Passenger side headlight has sharp cutoff

I hadn’t driven my Tacoma at night but the other night while driving home, I noticed that there is a pretty severe cutoff on the passenger side (to the side, not vertically). Usually, the headlight illuminates all of 180 degrees from right to left side, but on the passenger side, it cuts off about the last 1/3. Never seen this before. Are all Tacoma’s this way? See the attached picture.

 

No, mine is the equal to the drivers side.
That’s strange

 

Is your passenger side headlight out?

 

No, it's not out. I thought that, too, but drove up to a shiny new truck and could see the reflection on the tailgate. All lights working.

 

that looks normalish with the fog lights off to me. it might seem a smidge farther forward than where I would have drawn the line. headlights do not in my experience give 180* coverage. that being said foglights do fill that gap in

For example an old pic after I put HIDs in. You can see the angled cutoff on both sides in the grass.

 

Thanks. My fogs were on as well. It covers the sides on the driver's side. If it were the same on both sides, I wouldn't question it, but it's the fact that it's lopsided that seems so weird to me. I'll post a comparo shot on the driver's side.

 

ah yeah definitely something up then. i'd take a look at the passenger fog and see if there's anything wrong with it. it doesn't look on in the picture you posted

 

If you upgrade your lights that angle gets wider.. I upgraded to h9 bulbs and it got better..

 

Well, I'll be heading to the dealership to get this sorted out. I called them and the service writer tried to blame it on the clearbra, saying the glue used to adhere the film could be distorting the light. Well, first, this was happening before I had it put on and second, how would a clear and transparent film and glue cut off light like that? I have a suspicious feeling nothing will get resolved when I take it in.

Pictures are of the driver's side and passenger. Picture angles are pretty much the same (you can see the bulge of the hood for reference point). Hoping they can fix it and it's a simple fix.

 

Now you need a retrofit but seriously I didn' realize the width on the factory projector was so poor. I don' remember mine being like that or not.

 

Yeah, I’ve never had this issue before. I got home and switched the bulbs from driver’s side to passengers. Nothing changed, so it must be the projectors. I was hoping it’d be a simple solution.

 

You put H9's in the low beam?

 

You can do it as an easy upgrade if you want to stay halogen.

 

Hmm - and it is legal? Do you still get the sharp cutoff at the top?

 

That’s why I put h9 because you have more output and actually the cutoff is sharper.... no light above that...

 

Before/after

 

Well, after much back and forth, and too much arguing with the service “advisor”, I’ve come to 2 conclusions.
1- My dealership sucks.
2- So do Tacoma headlights.

I’ve never had such crappy headlights. IIHS doesn’t disagree.

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/most-pickup-trucks-have-poor-headlights-iihs-tests-show

I guess it’s at least across the whole segment.

One thing that the tech found was either a bent or mis-adjusted fog light on the passenger side, which would help things. I asked if it could be adjusted and the service guy was adamant it could not. “It’s a fixed mount” he kept saying. Until the tech looked underneath and told both of us there is an adjustment knob. Did I say how much I loathe this dealership? Then he has the audacity to try to blame it on me. Saying it might have been damaged at a grocery store. Or I leaned up on it. What?? It was like this from day 1 and who leans up against their fog light? 2’ tall elves?

Emails and calls will be made for sure.

I am pretty disappointed with the Tacoma headlights though. I’ve never been one to complain, as I’ve had some bad ones. But these lights are downright horrible.

 

I looked back at my photos of my headlights before my retrofit, and they were the same as yours. Stock projectors just suck lol.

 

Dealers

 

Those H9’s look pretty good