Your Best Guide to Your Car’s Headlights
These days, halogen headlights are still common in cars, but with the advancement of technology, LED, LASER, and HID are also becoming popular options for car’s headlights.
However, before you plan to replace or upgrade your car’s current headlights, there are several things you should know. These include the following:
Table of Contents
Alignment
Lots of people might be unaware of it. But, headlights are aimed to suit countries that drive on the left or right side. Headlights in left lane traffic areas have actually low-beam headlamps, which dip to the left. The light is basically distributed with a lefthand or downward bias to show drivers the signs and roads ahead without blinding incoming traffic.
This is vice versa for places that drive on right side with majority of the light directed downward. It also means that you can’t buy headlights in Ireland if you are planning to drive in France unless you want to calibrate your car lights for the change in the highway.
Load Adjustment or Auto Levelling
Load adjustment is used effectively in trucks and it means the headlights would adjust themselves and dip the beam downward to not blind some road users if cars become lower or higher depending on weight fluctuation or when car decelerates or accelerates.
SAE and ECE
ECE and SAE are basically regulation stamps. For those who don’t know, ECE means lamps may be used in European countries and some industrialized ones outside of Europe. On the other hand, SAE is the stamp used in United States. Major differences are purely based on allowable light and glare intensity. For instance, more glare is allowed in the US.
Lumens
It’s the light output’s standard measurement.
Projector Headlights and Reflector Headlights
Reflector headlamps are what they sound like. The actual light basically comes from the bulb in the center of the housing of car’s headlamp and reflects off the housing’s sides. It enables light being emitted from small bulbs to spread out on the road in front of the car. Projector headlights do exactly what they sound like. Such project lights instead of reflecting it. This kind of housing calls for various kinds of light bulbs to accommodate housing. Projector headlights enable more control of light beams as they’re emitted from housing. One must not confuse projector headlights with the HID headlights.
While the HIDs come in a kind of projector housing, not every projector headlight housing use HID bulbs. That is the reason why you’ll see projector headlights come with bulbs like H1 and H7.
There are other things that you should take for consideration when it comes to the headlights of your car. If you are unsure of some things when upgrading or replacing your headlights, it would be best to talk with professionals or people who are more knowledgeable on headlights. With this, you can be assured that you are using the right one suited for your car and you won’t experience any kind of inconvenience while you’re on the road.
