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C1 Headlight Alignment |
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Chip Werstein is seen
seated above lecturing about the first Tech Topic of the day,
Headlight Alignment. Many of the So Cal SACC members may
not travel out and drive their cars at night or some may do it
often, but if you are out and turn your headlights ON and see
that you are illuminating overhead cross street signs, while the
LOW beam appears searching for crawling insects 3 feet in front
of your car, you might want to read further and do this
exercise.
Chip selected Dwight McDonald's '62 for this alignment exercise.
Chip's initial handout for the factory Headlight alignment sheet
is seen below. Other illustrations were originated by the
Webmaster and entered for (hopefully) more clarification. Begin
by removing both Headlight Bezel's. This discussion is
centered around the C1 Quad headlight design. A discussion
on the C1 single headlight design follows at the end.
The drawing/layout above
was a handout from Chip. Chip admits that it does require
some understanding before performing the technique, since there
is no step by step procedure provided. Below is the
procedure followed by Chip during the session.
SQUARING THE CAR AND SCREEN
POSITIONING: The placement of the car and the screen
used for shining the headlights on is IMPORTANT! Begin in a location that is approximately
10 to 20 feet in length. The surface should also be level.
"Square" the car to the Screen/Surface where the headlights will
shine. The importance of this set-up places the surface to
be illuminated parallel to the headlamps on the car. If
this is not checked, the car could be pointed at an angle to the
screen and the entire alignment is shifted off. A garage
door can be used or the inside back wall of the garage, but the
car alignment to whatever surface needs to be done correctly.
Below is an illustration indicating the important measurements
for positioning the car in front of a screen.
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DISTANCE OF SCREEN:
The screen distance from the car-front can vary. The diagram
presented by Chip calls for 25 feet. The (you can check it out)
headlight "lighted/illuminated" area/size gets larger as the
screen distance increases. The closer the screen, the smaller
the illuminated area. Also, it can be seen, the illuminated
area is not a circle but is bigger in the left-right dimension.
Sometimes a good compromise distance is 10 to 15 feet making the
beam size smaller, and brighter.
1. CAR POSITION AND
SCREEN MARKS: Position the car on the level surface and
"square" the car front to a surface/screen located over 10 in front of
the headlights. Squaring the car front surface (imaginary plane
containing the headlights) is important because the center of the
car (Corvette insignia location) needs to be marked on the
screen/surface (left-right and up-down measurement). Measure
the distance from the ground to the center of your headlamps,
locate this distance on the screen and adjust the
left-right center location to be the up-down distance measured.
Your final mark locations of the headlamps on the screen is
found by measuring the location on the car. Remember, the
up-down is the same as the center location. Your screen surface
should now have marks identifying the center and all 4 of your
headlamps (corresponding to the car lamp locations. |
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2. The diagram seen above
indicates the Screen located in front of the car, and a
"plane/surface" indicating the headlamps. The large arrows
indicate the driver viewing direction in relationship to both
screens. |
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3. HIGH BEAM ALIGNMENT:
The first alignment will be the HIGH beam headlamp
adjustment. These are the inner lamps on the car. Turn the
HIGH beam ON in the car (all 4 lamps should be lit). Block off
the outside lamps with some type of paper. This is indicated in
the picture of Chip with Dwight's car above. Using the two
screws in the picture below (one for horizontal adjustment and
one of vertical adjustment), turn the screws to locate the beam
center (brightest hot spot) to be centered on the HIGH BEAM MARK position marked on
the screen. |
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   The
pictures above are examples of C1 headlamp "bucket assembly's".
Each lamp is secured into a framework of its own and secured in
location with a stainless ring. The stainless
ring/lamp/framework are secured into the double bucket assembly
by springs and two adjustment screws. The double bucket is
fastened to the car body. The
3 screws fastening the stainless lamp ring must be tight and are
NOT adjusted. 2 additional screws per lamp, adjust
the lamp angle and are indicated. One screw
adjusts the vertical angle and the other screw adjusts the
horizontal angle. They are indicated above. |
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4. HIGH BEAM ALIGNMENT
(continued): Repeat step 3 on the remaining HIGH Beam
Lamp. NOTE: When the car has the high beams
operating (all 4 headlamps working), the outer lamps are not to
be aligned when in the HIGH Beam operation. They are aligned in the following steps when
in the LOW BEAM operation. |
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5. LOW BEAM ALIGNMENT:
Switch the headlights to the LOW BEAM operation. Only the
outer lamps should be working. As a first step, the
pointing location of the Low lamps is straight ahead to the
screen to the marks made when we started.
Once the low beam lamps
are aligned to the Low Beam marks,
a further adjusted
"desired" pointing will be done. See the chart
below and adjust the Low beams slightly to the right
(as viewed by the driver) on the screen, and slightly lower.
A detail dimensioned sketch is indicated on the following
illustration. BE AWARE when making the offset adjustment,
the indicated offset is to the EDGE of the illuminated pattern,
not the CENTER.
This "desired" last adjustment position
provides more illumination on the
highway/roadside for obstructions alongside the highway.
Align both LOW Beam lamps
similarly.
Remember! You do not
align the outer headlamps in the HIGH Beam operation as the
change in any alignment when the outer lamps are switched occurs
inside the lamp, so
don't mess with the outer lamp alignment. |
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The following drawing was
also supplied by Chip while at the Tech Session. This
drawing contains alignment methodology for the single
headlight systems incorporated on the 1953 to 1957 C1 Corvettes. |
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The adjustment procedure is
very similar to the Quad headlight cars in car positioning,
screen location, making the marks on the screen, etc. A
significant difference is that this alignment is only performed
with the Lamps in HIGH Beam operation. No alignment is
done in the LOW Beam operation. A similar drawing below is
another way of viewing the supplied alignment sheet. |
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Thank You to Chip Werstein for
this presentation. |
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