2008 Heqadlights

[Harsh]

I have noticed that when the Avalon starts up the headlights seem to go through some type of adjustment. The beam aims down then up and stops. My wife does nto like the length of the beam and would like to adjust them up a bit to cover more road ahead of her while driving. Is this an adjustment I need to make electroically, or manually like on old headlight. I did not want to try anything since I notice the lights appear to move when the vehicle starts up. Any suggestions? Anyone else not happy with the length of the beam in front of the car at night?

[Heatwave]

The headlights perform an automatic self-leveling routine when you start the car. This keeps the lights shining in the correct plane, even when you have the car loaded in the rear. Start the car and let the lights settle out ... then pop the trunk and stand in it ... you'll see the lights readjust themselves to maintain the proper plane.

All the new headlights have sharp low-beam top-plane cutoffs ... that's intended to reduce the dazzling or blinding effect super-white lights have on some drivers of on-coming vehicles. There are manual adjustments on the light assemblies, so you could monkey around with them to raise the beams, but I think you'd just make things worse for the motoring public and wouldn't significantly "lengthen" the beam.

Here's a link that may tell you more than you really want to know about headlight adjustments and cut-offs:

Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply

Here's a pertinent passage from that link:

Here is what a correctly aimed set of European ECE or US DOT VOL headlamps looks like on low beam: