Hey all,

Posting to see if anyone can help with my headlight aim woes. I have an '03 sedan with ZKW Bi-Xenon lights that I cannot get high enough for all I've tried. When I start the car if the light switch is on I can watch them go through the down/up calibration just fine. At that point they look ok (passenger side a little lower but not bad), but as I drive away they slowly droop down. The driver side settles out at an ok-ish height, would like it a little higher. The passenger side, however, just keeps going like a bad lazy eye. Most of the drive is spent with a very clear step between driver and passenger side lights (even accounting for the stepped light pattern). I think that light output is ok, as what they do illuminate looks fine, so I wasn't planning to update bulbs or projectors. A few things of note:

1. The previous owner put on a European LCM with headlight aim knob. The LCM works, because I can get my rear fogs on, and I recently had about a week where my headlight aim knob worked as well, but after several days that gave up too and the knob now does nothing.

2. I have adjusted them using the top screws to their highest setting. This took some work, as at some point the passenger side vertical adjustment had been knocked off the "rails" within the light housing. With a lot of work I managed to get the grey piece back on its track. Because it had been jammed, the teeth on the adjustment wheel (within the housing, not the hand knob on the outside) were stripped, so I just manually put the rail at its farthest back point which would aim the headlight at its highest.

3. My front passenger headlight level sensor is broken. As in the little plastic arm that actuates up and down is snapped. It tends to hang in a position pointing towards the ground. This would likely coincide with suspension in droop, which is when the lights would aim downward. I know this is a problem, but if the Euro LCM worked it seems like this shouldn't matter, so I'm trying to fix the LCM rather than fix this, but maybe I need to do both?

There are a couple of other issues, like the Bi-xenon shutters on the driver side don't work at all so when I turn on brights I still get the half-circle cut off on that side (not a huge deal, can fix later, plus the PO programmed it so I get my halogen brights with both pulling or pushing the stalk). The passenger side light also doesnt quite fit as flush with the hood as the driver side. But my main complaint is the aim, especially the difference in aim. I think if I could get the passenger side as high as the driver side I would be happy, but if I could get them both to aim to the top of their travel it would really be ideal. A working Euro LCM knob would be icing on the cake.

Anyone with thoughts on these issues?

Next time I'm driving after dark I'll try to get pictures of my cross-eyed light pattern, but here is a video from when I did have my LCM working. You can see the passenger side at its lowest is lower than driver side (it's worse than that now), and that it's movement just doesnt quite match the driver side. When both are full up, I think the projection looks fine, but I can't get either one that high now that the knob isn't working.



Edit: I should add, the aim knob was working after having the battery disconnected, haven’t tried disconnecting and reconnecting to see if that helps.