bimmerspeed

Okay i have in issue, i took my car to the dealer and had them look at the alignment of the head lights, they are auto leveling, adaptive so they move in all directions. that being said.
the SA said that the left side (drivers side) is aimed lower on purpose, because it will not be in the eye of the oncomeing traffic. thats a bunch of BS.
this is not the first car i own with HID projectors, and its not the first car i have with leveling head lights.
this does not make any sense to me. why will one be lower and the other be higher.
the whole assembly looks lower, the DRL also looks lower, i can tell when i see the reflections from the car in front of me.

is this normal, left lower than the right?????????

if im not mistaking it should be leveled.

I have attached some pics to show the difference, the pic does not display it enough but you can see the difference.

dream5

it's normal.

your left headlight faces oncoming traffic so it's lower to prevent glaring the drivers of oncoming traffic. right side doesn't face oncoming traffic as much so it's raised higher for better visibility.

a proper cutoff looks like _________/---------------

here's an example of a near-perfect cutoff line

mrfva

Yup that's normal, even with non-HID and halogen headlights. As far back as I can remember, it's always been like this.

bimmerspeed

Okay, But doesn't the lights look not leveled from far away, like if you were going to be an on coming car, cant you tell that the lights need to be aligned, like if you were to see a civic, with after market projectors, you can tell that they did not align it, doesnt our car look like that as well..

BickUW89

Completely normal, and engineered that way. Take a look at the brochure for the E60 (heck, even the one for the E39 had this) and it shows a top-down picture showing precisely this alignment of the headlights as a safety feature - protect the eyes of on-coming drivers, see farther down the edge of the road for your safety).

Rudy

It's hard to tell if there's a problem or not. It's true that in left-hand drive countries, the driver's side light is often adjusted a bit lower than the passenger side but I agree that there shouldn't be such a noticeable difference at close range (like in your pics.) I'm not sure but I think the way BMW engineered it, the resulting light "spray" doesn't blind oncoming traffic due to something in the lens itself.

Even the alignment instructions from BMW indicate a more "aligned" horizontal line across both headlight assemblies:
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?s=&sho...st&p=237331

Also, take a look at the following thread for some additional information:
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=42644

EBMCS03

Try driving in front of one and see. Its fine.

BickUW89

This from BMW:


"an auto-leveling feature helps keep headlight glare out of the eyes of oncoming drivers."

Rudy

Right, but that doesn't mean that up close (against a wall or something) that they shouldn't look level like the alignment .pdf indicates...

RajB

Although one side should be slightly lower they shouldn't be that out from the pic you posted.