Whether you feel you can’t see as well at night, or you feel you’re lighting too low, or too high, in all these scenarios, there’s only one part of your car responsible – your headlights, as well known as high beams. Nevertheless this adjustment may appear easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a whole adjustment is much more technical than this elementary manipulation, and in this post, we are going to discover how to adjust the headlights of your Toyota Tacoma? To do this, first we will discover why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your Toyota Tacoma.

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Why adjust the headlights of your Toyota Tacoma?

So let’s begin our content with the interest of adjusting the headlights of your Toyota Tacoma. For many of us, our headlights are adjusted well enough, and they seem to light up enough after dark. Unfortunately this is not always the circumstance and looking at this setting, either because the headlights on your Toyota Tacoma are not bright enough, or because you have the sensation that they are too weak is a great idea .

Adjusting the high beams of your Toyota Tacoma for safety

First of all, the headlight adjustment of a Toyota Tacoma must be done for a very easy safety explanation. Regardless it’s for you, or for the other users you come across during your night trips. In actual fact, if you don’t see enough, the risk is to ignore an obstacle on the road, or to predict a curve badly. On the other hand, if your headlights are too powerful, regardless if you are meant to switch to low beam lights when you cross a car, the time needed to make this switch will most of the time expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your Toyota Tacoma . It is consequently essential for others as well as for you to have an ideal adjustment of your headlights.

Adjusting the headlights of a Toyota Tacoma for legal reasons

Furthermore to safety, there is a law that regulates the power, the adjustment of car headlights (articles R313-2 of the Highway Code), here is what it specifies: have between 2 and 4 headlights that illuminate at minimum 100 meters. Another legislation regulates their use, the European one (directive 76/756/EEC), which stipulates that there is no maximum height for the adjustment of the headlights, but that the maximum width of the beam must be very same to that of the dipped headlights and that the maximum luminosity must be 225, 000 cd.

How to adjust the headlights of a Toyota Tacoma?

We will now go forward to the part that concerns you the most in this post, how to adjust the headlights of his Toyota Tacoma? This adjustment may appear a bit complicated, but by following the instructions you should be able to accomplish it without too much problem.

Preparations to adjust the headlights of a Toyota Tacoma

First of all, you’ll need to prepare your car to adjust your high beams in good conditions, here are the preparations to executed:

  • Place your car on a surface in front of a white wall for example, about 4 or 5 meters from the wall.
  • Check your tire pressure cautiously.
  • Check that the height adjustment knob for the lights is set to 0
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  • Try doing that with half a full tank.
  • Take out all unneeded weight from the vehicle, just one person should be in the driver’s seat.

The headlight adjustment of his Toyota Tacoma

Once your vehicle is in position, you will turn on your dipped beam and make a cross-shaped mark (one horizontal and one vertical section) in the middle of the beam that will be projected on the wall. Check with a level that both parts of the cross are straight. Then back your car up to a distance of between 7 and 10 metres. For the rest of the process here are the steps to stick to:

  • Open your hood, locate the screws for horizontal and vertical control of the headlights of your Toyota Tacoma (they are usually designated, and those on top must modify the verticality and the one on the side handles the horizontality of the adjustment).
  • Use a cloth or another thing to hide the projector on which you are not making the adjustment.
  • Using the screws to make the horizontal adjustment, you should have the most intense part of the beam which should be a little to the right of the vertical line noted on the wall
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  • With regard to vertical adjustment, you will have to use the screw to try to position the upper end of the beam at the level of the horizontal marking on the wall, or slightly below.
  • Once finished, check that the headlights setting of your Toyota Tacoma is coherent, do not hesitate to check it after you have driven it, sometimes it may move.

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If you want to adjust the fog lights on your Toyota Tacoma, please browse our content on this subject matter.

If you need more guides on the Toyota Tacoma, go to our Toyota Tacoma category.