I took my car into the dealer last week to replace the headlight lenses on my 8. They were fogging from the inside. Not sure what caused that to happen but now it looks like the headlights are not leveled correctly. I drove my 8 for the first time at night today and it it looks like I am throwing a shadow about 10 to 12 feet in front of my car. I know this is new because I never noticed it before in the last year and a half since I've had the car. Can anyone tell me how far ahead the normal light pattern of the headlights should be ie where does the lower left higher right pattern fall in front of the car? Thanks in advance.

 

If you read in your owners manual it should tell you how to level your lights.

 

lol - welcome to my world. I've been adjusting and readjusting my headlights for at least the last month. Yes I had my light assemblies replaced as well. Almost have it back to stock, just cant seem to line the 2 beams up to the point where they dont overlap each other and cast "double lines."

The distance from the bumper to where the each light hits the road would be helpful to me as well. It looks like I'm throwing down the bat signal in front of my car right now.

 

This may help. It explains the headlights "Z" pattern
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tech-garage-22/headlight-aim-23177/

 

Thank you Tiggerlee! The thread you posted had what I was looking for. I will call my dealer and have them align them. I would do it myslef but don't want to screw them up even more. Only the driver's side light is off. I went to a different dealer near my house and used one of their RX-8's to compare the beam patterns on their building walls. Can't believe checking the alignment is not part of the process when replacing headlight assemblies! At least they hooked the power back up so I could use the car at night. Thanks again.

 

my headlights are also missaligned (spell check) after having them replaced. they don't affect my night time driving so it doesn't bother me. every once in a while someone will flash their high beems at me so i show them what high beams are suppost to look like!

 

Glad to help.

 

My auto leveling system seems to be very random. Some times the light will come on and stay on for 10 min. This doesn’t happen very often. Some times (rarely) the system seems to work, I can see it make corrections and I can actually see down the road when I am using the low beams. Seeing down the road is very helpful at night, I might add. Most of the time the system does not indicate a malfunction but I can only see about 30-50 feet in front of the car. So at 65mph or about 95 ft/sec I can see about 0.5 seconds ahead of the car assuming the best. Good thing it has good breaks & handling!

Has anybody else had this problem and did you get it corrected? I don’t think it is a simple question of aim because sometimes it seems to work. I have a service appointment scheduled for Friday and I want to go in with my guns loaded because I’m sure that they will come back with “No Problem Found”. That’s nice until the deer comes through the windshield very unexpectedly. I know, you never expect a deer to come through the windshield but if you at least saw it in the road before you hit it you might guess the next step. If I needed to flip on the low beams for on coming traffic I don’t think I would see anything except maybe white feet.

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.