Blinded by the Light – Day 123

Odo 1364

Today I tried to adjust the headlight. That's one of the things that is supposed to by done by the predelivery that the government mandates. We're not responsible enough to do that so the bike dealer charged me 900 dollars to take the bike out of the crate, charge the battery and adjust the headlight. Well they managed to take it out of the crate but given the fact that they didn't know where or how to plug it in, I strongly doubt they managed to charge the battery. I know for sure they didn't adjust the headlight as it's aimed for koala spotting...

Anyway I don't often ride at night and as I mentioned before I've pulled the fuse so the headlight is off. However I thought I should adjust it anyway. On the rare occasions I had the light on I could see the drivers in front adjusting their mirrors, even in big raised 4wds. Very little light fell on the road on dipped beam and on high beam it just went up into the trees. So today I attempted it. Well I've managed to adjust it from stupidly way too high to just illegal. I have no idea how this thing got through ADR testing. In 7.5 metres the “cutoff” is 25 cm higher than the headlight on “dipped”. It's supposed to be 5 cm lower, so it's 30 cm too high in the test. Of course in actual use I'll be looking about 10 times further down the road than that, so it's actually going to be 3 metres too high at the distance it will be used. To get it down any further will need cutting and bending. Not good enough Zero (I've used that phrase before...). As winter comes on I'm going to be forced to use the bike at night, so I'll have to fix it.

The pattern is completely symmetrical. It's required to be down on the right and should rise slightly on the left. So the reflector is no good either.

Grrrr. I wonder if I should make a warrantee claim.