2004 Seville SLS Headlight Problem

[TKNorris]

I'm new to the forum and have a question: My 2004 SLS low beams illuminate the road very poorly (don't shine far enough in front of the car, very easy to overdrive the low beams-the high beams look way down the road). I have raised the assembly as far as the adjustment will allow and I have replaced the low beam lamps with Sylvania Ultra lamps. I took the drivers headlamp assembly apart (wow, what a job) to see if there was any further adjustment but could not find any. I did, however, find that the chrome plastic coating in the low beam housing has been hot and some of the chrome is peeling off. I don't know if the problem was there before I installed the Sylvania Ultra lamps or not. I applied some of the chrome tape from Auto Zone over the burned portion and hope that will be OK. I found a headlight adjustment procedure and it calls for measuring from the ground to a dot on the low beam plastic cover and using that as a reference to adjust the height. Does anyone else have a like body style that has given them headlight problems? Or can someone give me the measurement that they find on their SLS from the ground to the dot and/or from the ground to the front and rear wheel well apex? I searched with no luck on this problem but did find help on taking the headlight assembly apart and using silicone to put it back together. It seems like the front end is too low, very often scrapes on driveway, etc. StrutMasters doesn't think it would be the struts since I have only 30K miles and no real bounce on the front end. P225/60 R16 tires properly aired.
Thanks

 

[kissedvfd]

Yep, the front end on these things do sit pretty low. You really have to be careful around parking stops.
I've adjusted my headlamps to optimize the high beams and don't worry so much about the limited illumination of the low beams. I depend heavily on the driving lamps and they are adjustable, at least they are on the 2000 model.
It has become difficult to locate somebody to adjust headlamps properly around here anymore.

Good luck!

 

[TKNorris]

Thanks for your experienced reply! I will look into the driving light adjustment and optimizing the high beams and see how it works.

Tom

 

[Dadillac]

The low beams on the '98 thru '04 Seville's absolutely suck. The only thing that I found that worked was an aftermarket HID kit. Not the "HID" bulbs that you get for $20. An entire retrofit kit with HID bulbs, ballasts and ignitors off of Ebay. It cost me around $260, but prices have come down alot, and it took about an hour to install. Most of that time was finding a place to mount the ballasts. It is a true plug and play deal. The improvement is phenominal. I opted for a 5300K lumens bulb and would not go any higher. Factory HID's are at 4300K. Anything higher in number will produce less real light, but will add some color to the light. You will need a kit that fits the 9006 socket.

Don