Capa vs nsf certified - headlights?

The capa certified TYCs are the exact opposite as you describe.

 

Well it's hard to tell at night via pics

These days cameras are too good

But in the dark neighborhood there is significant improvement for my needs

I am very very pleased

Thanks @jbrandt

 

Before

 

AFTER

 

there are sites out there on how to aim your headlights. Basically, find a flat wall and park (level) about 20 feet or so away and measure where top of the focus beam relative to your headlights.

Ideally, you measure your old ones before you take them off, but mine were so bad (even after using that "restore" crap) the beams were completely smeared anyway.

Here was my before:

And after:

 

Will check it out

Thanks

Very happy so far I am so used to led/xenon on my other vehicles that the fact this is now in the 21st century, I am happy

 

Well, unfortunately these aren't really all that modern, they are just "new" vertions on the original.

It seams there aren't a lot of "high tech" options for us with the 1st gens. There are tons of LED and hid plug is options, but frankly those suck because you're putting bulbs that refract the light differently into housings made for halogens, so the light smears just as if you had crapy worn out housings like we did.

The only other option for us would be a true HID retrofit, which can cost some serious coin. Not worth it, imo.

Better to go for some LED pods or a lightbar if you want to throw some serious lumens down the trail, and leave the "stock" setup for the street.

Glad you like them, I know I did.

 

Finally someone said it at loud. This sentence should be put automatically in front of every "headlight" thread in the 1st gen forum.

 

I agree with this. Seems like any after market headlamp I have ever purchased I could never get to align right. However, I've never purchased any for a Toyota. Mine are bad and I've tried cleaning them, only for that haze to come back after a month. And they all seem to get moisture built up in them...I just got my 3m headlamp restore kit so I'll give it one more try....then I'll be replacing!

 

Still junk, still better than nothing. You know not of what you speak. Ive been in the body shop industry over 40 years and have used CAPA (which is just a bullshit sticker on a shitty part) TYC's. They are junk....period

 

Then the OEM are shitty junk parts too, because as far as I can tell, they are identical to my original OEM housings. Which, relative to new technology, is probably true, but that's pretty much all that is available for 1st gen Tacos anyway. The ones I got are easily as good as the OEM I took off.

Of course that doesn't mean there aren't better light technologies out there (there are, duh, we DO have 20 year old trucks after all), but there simply isn't any aftermarket support for good high performance lights. Your options are these (from the "proper headlight upgrade" thread), or going for a proper HID retrofit.

Any other aftermarket brand I found was more concerned about the "bro" look and selling you sweet LED or HID plugins to go along with your cheap (but cool looking) halogen housings that end up leaking.

So what would you suggest Obi-Wan? Spyders? lol...

 

I understand that cheap China-man can rip off the entire headlight and fuck up the seal or plastic quality. But what is stopping him from copying the shape of reflector so it actually creates the same light pattern as OEM. WTF is wrong with you Chinese cheapo rip-off companies? Regardless of the shape of the reflector made the production cost is the same, I would think.

Contrary to "redneck-coll-truck-owner" thinking the headlights are not for decoration, but for making people safer on the road. I know, 180 bucks for brand new OEM (Camelbacktoyota) each side is quite steep, even comparing to HELA for the 1st gen Taco (I love these lights) but if you are going to change then after next 14 years, I think it is still not a brainer to go OEM.

 

what's junk about them? do they not seal out moisture well? do they haze over prematurely?

 

Anybody know if you can just buy the lenses?

 

If someone hasn't bought new lenses yet you can clean them up with a little water and toothpaste... takes about 4 minutes each side then coat with wax.

 

This is a million dollar idea. Not only for tacomas, but the mass vehicle market.

 

I haven't seen any, but from what I understand it's fairly hard to get a really good (and long lasting) seal from DIY. I hear a lot about guys doing HID retrofits and have the lenses leak later. It's possible, sure... but for $40 a side (for the above capa certified ones), it's hard to argue with just getting whole new housings...

Polishing doesn't really do anything, especially long term. If your lenses are discolored and faded from UV (like most older lenses will be), no amount of polishing is going to fix the discoloration that goes deep into the plastic.

The "before" picture I posted above is after polishing my lenses (twice - within a couple months) with a store bought kit using a drill and polishing disc, 2 polishing compounds, cleaner, and wax. I easily spent half an hour polishing each lens to get it as "perfect" as possible. Still did next to nothing, except that it looked nicer (but didn't actually perform better).

"After" is new lenses.

You can see a clear difference in the focus beam, where the before is completely scattered and has basically no cutoff (i.e. lots of scatter) and the "after" does quite a good job considering we're using pretty old technology housings. As I said earlier, the high quality function over form aftermarket headlight market is non-existent for us 1st gen guys.

 

probably why no one does it, lol...

 

Huh. I can buy glass e-code lenses individually for my Volvo..

Hmmm. Only 80 bucks?

 

Yup, the CAPA cert. housings I got from rockauto.com were like $40ish a piece. Like I said earlier, they are not the bees knees highest end technology available, but they are just as good as OEM (better, if you consider they are not faded and old, lol), which, at this point, is all we can hope for with 1st gens. If you want "real" light, get your self some LED pods/bars to throw some serious light.