Aligning you food truck headlights is not something a food truck owner thinks about until it adversely affects their night driving. Poor nighttime visibility puts you at more risk for an accident than you may realize. The sooner you can spot potential trouble ahead, the faster you can react to potential on road dangers. Headlight alignment is also about keeping your light aimed to where you do not blind oncoming traffic, which creates another dangerous driving situation.
Adjusting Your Food Truck Headlights Yourself
Though a lot of us think we cannot align our own food truck headlights, it is something you can do yourself in your commissary parking lot. Just make sure if you make this adjustment yourself that you park on a level surface.
Sealed Beam vs Composite Headlights
Until the late 1980s, trucks were generally equipped with sealed beam replaceable glass headlights either round or rectangular in shape. When Halogen headlights were introduced early in the 1980s, they looked like a sealed beam, but were a Halogen high-pressure lamp within a sealed beam lamp envelope.
In the mid-1980s, vehicles sold new in North America started looking more like the rest of the world with composite headlights blended into the aerodynamic shape of a food truck’s front end.
Headlight Adjustment
Despite changes in lighting technology throughout the years, basic headlight adjustment has not changed much. Whether it is a sealed beam in a ’65 GMC or a Lexan composite lamp in an ’05 Sprinter, basic principles are the same. Lamps adjust up and down or left and right with fine thread adjustment screws. In older applications you will find fine-thread Phillips head screws at 12 o’clock and either 9 or 3 o’clock depending upon side dampened by a spring on each. In newer composite headlight applications, expect to see Allen head fine-thread screws at 12, 9 and 3 o’clock that accomplish the same thing. Whether classic or late-model, lamps pitch up or down and right or left depending on what you want them to do.
RELATED: 25 Food Truck Repairs You Can Do Yourself
The Bottom Line
Days are now getting shorter, that means more of a food truck’s operating hours will be dark. Don’t put you, your food truck staff and others on the road in danger by driving around with improperly adjusted food truck headlights.
Do you align you own food truck headlights? If not, what holding you back? We’d love to hear your thoughts, you can share them in the comment section below or on social media. Facebook | Twitter
