Need help choosing correct LEDs for truck

It doesn’t matter how expensive they are they aren’t meant to be in the. Just because your not getting flashed doesn’t mean your not blinding other drivers.

 

Ok I'll try to tomorrow night

 

The product does not work, just like the rest. All these LED companies claim theirs is somehow different and they have fixed the problem, but unfortunately they cannot defy the laws of physics and even making such a claim demonstrates a lack of understanding of lighting optics, or that they just don’t care and are trying to make a dollar off your back. Not sure what is worse.

Moving the LED chips off center and using a directional light source changes the geometry of light in the entire housing. As in everywhere the light is hitting the reflector is now at the wrong angle, which produces glare, so those glare guards attempting to emulate an H4 don’t correct the issue. This is a geometry problem as mentioned before.

I can guarantee you it does not have a cleaner cutoff. Ironically your photo shows this, in that street sign that is glowing radioactive that you have crossed out which looks to be at a distance that it should fall below your low beam cut off.

This upgrade will provide much better output, superior distance projection, less glare and cost half the price. Because it is using the technology the housing is designed for.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

 

Well maybe I'll Craigslist these and do the upgrade sometime in the near future. That does look a lot brighter, and that's almost like a projector cutoff in that first pic. I do wish it was a little whiter light but that seems more usable in inclement weather. The GTR LEDs were just nice because of the plug and play aspect and the illusion of giving higher performance.

 

Don’t feel bad another guy on here a good friend of mine got burned by the VLEDs. He but the ones crash recommended now and they preform better. Now he stuck with 150 dollar LEDs no one wants on here cause the research crash did is getting out there now.

 

From their website: "The GTR Lighting GEN 3 Ultra Series was developed through rigorous testing in a scientific environment measuring important characteristics such as CRI, luminous flux, amperage, wattage, and the dominant wavelength..." blah, blah, blah - the more buzz words we put the higher the price can be . The truth is that these bulbs have exactly the same principal design as these 14 dollars bulbs




Like it has been written many times it is a simple geometry 101. Quality reflectors (and OEM reflector is high quality) are designed to have the light source in very specific position. The angle of each reflective surface is designed so the light coming from that the bulb's filament is reflected and directed to very specific point. As soon as the light source is moved from the specified in the reflector design the reflected light is directed somewhere else.

Even with halogen bulb the geometry plays a huge role. The geometry of the halogen bulb is a combination of bulb's mounting ring and the filament geometry. This is why you need to use high quality incandescent bulbs (Phillips and Osram/Silvania are well known brands), not a cheap no-name bulbs that look like H4, but do not keep the specified geometry with accuracy of a tenth's of millimeters.

LED headlight bulb replacement is one of the biggest scams in automotive market. They are not road legal and they are worthless regarding performance. But they look cool on marketing materials and very convincing to unsuspected buyers. But once you buy it and try it there is no other option then be a "that guy on the road" hoping to not get pulled over by highway patrol, dump the problem on some other sucker (via CL for example) or just swallow the loss learn from mistake.

 

The cut offs are identical to stock as the technology being used is the same as stock.

Even in a projector headlight assembly like 3rd Gen which controls glare, LED performance is poor. Moving the light source off center causes the critical beam hot spot to be washed out, which means you have no distance projection. Worse is the LEDs shift your beam pattern toward the vehicle increasing foreground light right in front of the vehicle which reduces your eyes ability to see distance. This makes it seem brighter but you have traded your distance projection for a bunch of light immediately in front of the vehicle.

Lengthy but goes into high detail:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-hid-vs-led-vs-halogen-h11-projector-headlights.589465/

Note the GE +130s in that thread are a bit whiter and available for a 2nd gen in an H4. GE also just released a +150 version that looks promising to be even higher performing. I should have them any day now and will share test results in the 2nd gen ultimate headlight thread. The whiter GE bulbs do have a blue coating over the high beam though reducing high beam performance.

It is good to see science prevail over marketing scams.

X1000. Unfortunately people see new cars with LED headlights making them think it is legitimate and for a few dollars and a bulb change they can have the same thing in their halogen based vehicle. Few realize the OEM LEDs are in housings specially designed for the LED light source and the drop-in LED sellers take advantage of that to up-sell people on China trash with outlandish marketing claims and convincing photos.

Somewhat ironically I see about as many cars with an aftermarket LED headlight out as I do halogen ones, even though the halogen cars make up the majority of the population.

 

You're hardly the first to get stuck here. You won't be the last either. Hopefully we aren't sounding demeaning or anything.

There are some people who refuse to believe it, like the guy a while ago who posted pics of his LEDs that were illuminating the tops of 30' tall trees with low beams, and insisted that was superior light.

Factory headlights aren't designed to give us the optimal light pattern for night visibility. They are designed to give us "good enough" light without blinding oncoming drivers. If you want "optimal" light when on-coming drivers aren't as much of concern (i.e. off-road), even high end HID retrofits aren't the answer, IMO. The lower your lights are, the more shadows you cast, which is why most off-road racers use lights on the roof (and everywhere else they can fit them, lol). I resist lightbars because I don't want to look like a bro, but when the time comes that I do want lights for off-roading (I don't do hardly any night wheeling currently), I'm going to suck it up and go full bro mode with a lightbar or pods.

In reference to crashnburn's headlight upgrade thread, I did the harness upgrade on my 2004 first gen, with new CAPA certified housings. The 2nd gens you can get the TRD Pro housings, but honestly I don't think they perform much different than regular factory housings. For the bulbs, I kept my old(er) Sylvania bulbs instead of the super bright Osram bulbs. The reason is that I opted for longevity over brightness for my daily driver. Those bulbs burn a lot hotter and don't last as long. Now that my Tacoma isn't a daily driver, I may go for the brigher bulbs ones day, but only if they burn out. Like I said, I'd still go for a lightbar over anything with the headlights for my needs.

 

The TRD Pro/Smoked Sport housings offer no increase in performance, it is purely a cosmetic mod for someone that wants slightly more aggressive looking lighting assemblies.

Halogen is a spectrum of performance vs life. While I opt for the performance end of the spectrum, there are bulbs that offer a better balance of improved performance with decent life, like the Philips Xtreme +100s, which have a 450 hour lifespan compared to the high powered Osrams at 200 hours.

If/when you do go light bar, look into glare mitigation off the hood, as the intense hood glare harms your ability to see distance at night. Less of an issue if something like KC's Gravity series "light bar" which has better pattern control than a standard light bar.

 

Get ready KC lights your stock is about to get all bought up now lol

 

I'm still on the same set of SYLVANIA XtraVision since 2014. Granted that for the last two years I use LED DRL for driving during the day, but still 3 years is quite impressive. Before I wised up and switched to H4 I used to replace 6054 every year or so (real PITA).

 

I switched back to halogens on my 2000 Tacoma. I had exactly the same type RysiuM shows a couple of reply’s back. Cost $20+.
In my old OE cloudy housings (with old Chinese H-4’s taken out ) the LED’s finally let me see down the road, even the side of the road and road signs. There was definitely scattered light and some glare ( the glare was not obnoxious, probably since the LED’s are low output and in a low truck, I had my son drive the truck on a dark county towards me while I drove in another vehicle ....some glare but definitely not blinding )
The real awakening came on a heavy rain night....the LED’s just didn’t penetrate the heavy rain.
Thinking about what Crash and RysiumM have said I ordered new TYC headlights and 2 stock H-4 German made Osram’s.....: )
P.S. in my projector headlight vehicle in put HID.....so far so good.

 

We already went down that road with the LED SAE fog review and @Taylor@KC HiLiTES could vouch for how we wiped out their LED G4 Fog supply, at first in clear and then again in amber. TacomaWorld has a thing for outstanding products.

Another fun one was figuring out you could get 20% off of the high end Northstar AGM battery by buying online through Batteries Plus and picking up in store saving on shipping and getting an additional 1 year warranty extension. You can view inventory at all the stores through their site and nearly all the stores had stock of several when I checked where to buy one. Post on TW and statewide the inventory is wiped out within a week. Had a friend try to order one in person through the store and the guy was dumfounded at where they all went. The statewide supply is just gone.

 

Yup still wait for the 501 amber set to come back in stock lol

 

And I’m on of those that use quality products

 

https://www.bulbfacts.com/ Good site on aftermarket lights.

 

Unfortunately, the same marketing double speak / BS on LED (and HID) headlight replacement bulbs. Who would you trust more, a web site selling bulbs or an independent third party with solid engineering / scientific knowledge and testing with nothing to gain by selling you anything. (The latter would be @crashnburn80 here.)

 

I second @crashnburn80

 

Hmm.... Well, the bulbfacts guy has some stuff on Youtube where he does some testing. Seems legit but what the hell do I know

 

The more info the better.