2007 Es 350 Headlight - Non Hid

[runningfreak]

Just recently my wife told me her headlights were not shining as bright as they once were. I replaced the Halogen bulbs and they are shining brighter but not as far out. It looks like the lights need adjusted but I can not find an adjustment. Someone told me that they might be self leveling lights and I need to replace the motor on them. I have read up on self leveling but do not see any information on what to replace or even replacement motors for this model. Any help would be nice.

[gbhrps]

runningfreak,

To tell if you have the selfleveling head lights, turn the headlights on and start the car with its nose close to the garage wall. From the driver's eat you'll see the headlight beams sweep up and down and then settle about midway. They do this everytime at start up, and they are factory aimed. The sweeping up and down says that both headlight motors are working.

If your headlights (or just one of them) don't do the sweeping exercise at startup, then they aren't self leveling (or the one motor is defective).

Lexus selfleveling headlights follow the road undulations to keep the headlight glare out of the eyes of drivers coming at you, and they take their signal from the passenger side rear suspension. Get the rear of the car in the air and you'll find a tiny (1/8th inch) round rod hanging down onto the suspension of the right rear suspension arms, about midway from the wheel to the center differential. At the top of that rod is a small, zippo lighter -sized sweep control, that triggers the headlight motors up and down.

If that sensor goes bad, the headlights will still move at startup, but won't move at any other time, and there will be a yellow indicator light on the dash (headlight with motion curves on one side) that will light up.

When the one on my wife's last ES 330, an 04, went bad, the dealership wanted $500 for the sensor. I found a used one on eBay for $150 including the shipping. Easy fix, one wiring connector, and two 10 mm nuts to change. The old one , when opened up (4 screws) was full of rusty water.

Your 07 will have the same setup, if it has the selfleveling system, as my wife's present 2011 ES has the same critters on the passenger rear suspension as her old 04 did. Good Luck!

[1990LS400]

The halogen headlights do not have the auto-leveling feature - only the HID headlight units have it.

Even if your car had auto-leveling headlights - which it does not - self leveling occurs only upon initialization when the engine is started and not while driving.

If you can't find the headlight adjustment screws, I assume you don't know how to adjust headlights so that they do not blind oncoming drivers. It is an exact procedure and not something done by trial and error. Take you car to a Lexus dealer.

[cduluk]

All '07-'12 Lexus ES headlights (both HID and halogen) have adjustment screws on the rear of the headlight that you can turn to adjust the beam up and down.

The HID version headlights on the 07-12 ES350 have what Lexus calls "auto-leveling" (a solenoid with a rod attached to the headlight projector pushes in/out to adjust the height of the light beam) and "AFS" (alternating front lighting system; a motor turns the projector left and right to aim the beam around corners). With this system, the leveling motor adjusts the height while driving when the brakes are pressed too quickly (to avoid the beam shooting down as the nose goes down) and while accellerating hard (to prevent the beam from shooting up and blinding oncoming drivers as the nose rises). It also compensates for the rise in nose due to excessive weight in the trunk, etc.

However, the halogen version headlights lack all of these motors. Simply, there are adjustment screws behind the headlight that you can turn left and right to raise and lower the light beam; the headlights are hinged, and on the other end are the screws that act like the "solenoid rod" in the HID version headlights.