'13 HID Headlights

Looking for some input on moderately priced hid's for 2013 tacoma. I replaced the fog lights with 6000k leds and now i gotta get the headlights up to par. Are HID's the way to go? Thanks in advance for the feedback.

 

search please.

 

I'm in the exact same boat. Contemplating between getting projector retrofits, or going with HIDs and saving some $$$

 

I ran HIDs for a while on my rig and they scattered too much light, blinding other cars. I'm in the middle of doing a retrofit to my lights and would recommend it. Also ran LED headlights, they also through out a good amount of light too.

 

If you are wanting to go HID for you headlights its highly recommended to get retros cause they put out to much light output in just your stock housings. I went with custom retros in my 2006 and I love them!!

 

If you want HID's, get a proper projector retrofit done. The stock halogens on the Taco are already pretty bright. Putting a PnP HID kit into the reflector housing won't make it much, if at all any better and will just annoy other drivers. Plus a proper retrofit's output on a road looks badass.

 

You guys just had to help him, instead of him using the search button. -_-

 

I have been searching, just wanted more specific feedback.

 

Get the retro...exponentially better than a PnP kit.

 

Retrofits are the way to go.

 

I mean you could. But that's a bit like putting a spacer lift on your rig. Gives you the look, but none of the performance. Plus it has the added benefit of actually being dangerous to everyone you pass on the road.

 

I gotta say this, I am not trying to be a nanny, but if I post this once then I did my part. [I have a side-hobby in optics and lighting]
--------------

there are few if any mods you can do to stock tacoma (or any vehicle) headlights that meet Federal photometric requirements. Anything you do to them besides change the bulb with a similar replacement bulb, will do something negative to the photometrics and it is always one of these three

a) not as visible to side or approaching traffic
b) blinding or offensive to oncoming traffic
c) reduces your own ability to see

you can do whatever you want, but almost zero aftermarket meets photometric standards requirements. some new LED bulbs from philips meet them, but only in about 6 vehicles at this point. it is best to just stick to stock...

to meet photometric requirements is costly and you go through a lot of calculations and molding/grinding/testing...no one who sells you aftermarket headlight bits does any of that. if it says DOT on it, that means absolutely nothing. DOT does not mean a damn thing. FMVSS 108 is the requirement.

ok off my high horse...I won't say anything more and I won't worry about it, everyone is free to do whatever...but please know there is a correct and reasonable way vehicle headlights should be set up and working.

 

I don't understand how that was applying to what I posted? I was trying to dissuade him from just plugging in a cheap HID kit in is stock reflector housing and blinding everyone.

And no, none of these kits are technically legal. But a good retrofit will rarely get you pulled over unless you go crazy with them (blue/red LEDs etc).

A question for you: How does a retrofit go against the spirit of the law?

 

I've read a ton about this topic on here, and I think the general consensus is to get a proper retrofit if you're switching to HIDs (assembled properly, using quality components). Everything else isn't as good, or is illegal/dangerous to other drivers.

Buy once, cry once.

 

sorry I will edit my post to remove the quote, since my statement is 100% generic

BUT since you asked:

Most projectors aren't self-contained. None of the ones found in original equipment headlamp assemblies are self-contained (that is, they're not sealed from water/dirt entry and they're unshrouded so they emit stray light in directions other than through the condenser lens; for these reasons they require being inside a housing. If the housing's not designed to hold a particular projector, in most cases the "alien" projector cannot be acceptably mounted in the "surrogate" housing. Certainly this is the case whenever the housing must be hacked in any way (cut, drilled, lens removed, etc); once that's done an acceptable environmental seal is never re-achieved. More about this alien/surrogate mounting issue below.

There is such a thing as a self-contained projector. Hella, for example, has an extensive range of 50mm, 60mm, 90mm, and 120mm units. Low beams, high beams, low/high beams, fog beams...halogen, HID, LED...Right-traffic, left-traffic, etc. However, these don't erase the problems, they just change to a different set of problems. A headlamp is type-approved or certified to the applicable regulations in the form it's produced. Putting a projector, self-contained or not, behind a lens it wasn't specifically designed to be behind (as in an aerodynamic composite front light assembly from whatever vehicle you have in mind) means you no longer have a certified/type-approved lamp, you have an assemblage of parts that very likely does not perform the way the regulations require. This is not intuitive, but those lenses are not 100% transparent, and their surfaces are reflective. It is a very, very common occurrence during the design and engineering phase of an OEM headlamp that changes must be made (and remade multiple times) because while the optical package -- projector or reflector -- meets the requirements without the front lens, when the optical package is put into the housing package including that front lens, the lamp doesn't comply. And an optics package that complies in one housing doesn't necessarily (often doesn't!) comply in another housing package, just because of differences in the size, shape, angles, and distance of the front lens and other elements of the housing. Typically the problems are insufficient intensity in the low-intensity zones (above the cutoff) due to less-than-full transmission through the front lens, and reflections within the headlamp bouncing stray light all over the place where it doesn't belong and isn't allowed. Highly trained and very well (and expensively) equipped engineers spend a lot of hours fixing these problems on each and every new project, because that is the nature of the job. It is not something that can successfully be tackled in a homeowner's garage, on a hobbyist's workbench, or behind the Retrofitz-R-Us website.


"Reasonably close" doesn't even begin to cut the mustard. Not only are there beam alignment issues (the high beam must be properly placed with respect to the low beam, and either it's right or it's wrong -- there is no such thing as "reasonably close"), but there are also center-of-mass/center-of-gravity issues. It is a lot harder than it might seem to devise a mount for a projector so that it stays put, doesn't shake, doesn't lose its aim, doesn't detach from its mounts. This, too, is something that practically cannot be done on a by-guess/by-gosh basis.


Headlamps are life-safety equipment. All aspects of their performance -- not just the beam patterns they produce, but also their mechanical and environmental robustness and, with HIDs and LEDs, electrical and thermal safety -- are specified in detail, objectively, by the applicable technical regulations. A wide range of performance and design are permitted, but the basic requirements are stringent and exacting. None of it can be assessed by eye. "Gosh, it looks good to me!" or "Wow, look at that sharp cutoff!" or "Nobody ever flashes me at night" or "I drive past cops every day and I never get tickets" just are not relevant responses to the real safety and reliability issues involved.

It takes an enormous amount of money and a long time to design, engineer, tool, and test/approve/certify a legitimate headlamp. It's not because the people doing the work are slow-paced or lazy!

 

No worries. Still want to know the answer to my second question though

 

a little grumpy?

 

did you see it, did you see my answer ?

 

I never understood that either if you don't want to help don't help. Don't chime in just to say "I don't want to help you and your question is pissing me off."

 

I did. I'll have to get back to it a little later, got a lot to say/ask, but I'm at work