Halogen Headlight Aiming from Hell...

Well one of the bulbs in my regular halogen housings went out, so I went and bought a pair and replaced the bulbs. Everything was great until I took a testdrive and noticed I was signalling MIR (or I guess the ISS this millenium) illuminating road signs very well, and the ground not so well...

So I figured simple headlight adjustment screws, and thought nothing of it. Since I have a spare set of aftermarket housings that I am altering for an awesome project, I noted where the screws were and set to it.

Well the first 10 minutes was me finding various phillips head drivers that would be short enough to wiggle in, long enough to be able to grab on the angle since the metal bar sticks out so far on the driver side. When I finally found one, I fiddled for another few minutes not getting anywhere. I then noticed the OEM housings do NOT have phillips slots like the aftermarket ones. Well that's a bummer.

I generally adjust by hand, but I could barely get my hand on the screws/bottlecaps let alone turn them either direction. They were screwed very very tightly unlike all my other vehicles.

I then found the mating socket (8mm), and tried to ratchet it. However, Toyota in their infinite wisdom made the length of socket required longer then every standard socket length, but shorter than any standard socket extension. I have 8mm sockets 2cm long, as well as 10cm sockets. With the 2cm ones, the ratchet handle hits the hood frame and inverter grounding metal point. I get 1 click to 2 clicks per ratchet because of this. Anything more and the tool goes crooked slips out of the socket and you have to blindly realign it. Horrible... The passenger side is much easier since you can take the plastic bits off and get a full fist in there as well as the ratchet turns about 1/4 revolution each time and it is fine.

I tried wrenches, I tried grips, I tried everything. Eventually I just bit the bullet and ratcheted the driver side 1 click at a time over the course of nearly 45 minutes to bring the beam down to a reasonable level.

Worst headlight adjustment experience ever...