DOT and SAE standards things of the past

There was mention below about eyesight and the relation to the "new" vehicular headlamps.

One upon a time headlights had to have sae or dot imprinted on them the were sealed beam and easily viewed it was embossed in the glass.

back then cars and truck would adhere to the requirements to aiming and such. If out of alignment and shining into oncoming traffic the local constable or state cop might write them up.

Back in those days they had gas stations and repair shops alike the had a sign to certify themselves as able to aim and write off headlight tickets.

Nowadays, although there is a basic adherence in new cars to send the brightest portion of the light from the lamps in a specific pattern a cut-off pattern if you will allowing the right hand roadside more and higher light than oncoming traffic, new improvements and acceptance to massively brighter lamps and the allowance to what seems extreme tolerance to the hazards of blinding oncoming traffic in favor of the emitters favor.

Crazy is.

It is so easy to buy and install any and all types of LED replacement bulbs that disgrace the allowed patterns and it seems the status quo is brightest lights wins.

I have 2009 chevy it uses some variant of h4 and have tried a couple few sets of led replacement inserts, but they blind oncoming traffic and I get highbeamed. That is even after taking time to draw out my cutoff patterns on a wall and copy that with the new bulbs.

I use sylvania silver star krypton?s they offer the best bright light and still stay pretty pure to the design and allowable aim.

I even hate a lot of cars and truck at daytime so bright I have to dim my mirror as the ride up behind.

Vermont has rust inspections. They just last year included check engine light inspection. Talk about a fiasco mandating repairs that no one in the state can understand or perform. (just call it artisan and not incompetence)
there is no way in hay that they will include headlamp aim and brightness standards

blaze on
brightest lights wins.

Used to have head light adjustment as part of the yearly inspection here in Texas.

The people got so tired of being ripped off by the inspectors they dropped it.

They could claim the lights were out, tag on another $15 to adjust them, then go to twisting on the plastic nuts and break them.

"Sorry, it sure won't pass now, but you still have to pay me for breaking it"!

(quoted from post at 12:51:25 09/24/19) Used to have head light adjustment as part of the yearly inspection here in Texas.

The people got so tired of being ripped off by the inspectors they dropped it.

They could claim the lights were out, tag on another $15 to adjust them, then go to twisting on the plastic nuts and break them.

"Sorry, it sure won't pass now, but you still have to pay me for breaking it"!

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Funny you mention that about TX. When I was stationed at Ft Bliss most new soldiers were told by old hands where to take a vehicle for inspection if you wee going to register it in TX. It was almost taken for granted that if you were from out of state most places certified to do vehicle inspection would lie about something to sell a repair. One favorite place you could take something in, tell them to please aim the headlights and do a vehicle inspection. It was claimed that was all it took to pass. It was like 10 bucks to aim the light and 15 or 20 for the inspection.

Rick

When we bought our first Subaru Outback we got a lot of complaints when meeting others at night, and I complained to the dealer. He told me they were not adjustable and once the suspension softened it would be alright! We don't drive at night very much so I just let it go, but it was still a problem. Eventually I googled it and sure enough they were adjustable, but just hard to find the screws, I lowered them a little and all was fine!

Though thankfully todays headlights are much brighter than the headlights of once upon a time, I find that I have lights aimed high at me far less than say 20 years ago. It is good to be able to see whee I am going.

I don't drive my 64 F 100 much at night, but when I have, I sure notice the difference. Those old sealed beams look yellow. joe

I seem to live in the "One Headlight State." Here in northern Michigan, near every car or truck I see at night has only one headlight. I guess this goes unnoticed until both go out. No vehicle inspection here required ever, and it seems the cops don't enforce. Maybe too many of them? I find it kind of amusing after living in New York state for 40 years and any slight infraction bought a high dollar ticket.

I still have an old head-light aimer here. Just got done adjusting the lights on my 94 Ford F250.

One time a COE Freight Liner flashed his lights. I always drive with the headlights on low beam. When I meet him, the low beam was so high, I could see the diamond tuff in the back of the cab. The headlights were adjusted the next day.

OK Russ im going to say this. If your Dealer told you your suspension will soften they lied. Ive work at a dealership for 17 years in the shop and thats the craziest thing iv heard. If your suspension gets soft you have a problem and that dang sure aint a way to fix your lights.

To speak on the modern headlamps, I have a vehicle with OEM LED projectors. The light output is outstanding on flat roads. They have a very sharp cutoff where its completely dark forward of or above the cutoff. The problem with that is hilly terrain, going down a hill you can not see anything until you reach the bottom of the hill and level out, this is a bigger issue if you are going up another hill.

Most of the problems are from people putting HID or LED bulbs into halogen reflectors. The HID & LED bulbs are suppose to have specific reflectors, usually they are projector housings.

I had an interesting experience with headlights on my 2008 Triumph Tiger motorcycle. These bikes use projector headlights, which use lenses to focus the beams rather than reflectors. Projector headlights are common on newer vehicles because they're much smaller than typical reflector headlights.

I bought the bike used, and noticed the low beam projector looked a little cloudy. The first time I drove it at night, I realized the low beam was almost useless! It seems Triumph had a run of defective headlight assemblies where the reflective coating would peel off the inside of the reflector. The only repair is to replace the whole headlamp assembly at 350 bucks.

With the bad headlight replaced, the lights were better, but not by much. I then switched to Sylvania Silverstar Ultra bulbs, which was a big improvement. I highly recommend these bulbs; they put out a lot more light that OEM bulbs but draw the same current. The down side to them is their life is quite a bit shorter than OEM, so you need to keep an eye on them.

Still not satisfied with the lights, I experimented with aftermarket driving lights. These got me to where I felt safe riding the bike at night, but the additional current draw was taxing the charging system. At that point I tried switching the H3 driving lights to LEDs. Fuhgetaboutit! Those LED bulbs may be bright, but they're totally unfocused.

I considered converting the lights to HID (high intensity discharge), but this would have involved butchering the headlamp assembly, meaning no way to go back.

Around 2013, Triumph did a minor upgrade to the Tiger, renaming it the Tiger Sport. One change was an entirely new headlamp assemby, which used four bulbs and reflectors rather than projectors. It looked like the new assembly would work in the older bikes, and Tiger owners quickly figured out how to make the swap. So I spent another 350 bucks on a TS headlamp assembly, plus a hundred on a conversion kit developed by an owner in the UK. Problem solved! Not with new LED or HID technology, but rather with old-school reflector headlights. The driving lights went into the trash, no longer needed.

My last Tundra had a knob on the lower left side of the dash to raise or lower the headlight aim. You could attach a good load on the hitch and still not have the headlights rise into the vision of oncoming drivers.