The ultimate foglight upgrade H11 (not LED or HID)

Yes for the fogs. Your 2nd gen takes H4s for the headlights. Take a look at this thread, stock wattage upgrades listed near the end.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

If you are looking for stock wattage the Philips Xtreme +130 or Philips Racing +150 would be good choices.

 

I bought some LED amber bulbs before I really read much about lighting, and now realize it isn't going to work for me. Luckily I'm only out $20. I still want yellow fogs, and I'm not spending $350 on Bajas, but I need something that actually works. Would you go with one of these posted options or upgrade the bulbs w/harness and install a yellow filter. Also, there is a big difference in price between the Rallylights harness and others marketed towards HID conversions, and I was wondering if there is anything different between the two other than gauge of wire and quality of connectors? I'm not looking for the "Ultimate", just an improvement with an amber glow. Thanks in advance!

 

As you realize drop in LEDs are certainly the wrong approach.

Just to cover a couple points:

Even if you went with the Baja lights, they do not produce lights with a fog beam pattern so they would be unsafe for street use and not effective as fog lights. Their wide cornering beam emits significant light above what would be a horizon, which will blind oncoming drivers and produce significant glare to yourself in fog.

Yellow lenses on LEDs are also a poor performing option. A yellow lens is a filter to filter out white/blue light and let yellow light through. Putting a yellow filter to filter out white light on a light source of primary white light with little yellow light is really going to hurt output.

Halogens on the other hand produce lots of yellow light, which is why many do not like them, but are then less affected by a yellow filter than LED.

Yellow filter on the bulb vs yellow filter on the lens has the same net result. They are both filters just applied differently. Applying it on the lens gives you more bulb flexibility but arguably less durability.

When looking at a wiring performance improvement for halogens, the big factor is wire gauge. The larger the gauge (smaller AWG) the smaller the voltage drop and the brighter the bulb burns. An HID kit is meant to isolate the factory system from a power spike at bulb startup, not for sustained high current draw like halogen. Remember HIDs use less power than stock. Most the HID wire kits are around 16-18 AWG. Rallylights is 12 AWG for maximum sustained draw performance. I know Headlight Services offers a 14 AWG for less than Rallylights, you’d have to contact Mike at Headlight Services for pricing.

All coatings reduce output, so I don’t run coatings. But if you wanted to run yellow fogs, I’m not a personal fan of the concept of a lens film. I’d rather have the lens as durable as possible and the coating on the bulb protected inside the assembly. So I’d look at a quality yellow bulb with a harness from Headlight Setvices if you want to up the voltage at a lower cost than Rallylights. I’ll check on the H9 bulb with the H11 glare cap status. That would be the other option with a lens film which will produce brighter output than an stock wattage H11 yellow bulb on a harness.

 

I checked and the H9 with the H11 glare cap are not available yet. Waiting to hear back on an updated ETA.

 

I see where you are going with this. If I decide to go with a H11 bulb in the meantime, would adding a harness drastically change the output? It seems to me that system is made for 55W, which I assume the Toyota OEM wiring is suitable. Also, I wonder how the yellow film would hold up to the higher wattage/temp H9 configuration.

 

Drastically at stock wattage, not really. Toyota’s wiring is good, but there is still room for improvement. A good harness will net you a fraction of a volt, which while sounding small may get to a 10-15% improvement. The headlight upgrade was measured at 0.4v improvement I think. Look at the chart on headlight services page to see how that helps output:
http://www.headlightservices.com/Wiring.html

Stock fogs are 55w, an H9 will be 65w, so I wouldn’t anticipate a big temp increase to where laminex would not be useable. I’ll measure it with an IR temp gun when they come in. I wouldn’t use laminex on a high wattage bulb.

 

Anyone have trouble plugging the Flosser bulbs into the stock harness? I haven't got the new harness in yet but I wanted to at least play with the new bulbs. The plug looks the same, but the plastic that separates the two pins is longer in the new bulbs and won't allow it to plug into the channel on my stock harness.

 

I haven’t tried plugging them into the OEM harness. Be advised running both them on the OEM setup will put you right at the fuse rating and possibly blow the fuse.

 

No doubt. But since I had them I wanted to try. lol

 

H9 bulbs with H11 glare caps are 20 days or less out. Will post once they are available.

 

Thanks for testing on this. Look forward to the results as my Apex 2x3 Amber LEDs (now Cali Raised) do not even produce a discernable beam spot at 25ft. I set the height and width at a distance of about 12ft as that's the limit to the discernable beam spot.

 

I want to order the headlight and foglight upgrades but the website saysNOT for DRL or factory fog lamp equipped vehicles).
My truck has stock fog lights...are they just referring to stock bulbs or am I missing something?

(NOT for DRL or factory fog lamp equiped vehicles)
$93.50

 

That is referring to vehicles that use h11s for headlights at reduced power for DRLs. Because the relay is either on or off, it does not have the ability to operate at partial power. It has no affect on our fogs as they do not operate at partial power.

 

Will I need to buy two harnesses? One for headlights and another for the fog lights? I presume the item thats listed under the 4runner option is the correct harness? sorry for allll the questions lol . thanks in advance!

 

Correct, the headlights and fogs require separate harnesses. Which one are you looking at under 4runner? Headlight Services or Rallylights?

New glare capped H9 bulbs are supposedly 10 days out. I'll be trying them as soon as they are available and comparing to the 90w Flossers. They would not require a harness like the 90w Flossers, however a harness would still improve performance.

 

i was looking at headlight services. I was looking for the brightest white light without any blue tint. I saw something about the H9's, are they the latest and greatest?

 

I've hit standard Caliraised pods with a digital spectrometer. The vast majority of their light is in the blue spectrum, here you can see how their spectrum compares with the 90w halogen. The marker is placed at 595nm which is the center of the amber spectrum (570-620nm). For a given amount of light output, halogens produce double that of LED. So if you are filtering your LED to only allow amber light through, the output is going to be severely reduced.

You can also see the unfiltered pods put out massive amounts of blue light, which is not what you want in rain/snow/fog due to blue light's refraction causing surface glare on the moisture in the air. For poor weather you want more long wave length light, which is light on the right side of the chart, and less short wave length light which is the left side of the chart. Greater than 700nm is IR light which will keep the lens from icing over in cold weather.

 

Ok, the 4runner harness is ground switched. With a 2012 I highly suspect you are conventionally switched, meaning you would want the harness from this page: http://www.headlightservices.com/Wiring.html

I suspect the H9s will be brighter and run cooler, but I like tested facts. I'll test them as soon as they are released.

 

Great info - thanks! I admittedly bought those pods as an impulse buy...live and learn! They are coming out in the near future and OEMs going back in. And then following this thread for a possible upgrade.

 

Get the H9's in yet? Still waiting to see what you think before replacing my heads. Still want to replace the fog's but not sure whether I want the Philips Xtreme +130 for stock yet or not.