Triumphrat

BigRieg

I've had my '06 Tiger for just past a year now, but haven't had too many occasions to ride after dark. When I have, I noticed that the headlights were pathetic in illuminating the roadway effectively. Kudos to the factory and dealer for a job well ignored. For a good Memorial Day exercise, I decided to dig into the cockpit and align the headlights.

Getting the cockpit off and gaining access to the headlight assembly is easy enough. Removing the windscreen, the two turn-signal trim pieces, and four bolts and the Tiger's little fairing breaks away easily. The next issue though, entailed two hours of trail and error to figure out how the two headlights should be positioned.

The first thing I noticed was that both headlights have split beams. That is, there are two primary beams off each lamp that form a "V" with an angle of roughly 20 degrees. This had me scratching my head while I played around with the horizontal adjustment. After a bit of adjusting, when I had everything aligned to give good coverage, I found my high beams were illuminating the hedges, but not the roadway.

So I readjusted the headlights using the high-beams as my guide, then tweaked the low-beams to dial in the best coverage. This, in my opinion, is the key to aligning the headlights if your alignment is off in the weeds.

The way my low-beam coverage is now formed is very interesting...

The "V" formed by each headlight overlaps. The right leg of the V from the left lamp illuminates the right hand side of the lane in front of the bike. The right lamp works the same, but in reverse, with the left leg of the V-beam illuminating the left side of the lane in front of the bike. The left leg of the V from the left lamp illuminates the roadway to the left of the bike, outside the lane, with the right leg of the V from the right lamp doing the same for other side.

It's a little confusing. The best way to think of it is like a VW logo, with the lamps at the bottom of the W and the center beams overlapping to make the V.

By aligning the headlamps in this manner, with the center portion of the beams overlapping, I was able to get good broad illumination of the roadway, and the high-beam beams are spot-on for excellent coverage down the road.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has found a different way to align their headlights that gives good illumination for both low and high beams.

[ This message was edited by: BigRieg on 2007-05-29 01:37 ]

dword

Well now that you got it all figured out.. wanna set mine next? Me I just gave up and run em on high once I get off the highway on the 2 lane.. the low beams on mine only reach out about 1 car length.. the do a good job of lighting the side of the road but I have to use the brights to see more than 30 yards in front of me.

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The Long Road Home

If you travel long enough in the same direction you will end up right where you started.

JRO

The factory headlight setting is worthless.

The lights on dim aren't real bright, and I do tend to use mostly brights on the highway. I set my brights pretty high, and a little wide. I think they do a really good job. I'm not lighting up the hedgerows, but I do get some bar-ditch illumination, which I like.

As far as I know, it's trail & error. You play with it, until you're satisfied.

BigRieg

How much is a headlight adjustment worth? Maybe I can start a business.

For me, the trick was pointing the bike towards a wall, covering one headlamp while gauging what the other one was doing. After adjusting them, I would cruise around a dark neighborhood for a few minutes and try out the setup. Then repeat. :brk: It took me about an hour to get them where I was happy.

It's a pain, but having good illumination is worth it. Plus, with the headlights properly aligned, it seems like I am being noticed by cagers a lot more.

I agree that the factory setting is worthless. I would be surprised if they actually did any factory adjustments, given the poor state my headlights were in.