Post by scooterollie on Feb 7, 2008 10:03:57 GMT -5
Headlights on our scoots often leave something to be desired when riding at night. Low wattage bulbs and poor reflector design/quality reduce headlight effectiveness. There is a simple adjustment procedure you can do to make the most of your lights at night.
Since our scoots come with many different designs of headlight modules, the most difficult part of this may be finding out how to make the adjustments and getting the adjusters to work. You are on your own for that part of the procedure. Some modules are very crudely made and use screws, others have knobs that you turn. The knobs may turn gears and those are known to strip or break. If you don't know what you are looking for, it may be difficult to find the adjusters or, because of your scoot design, difficult to get to the adjusters. If you have two bulbs, there is usually only one set of adjusters - vertical & horizontal - which move both bulbs at the same time.
You need a wall or garage door and a reasonably flat, level surface up to around 30' out from the door. It helps to have someone else to work with but creative folks can figure out how to do this on your own.
-Back the scoot up until the tip of the headlight bulb(s) is 25' from the wall or door.
(A UK site says 17'. Never tried that. Standard here seems to be 25')
-With the scoot off the stands and someone sitting on it, measure the distance from the
ground to the tip of the bulb(s)
-On the wall, directly in front of the headlight(s), measure and mark (piece of black
electrical tape does the trick) the same distance. Place the tape horizontally.
-Measure 2" below the first and place another piece of tape, horizontally.
-As accurately as possible, place a short, vertical piece of tape across the first two, marking
the point on the wall aligned with the center of the headlight module. If you are too far
right or left of center, your light beam will not be directed down your lane properly.
-With someone sitting on the scoot and the light(s) on low beam, adjust the vertical
adjustment until the top edge of the light beam is even with the lower line
-Adjust the horizontal adjustment so the center of the beam is on the small "+" mark
made by the tape
-Switch to high beam. Theoretically, the high beam should align with the top "+" mark
The above assumes properly made and aligned headlight modules. If the low and high beams don't fall where you want them on the road, you may have to fine tune the vertical adjustment to suit your preference and scoot. I did this on my previous scoot and found the factory adjustment had the low beams to be looking down at the road well before they should. Raising the low beam caused the high beam to then search down the road as it should. Even with 35W35 bulbs and cheap headlight modules, night time lighting was much improved.
Another thing I found that really improves night time lighting is to install a set of fog lights to fan out across the road directly in front of the scoot. Coupled with the standard headlights, the fog lights brightly illuminate the immediate road and shoulders. Great for riding back roads. There is a problem, however. The 150 scoots won't put out enough current to support the fog lights and it may even be marginal for larger scoots. My Bali 250 had the 18 coil stator and handled the extra load OK for short rides.
Since our scoots come with many different designs of headlight modules, the most difficult part of this may be finding out how to make the adjustments and getting the adjusters to work. You are on your own for that part of the procedure. Some modules are very crudely made and use screws, others have knobs that you turn. The knobs may turn gears and those are known to strip or break. If you don't know what you are looking for, it may be difficult to find the adjusters or, because of your scoot design, difficult to get to the adjusters. If you have two bulbs, there is usually only one set of adjusters - vertical & horizontal - which move both bulbs at the same time.
You need a wall or garage door and a reasonably flat, level surface up to around 30' out from the door. It helps to have someone else to work with but creative folks can figure out how to do this on your own.
-Back the scoot up until the tip of the headlight bulb(s) is 25' from the wall or door.
(A UK site says 17'. Never tried that. Standard here seems to be 25')
-With the scoot off the stands and someone sitting on it, measure the distance from the
ground to the tip of the bulb(s)
-On the wall, directly in front of the headlight(s), measure and mark (piece of black
electrical tape does the trick) the same distance. Place the tape horizontally.
-Measure 2" below the first and place another piece of tape, horizontally.
-As accurately as possible, place a short, vertical piece of tape across the first two, marking
the point on the wall aligned with the center of the headlight module. If you are too far
right or left of center, your light beam will not be directed down your lane properly.
-With someone sitting on the scoot and the light(s) on low beam, adjust the vertical
adjustment until the top edge of the light beam is even with the lower line
-Adjust the horizontal adjustment so the center of the beam is on the small "+" mark
made by the tape
-Switch to high beam. Theoretically, the high beam should align with the top "+" mark
The above assumes properly made and aligned headlight modules. If the low and high beams don't fall where you want them on the road, you may have to fine tune the vertical adjustment to suit your preference and scoot. I did this on my previous scoot and found the factory adjustment had the low beams to be looking down at the road well before they should. Raising the low beam caused the high beam to then search down the road as it should. Even with 35W35 bulbs and cheap headlight modules, night time lighting was much improved.
Another thing I found that really improves night time lighting is to install a set of fog lights to fan out across the road directly in front of the scoot. Coupled with the standard headlights, the fog lights brightly illuminate the immediate road and shoulders. Great for riding back roads. There is a problem, however. The 150 scoots won't put out enough current to support the fog lights and it may even be marginal for larger scoots. My Bali 250 had the 18 coil stator and handled the extra load OK for short rides.
