Is there a headlight rule of thumb?

I'm about to change out the housings and wondering of there's a rule of thumb like "at 50 feet from a wall, the top of your beam should be 3'6" from the ground" or some crap like that. I dont know that the stock housings are aimed properly. Looking for the best way to set the lights without blinding oncoming traffic. Thanks for any tips.

 

Mark your current lights on a wall before you remove them and check the new lights against that

 

1
Time the job so that it's dark enough to see the headlight's glow clearly. Begin working at around twilight.
2
Park the car on a flat surface facing a wall or garage door. The parking surface must be long enough to allow you to park the front of vehicle 25 feet away from the wall or door, but park the front of the vehicle up close to the wall for the initial procedure.
3
Mark a center line on the wall. Extend a yardstick from the hood ornament, or center line on the hood, to the wall or door. Make a vertical line on the wall with masking tape to mark the vehicle center.
4
Take measurements for reference marks. Measure from the ground to the center of one headlight. Mark the wall two inches below that measurement with a horizontal stripe of tape that's as wide as the vehicle. Place a yardstick vertically in the center of front grill. Use the hood ornament for a guide. Measure from the center of a low beam headlight to the center of the yardstick. Measure that distance from the vertical center tape along the horizontal tape stripe. Mark the distance with small vertical strips of tape that cross the horizontal tape on both sides of the center line.
Your wall marks will look similar to this: (----+-------|*------+----)
5
Back up the car in a straight line until the headlights are 25 feet from the wall. Use a tape measure to mark the distance accurately. Be sure the driveway or parking surface does not slope up or down.
6
Turn the low beam headlights on. Notice the glow from each lamp is lower on the left side than on the right. The flat line at the upper left of the glow is called the cutoff.
7
Adjust the vertical aim of the beams. Use the vertical set screw over the center of the lamp to set the cutoff of each beam level with the horizontal tape line.
8
Adjust the horizontal aim. Use the horizontal adjustment screw, off to the outside of the lamp, to line up the angled slope coming up from the cutoff with the vertical side marks.

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Yes, there is a thread somewhere w/ the info in it. It shows the factory specs for aligning the headlights. iirc, you can do it 25ft or 9ft from a wall. I'll try to find the post...

 

I don't use the wall shit, I prefer to drive to dark area and use where the light is hitting on the road to adjust them. They can be even on the wall but still need a bit of tweaking to be right when actually driving. They will also need adjusting if just swapping bulbs. Even with same style bulb, I have found that going from one H7 to another H7 in the same housing will require a touch up on aiming...or H4s if you have oems. Going from halogen to HID in the same housing will of course require re-aiming. I usually focus lights where dims hit the road 20 yards or so in front of the truck or just beyond where the fogs light up road. (my fogs are HID so they do light up more than with the halogen bulbs) This usually keeps light out of back windows and puts brights where they need to be too, although, some compromise of where dims and brights line up with seperate bulbs may need to be made so both dims and brights are generally both right. The dims are of course more important to have dialed in the best.

 

Here you go...

 

Thanks Gents