Headlight Woes.... OR... my lights are CRAP

[MarkD51]

I searched in vain for the particular youtube vid I wanted to show, but couldn't find it, sorry.

But how it said to proceed was this:

Find a large level parking lot with a smooth flat brick wall. (I once did this in back of a Walmart Supercenter one evening with my own Tahoe)

Pull up to the wall only mere inches from it and almost touching the wall, exactly square and straight and measure both sides to check both are the same distance, the distance between the headlights and wall must be the same. Insure you pulled up exactly straight in other words.

Turn on your lights. Take a piece of Blue Painter's Masking Tape the exact same length as the Headlight Housings, and place this piece of Tape at the very bottom of where you see the beams of light hit the wall on both right and left sides. (correction, insure the tape is exactly physically positioned at where the bottom of the light housing itself is) Insure the Masking tape is exactly in the correct position left and right in relation to where the headlight housings are.

Now back up perfectly straight. Do not touch the steering wheel at all when you back up. Have a 50' Tape Measure and be at a distance of 25' or 30'. Check with the tape measure to insure your distance is correct on both sides.

Adjust only one light at a time, covering the other lamp with a beach or bath towel. Insure, just like before, that the brightest area of the beam is again just hitting above the piece of Masking Tape, and that the beam is centered where the piece of Tape is.

Repeat for the other side. Of course then test. The process might need to be repeated, and some slight further adjustments made.

Hope this helps.

 

[Shibbershabber]

Thanks

 

[Rocket Man]

I searched in vain for the particular youtube vid I wanted to show, but couldn't find it, sorry.

But how it said to proceed was this:

Find a large level parking lot with a smooth flat brick wall. (I once did this in back of a Walmart Supercenter one evening with my own Tahoe)

Pull up to the wall only mere inches from it and almost touching the wall, exactly square and straight and measure both sides to check both are the same distance, the distance between the headlights and wall must be the same. Insure you pulled up exactly straight in other words.

Turn on your lights. Take a piece of Blue Painter's Masking Tape the exact same length as the Headlight Housings, and place this piece of Tape at the very bottom of where you see the beams of light hit the wall on both right and left sides. (correction, insure the tape is exactly physically positioned at where the bottom of the light housing itself is) Insure the Masking tape is exactly in the correct position left and right in relation to where the headlight housings are.

Now back up perfectly straight. Do not touch the steering wheel at all when you back up. Have a 50' Tape Measure and be at a distance of 25' or 30'. Check with the tape measure to insure your distance is correct on both sides.

Adjust only one light at a time, covering the other lamp with a beach or bath towel. Insure, just like before, that the brightest area of the beam is again just hitting above the piece of Masking Tape, and that the beam is centered where the piece of Tape is.

Repeat for the other side. Of course then test. The process might need to be repeated, and some slight further adjustments made.

Hope this helps.

Holy crap I don’t think I’ve ever seen 5 of the same posts. The site might be laggy again, but patience with that trigger finger!

 

[MarkD51]

Shit! Yeah, the forum was lagging like a *****! I looked, but see no option to delete! Damn.

 

[MarkD51]

If again you'll perhaps swap Headlight Housings, this of course would be a good time to also incorporate the Hi-4 Headlight Kit.

Most commonly, they come with a set of Quick Squeeze on connectors which work, but can give problems over time. And as well these kits will come with a 30A Relay. I suggest placing the relay in a place that won't subject the Relay of getting wet, and to also place it where you can easily swap a Relay out if one goes bad.

I'd had about 3 relays go kaput in the 14-15 years of installing such a kit on my own Tahoe. The first time I had to swap one, it was in a bad location. I corrected that for possible future issues.

I only responded because just like you, I went through this same crap and learned the hard way with aftermarket Headlight Housings some years back, and like you, wound up with quite poor illumination because of that thought to be upgrade.

 

[Rocket Man]

Shit! Yeah, the forum was lagging like a *****! I looked, but see no option to delete! Damn.

All you can do is edit or ask for the mods help. It just did it to me too.

 

[MikeNM]

My 2007 Yukon XL (not Denali) had an inch of water in the right (passenger side) headlight, plus the original Yukon high beams are lousy – they don’t illuminate the road any farther than the low beams. Since I had to remove the headlight anyway to fix the leak, I decided to upgrade to HID headlights (Morimoto Mini D2S). It was a good upgrade, and the HID high beams are a significant improvement on this particular vehicle. But I wouldn’t go to the effort to upgrade my other vehicles to HID since they have decent halogen high beams (and their headlights aren’t leaking).

The HID high beams shine way farther than the lousy Yukon OEM high beams and are a great improvement for the Yukon. But the Yukon OEM low beams actually shine farther than the HID low beams due to the sharp cutoff at the top of the HID low beams. So the HID provides better high beams for country driving, but the HID does not provide any more light for in-town driving with low beams due to the cutoff.

Since the Yukon OEM reflectors are so bad, I wouldn’t recommend using a HID or LED bulb in the Yukon OEM reflector without a projector. You will throw out a large amount of light and glare with a poor light pattern.

 

[exp500]

96-99 my guess. Really bad factory lights. one cheap fix, Swap low beams to hi beams, your DRLs will be in inboard housings then. Also cheap is 4 lights on Hi beam. The eagle eye reflectors are as good as factory. Found this out trying to use 100Watt ebay bulbs that didn't fit right.Just remember when hi beam light on, low beams are showing. Hope this helps.

 

[iCajun]

For my 97 I found the 88-90 quad lights to have a much better beam pattern than the stock plastic lights. Not any brighter but could see much better. They are pretty cheap at the junkyards. Installing heavy wiring made them much brighter.

 

[iCajun]

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