2004 Rx330 Headlights

[jclearwater44]

I have my RX330 for about 6 months and love it with the exception of the headlights at night especially on unlit roads. The lights illuminate the roadway very well, however, when I'm on a roadway that might be evern slightly hilly, the beams distance can suddenly shrink to less than 15 feet in front of vehicle. Dealer says there is a leveling system that constantly adjusts according to vehicles 'attitude' and has raised angle of lights but now they're too bright for oncoming drivers.

[wwest]

MY 01 RX300 does not adjust headlamp level above about 15 to 20MPH.

[SW03ES]

It should, the Lexus system is completely dynamic and adjusts the level at all speeds. In all honesty theres not a lot you're going to be able to do short of installing secondary driving lights (which would be very easy to do and pretty inexpensive).

[Randall]

My wife and I just bought a 2004 RX 330 last month. We love it with the exception of the HID headlights. We have the same problem, when you're on an unlight road, the HID lights do not shine far enough down the road. Of course if no one is around we can use the high beams which are awesome. But, if there are cars in the distance, you can't turn the high beams on and therefore are stuck with limited visability.

I took it to the dealer today and the mechanic said that there was no adjustment for the headlights to angle them up farther. I would think that since they are auto leveling that there would have to be some kind of an adjustment to set the top limit of motion or something. Just doesn't make sense to me. If it could be angled up just a little bit it would help a lot and would still not be in drivers eyes.

With standard headlights, you can see the reflection off of signs as you go down the road. You can't see that with these lights unless you're right on top of the signs. My wife almost hit a dog the other day because it came from the left side of the road, which of course has an even shorter visability distance that the right side.

If anyone has any help in this area I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Randall & Maria

Warner Robins, GA

[SW03ES]

The guy at the dealer was lying, you can definately angle them up...

[Randall]

Is there anyway for me to do it myself or is it a computer adjustment?

Thanks,

Randall

[wwest]

There is an axle height sensor on the rear suspension, adjusting it is easy and will result in different "level" position for the headlamps.

[Randall]

Thanks wwest, I'll see if I can find it. I'm wondering if adjusting that sensor effects anything else? Do you know?

Thanks,

Randall

[wwest]

Height sensor is wired directly, only, to the auto-leveling ecu directly above your left knee as you sit in the driver's seat. Therefore it is unlikely that this sensor affects any other operation, at least for vehicles without air suspension. With air suspension the sensor might have dual use.

I tried to modify my 01 RX330 such that the lights would tilt upward during high beam use by injecting a constant current into the height sensor (actually a simple potentiometer) output. It worked fine with the vehicle stopped or at low speed but not above ~10MPH. On further research we discovered that the LAN, multiplex system, was "telling" the auto-leveling ecu the vehicle's speed and the leveling is disabled altogether above some selected speed.

I would imagine the AFS has the same feature, it makes sense, AFS could be hazardous at some reasonable higher speeds.