Proper headlight upgrade

Yesterday I performed the ultimate headlight upgrade and am nothing but happy with it.

Results:

Before


After

Both pictures were taken at the same time of night one day apart on the same road at the same spot. This is with hi-beams. The difference is amazing great coverage and great color.

If that's not convincing I don't know what is. I was torn between doing a proper HID retrofit and this and decided on this. For about $150 you get headlights that are 2x as bright as stock and a bit "whiter" in color. I'd say the color is around 5000k (correct me if I'm wrong). Install was a piece of cake. The hardest thing was finding out where to mount the relays and fuse. Otherwise I had no problems. I ran a good portion of the wire in front of the radiator which is where the stock harness is (a bit worried about the heat but the harness was rated at about 210 C or F can't remember but it seemed fine considering that's where the stock harness is). Don't forget 1st gens are ground switched so get the ground switched harness.

Anyways, if you want brighter headlights and don't want to retrofit with projectors and HIDs upgrade to these Osram bulbs. If you're wondering about the whole not legal for highway use thing it just means that since they are over a certain wattage the DOT doesn't approve them, but when put in stock housings in a Tacoma they just look like other modern headlights.

Credit goes to crashnburn80 for the original idea.

 

I might have to give this a whirl. I put in a set of the Osram 70/65W bulbs but they seem to be close to what the OEM bulbs are. Perhaps utilizing the wiring harness with relays will boost the 70/65 bulbs without having to step upto the 85W bulbs.

Thanks for the link, much appreciated Amigo!

 

I'm not sure how much of a difference the harness makes. When I have time I'll unwire it and hook up these new bulbs with the stock harness and see how they look.

 

I'll have to say goldentaco03, that really is a tempting upgrade. I wonder if the low beams would be affected at all. I admit, I didn't take time to read the link,

but I will.

 

Would these melt the stock wiring harness if you just plugged them into the old bulb's place? I'd really like the try them but suck at anything electronics so I'm unsure about attempting this endeavor.

 

Give in the chance I would of done this over my current retro fit source hids, I've been uderly unimpressed with the retrofits.

 

I think you'd run a huge risk of melting the wiring harness if you ran the 85W bulbs, that's one reason for the relays and heavier harness. I have had no problems running the 70W bulbs without the relay harness. But as I mentioned before, I really see no advantage with them over the OEM bulbs.

 

I think that extra 10w really makes a difference. Plus you're driving them right from the battery.

 

Low beams are much brighter. Wish I took a picture.

 

It is plug and play if you can change a headlight and unscrew your battery terminals then you can do this.

 

Nice!!

 

Much better!! Which harness # & bulb# did you use?

 

H4 bulb and harness
HL28200S harness
80/85w bulbs

 

Any pictures of your wiring? I'm a little hesitant to wire these straight to the battery as I've already got accessories running off of it.

 

Yeh I'll take some later. It's not that bad.

 

Really? What bulbs did you go with?

 

Do you have to take off the grill etc to do this?

 

35W D2S 3Five 4300K.

 

Nope not in a first gen.

 

True but if you read crashnburn80s original build thread he gives a few reason for why not to get hids. Different strokes for different folks I guess.