VW Electrics Headlight Adjustment

Round headlight adjustment

(Penned by Covkid)

This article is for round headlight adjustment only although the principles should apply for square headlights too.

If you remove front grill you will see two adjustment screws at the positions shown by the coloured dots in photo below. Red denotes vertical (up & down) adjustment and blue denotes lateral (side to side) adjustment. These units are actually combined DRL units.

For reference (and by all means set them up on a wall using the 25 feet model or even let your local garage check them), below photo is where the 'kicks' should be and the cutoff points on an average flat road (along the blue line) to ensure you can see but not blind other drivers. The kick on the left is to help pick out signs etc, and should start at the kerb edge. The right kick should start at centre line of road, on the right the beam needs to be below eye level of oncoming traffic. May help anyone trying to set them up from scratch and get them right. You only have to look at height of the beams then. Headlight aligners simply get you to that point and quite a few set them too high I've found. You should NOT be lighting up the backs of drivers heads. Set them like this and they will pass alignment check.

If you're not sure what I mean by 'headlight kicks' take a look at this next pic as I go round a bend. At that distance you can see both 'kicks' clearly. On a straight road, the very start of the left kick should be at the kerb edge. I worked on bugs for many years and had no problem setting up headlights accurately by hand like this and they always passed. You can set them on a garage door to some extent but you'll only get a 'near enough' adjustment and other than putting them in front of headlight aligners, the above is perfectly true and sets them so you get a good spread of light where you need it, without inconveniencing anyone else and within the rules.