Non oem headlight assembly putting out bad beam pattern

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by aiagm, Jul 23, 2024.

  1. aiagm

    aiagm New Member

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    I bought a non oem replacement halogen headlight assembly for my nhw20L and cannot get a decent beam pattern. The screw to adjust it is either a dummy or I'm doing it wrong. Did I just buy a junk assembly?
     
  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    It is possible The Tyco brand. That I have purchased a few times the adjusters seem to work I do know when I change from a halogen bulb to an LED bulb I have to crank the adjuster righty tighty about six or more half turns of the screwdriver or three complete rotations of the device that I'm turning on the headlight when you do this you'll all of a sudden see your cutoff line magically appear and then you apply the cutoff line to where it's supposed to be on the garage door that you measured from looking at a headlight aiming manual I noticed this on quite a few changeovers so maybe this is the thing I don't know what kind of bulb you're running or any of that if you turn the adjuster while you're looking at the forward edge of the headlamp Chrome piece that's behind the clear plastic you will see that piece widen that gap as you lower the light assembly internally or it will raise up if you're going the other way You want to do this at dusk or in your garage where it's looking like dusk all the time I can't make videos easily or you can probably look this up on YouTube and see a video when you crank your adjuster righty tighty with the bulb in and turned on all of a sudden you'll see you're cut off line just appear It's like a flat line across the wall that's what you want to be aiming notice your flat line before was invisible because it was way up in the sky or aimed up pretty high You just brought it down and now you're sitting it on the measurement line that we hope you put a piece of tape on the wall or garage door to use to do this with this is the up and down not side to side.
     
  3. ColoradoCrow

    ColoradoCrow Active Member

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    If you bought it from Amazon for $150 like I did....not really the reflector is just sub par and crappy. I had LED blubs and the beam pattern was to tight and directional. I switched back to Halogens and it got a bit better but the pattern is very choppy and now smooth at all. I installed fog lights and that helped a bit. Some day I will install projector lenses and LED.
     
  4. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    I used to appreciate nice headlights and all that stuff but as I get older and drive less and less at night seems like a lot of work for well not much use I guess but that's what I would be looking to do also is put the nice whatever it is the titanium little mini projectors in our factory headlamps and that should pretty much have your way with the headlight system The little fog lights that come on the car with decent bulbs seem to do okay there are some others that could fit in those holes that are better lamps in themselves but I mean how far do we need to go.