richie

my passenger light is a bit higher than the driver. i bring it in to check it out and the tech tells me thats the way its supposed to be. for safety reasons they drop the driver side because they are so bright. anyone heard of this? at a distance of about 15-20ft you can see the passenger side is a good 3-4 inches higher when its shining on my garage door.

zoom44

the tech is correct but did he measure the beams to make sure they are at the CORRECT heigths?

richie

he didn't measure anything, just told me it was normal. this is the same shop who told me the bose audio-pilot doesn't adjust the sound levels depending on ambient noise so i'm not surprised.

Labop

The tech is correct. I took a left hand drive car to england. They had too adjust the headlights to the opposite (right hand lower than left) so as not to blind oncoming drivers. All the cars I've driven have had the left lower, pretty sure there's a regulation, if not then it's common sense. I do notice a bit of a difference, probably due to headlight/bulb quality. It was hard to tell the difference on my old honda unless I had them on in front of the garage door. With the RX-8 I can really see a differrence quite a ways out.

zoom44

well they suck but you should make them do their job. take it back ask them to show you the specs for the aiming of each headlight and then have them check them and show you that your headlights are to the aiming spec.

tRiX8

it's been the standard for left-hand drive i believe

richie

i will take it back and have them check the specs. i agree it should be a bit lower, but i've never seen it so noticable before. maybe its the intensity of the lights that make it more noticeable.

scoop

Well my xenons are exactly the same and it stands to reason, there is not a problem with shining lots of light at deer in the ditch but it's not so good for other drivers coming toward you . . . The cutoff is so sharp with these lights that you see a very noticeable notch or step in the middle that looks out of place. If you drive some cars with good euro spec traditional headlights you will see a very sharp and noticeable cut up to the right to illuminate stuff along the side of the road, same deal. When comparing to older US DOT spec headlights there was no focus and there was no light so you would never notice . . .