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3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Discussion in '3rd Gen. Tacomas (2016-2023)' started by crashnburn80, Jan 25, 2019.

  1. Nov 8, 2019 at 2:04 PM
    #1841
    Quacktacular81

    Quacktacular81 Unknown Member

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    My H9's arrived late last night, hoping to install this evening! Any info on the stock low beam bulbs being used in the H16 fogs? Assuming they will fit the housing, would the beam pattern be acceptable?
     
  2. Nov 8, 2019 at 5:44 PM
    #1842
    mynameistory

    mynameistory My member is well known

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    I've had drop-in LED bulbs installed on my truck since last year, and based on Crash's recommendations I've switched back to halogen (H9 upgrade). Keep in mind that I'm now in a 2016 4Runner. Here are my impressions that I shared during a conversation with Crash about selecting high beam bulbs:

    With the LED bulbs in the truck for a year, I became accustomed to their beam pattern. The neutral white color, the sharp cutoff, and the bright overall field of view are fairly characteristic of the LED bulb in the projector. When I travel over bumps, I can see the abrupt cutoff line swing up and down on the surrounding road and features. It seems brighter than stock, it IS brighter than stock.

    Switching to the H9, the obvious change is the color temperature. After that, the beam pattern. It actually seems less sharp on the cutoff edges when illuminating a wall. It takes some time, but the subtle differences start becoming apparent.

    The biggest overall difference is that... my eyes stop noticing the headlights beams at all. Instead, I'm seeing the features in front of my truck gently blend into the road ahead, and then again beyond the reach of the beams. I think others have discussed this before. The LED bulb will overpower and consume your near-field vision with the beam intensity, but at the expense of seeing anything beyond the cutoff. This means that you can only focus on and react to road features that "jump" into the illuminated area. And with the LED hotspot often misplaced, that illuminated distance is reduced- with some bulbs more considerably than others.

    I think that is my overall impression- I've stopped noticing my headlights and have started "seeing the road" again. I think this must be true with the OEM lighting as well. As inadequate as the stock bulbs seem, their purpose is to let the driver see the road ahead- rather than overpower their near-field impression.

    Companies that market drop-in bulbs count on this initial, brighter impression. However it's more superficial than beneficial in most cases.

     
    Mushu, Deucer01, bshammer0 and 8 others like this.
  3. Nov 8, 2019 at 8:36 PM
    #1843
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    I have not tried those LEDs specifically. While the high beams appear to produce a flood of wide area light, their purpose is to extend distance projection. You can see in the Hikari post a comparison on the high beam pattern, and notice how their is higher intensity light right at the bottom of the pattern, as that is where you'd want it to extend your visibility on road. LEDs with better focus will enhance this area for distance performance better than those with poor focus that may give more scattered light to the rest of the beam but may end up losing the distance projection performance due to poor focus in that critical area. See lower part of the Hikari review for high beams in post #1608 here.

    Let us know what you think after taking it for a spin. Placing an H11 in there will amplify all parts of the pattern including glare. Stock fogs don't do the best job of glare control, I don't think the glare would be much worse than the stock fogs that take H11s, though I have not tried the standard non-wide angle fogs.
     
  4. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:00 PM
    #1844
    Quacktacular81

    Quacktacular81 Unknown Member

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    The H9's went in just as described. Trimmed the tab and plugged into the factory harness. Didn't get a chance to take it for a spin.

    I could not get the H11's to seat into the fog housings. The tabs look to be identical, but something is apparently different.
     
  5. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:03 PM
    #1845
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    That is the result I have typically heard from the fogs. I haven't looked at it first hand.
     
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  6. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:08 PM
    #1846
    CAG Gonzo

    CAG Gonzo Ascendant Spaghetti

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    Here's a question I haven't seen in this thread (unless I missed it): if you lift your truck, is it wise to realign the headlights? Do you need to realign halogens? Can they even be realigned?
     
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  7. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:14 PM
    #1847
    Tullie D

    Tullie D Well-Known Member

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    I didn't try putting the OE low beam H11s in my fog housings, but the Nokya NOK7618 Hyper Yellow bulbs, which are also H11s fit easily. There must be something different between these fog housings. :notsure:

    BTW, my OE fog lights were H16s.
     
  8. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:27 PM
    #1848
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    It depends, but in general it is something you should check. A small minor lift (equal front and rear) may not require much if any adjustment. If you have a significant lift, such as going to 3" and 285s, you've added significant height to your vehicle and the headlights should likely be adjusted down some to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. But it is a balance, because over adjustment also means you lose the distance projection in your headlights. If you lifted the front more than the rear, then not only have you changed the height, you have changed the pitch of the truck, which changes the angle the light is projecting by raising the cut off significantly. In this cases it is very important to re-aim the lights to correct the cut off line. And yes, the halogen lights can be aimed. Be careful to only use the vertical adjuster. The horizontal adjuster can be a nightmare to return to center.
     
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  9. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:30 PM
    #1849
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    I suspect it is the bulbs, as I have heard from many that H11s are not plug and play in the fogs. And Osram is a pretty common bulb. Nokya on the other hand, is not so common by comparison.
     
  10. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:41 PM
    #1850
    skierd

    skierd Well-Known Member

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    Do you mean re-aiming the headlights? If so, I wholeheartedly recommend it. From the factory our headlights are aimed low imo. If you search under my screen name for “aim headlights” the method and reasonings I used should come up. If I recall correctly I ended up raising the cutoff 0.5-0.75”. It made the stock bulbs usable imo.
     
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  11. Nov 8, 2019 at 9:45 PM
    #1851
    CAG Gonzo

    CAG Gonzo Ascendant Spaghetti

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    It'll be a minor lift, 1-2", remaining on stock OR tires. Factory rake will be preserved. Thanks for the info!

    I did not know all of that. I'll take a look at your findings. Appreciate the help!
     
  12. Nov 9, 2019 at 4:32 AM
    #1852
    From_The_Sideline

    From_The_Sideline New Member

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    After reading all the pages, I decided to take the recommendation from crash for the 4Runner. I have a 19 T4R pro, so I looked up https://www.rallylights.com/ and I saw that they weren’t very far from where I live. Last week I was going to be really close by to them. So, I stopped by to see if I could pickup the H9 bulbs. I met Wil the owner, who couldn’t be nicer. I told him how I found out about them on the Tacoma forum. We spoke about what I was doing and about the harnesses that everyone was modifying for the H9. He informed me that he could make the harness which they did while I was there. He also said, he will have the correct H9 connector coming in soon to be able to make a H11 to H9 plug. Great guy to talk to and purchase from.
     
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  13. Nov 9, 2019 at 8:08 AM
    #1853
    skierd

    skierd Well-Known Member

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    I’ll try to consolidate my headlight aim posts:

    Going off of the IIHS recommendations for headlight range on low beams, the right side head light should reach out to approximately 325ft. According to their tests, the Tacoma only reaches out to approximately 220ft. Knowing that the headlight height is 40" (on my stock SR with 180 pounds of sand in the bed and no one in the driver seat), that would mean that a stock Tacoma's headlights are angled down at 0.86804 degrees, while an "ideal" aim would be angled down at 0.58757 degrees. Back to the wall test measurements... Knowing that my truck is 10ft away from the wall, and that the stock aim is 0.86804 degrees down, I should see a drop of 1.82" vs an ideal of 1.23", a difference of 0.59". Right? Feels right... So raising the stock headlight aim by 0.5" should get me a beam pattern closer to IIHS's ideal than the factory aim.

    Here’s the Toyota spec:




    I couldn’t get to 25 ft as we have too much stuff in the warehouse at the moment, but Toyota also lists an aiming spec for 10ft.

    Start by pulling in to the shop and get close to the door to mark the bulb centers and measure the height.







    The dot that marks the center of the bulb is right at 40” (stock SR with 180 pounds of sand in the bed by the cab).

    Toyota’s spec for aim is the top of the cutoff and/or the center of intensity aka the hot spot should be at the same height as the center of the bulb at 3m, +/-1.57”. So I backed the truck up:



    And measured at the wall



    Both adjusters are on the back middle of the headlight and look like dull silver geared screws. It’s an 8mm hex head on the screw. You’ll need a flat surface and a flat wall you can back away from by 10’ that’s light in color, preferably white. I used a garage door at my work warehouse.

    Pull your truck as close as you can to the wall, find the nub in front of the projector that denotes the center of the headlight, then mark it on the wall. Measure the height of the nub from the ground and measure your mark to make sure it’s the same height.

    Turn your headlights on, and mark the right side of the projector cutoff. Back up 10’, keeping the hot spots of the headlights centered on the wall marks. Mark the right side of each projector cutoff again. Toyota’s spec is that both are supposed to be at the height of the center mark, on my truck it’s 40”, but the spec is +/- 1.5”. From the cutoff mark, measure up 0.5, 1, and 1.5”. Turn the adjustment screws until the cutoff is level or just above the 0.5” line. You’ll know you’ve gone too high once you drive at night as the cutoff line will point up and the projector hot spot disappears in to the night vs falling nicely on the road 50-100’ (guesstimate) further than stock.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
  14. Nov 9, 2019 at 6:41 PM
    #1854
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    @Rockoma5 this is for you.

    Beamtech Amazon H11 LEDs
    Specs:
    Output: 8000 lumens (4000 Lumens per bulb)
    Power: 50w (25w per bulb)
    Color: 6500k

    7FED5FF3-3912-48FA-8C22-00F8D4B3013B.jpg

    Cross section
    1A90C0A2-C989-447B-BAD7-AE7BFA7DEB23.jpg

    Measuring cross section, 4.9mm. Among the widest (worst) I’ve tested. Target is 1.4mm. Wider LEDs lose the hot spot, lose focus and lose distance projection.

    Power draw
    35430716-F3D1-43DC-8C67-7C4B7668A9F7.jpg

    While advertised as 25w, they only draw 11w. The lowest I’ve measured for a drop in LED.

    Pattern
    Beamtech vs stock
    2D1C4A05-8B9C-4143-B49F-E36D6E0B656D.jpg

    At 18’ the hot spot is completely lost. The result is a non-focused short range flood pattern, which makes for terrible headlight performance.

    Output
    34B04186-6B0F-42CE-84D6-284D6C6F264F.jpg

    Compared to stock the Beamtechs have a 34% output loss. That is measured at 18’, if measuring at the extended distance test the numbers would likely be significantly worse due to the focus loss. While claiming 4000 lumens, they are handily beat by a 1200 lumen stock used halogen bulb.

    They spec 6500k, the measured actual is 7249k, which is far higher color temp than ideal.

    Many often seem to think they are getting a great deal on really cheap Amazon LEDs. The specs are often way over inflated. Poor designs lead to loss of focus and shifts the light to a short range flood light which people intrinsically initially like more foreground light, so people give the light good reviews and recommend it to others not realizing they have lost their distance projection, which is the primary purpose of a headlight.

    If looking for a drop in LED, you’d be far better off with the Hikaris. If these were a halogen bulb, based on their output performance, they wouldn’t even meet the legal minimum for headlight output of an H11.

    :cheers:
     
  15. Nov 9, 2019 at 11:11 PM
    #1855
    mynameistory

    mynameistory My member is well known

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  16. Nov 10, 2019 at 2:14 AM
    #1856
    Garab

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    Lmfao. Savage. This made me burst out laughing in a silent room at work. My coworker is looking at me funny.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2019
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  17. Nov 10, 2019 at 10:11 AM
    #1857
    TACO_ROCKET

    TACO_ROCKET Well-Known Member

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    @crashnburn80 since I only need one bulb for my bike, would you be interested in testing the other one if I sent it to you? They're H7, though, so I don't know if it would even be worth trying to make that work.
     
  18. Nov 10, 2019 at 10:53 AM
    #1858
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    I don’t have any H7 assemblies to test in, just Tacoma 3rd Gen H11 and late model 2nd Gen H4.
     
  19. Nov 10, 2019 at 11:35 AM
    #1859
    skierd

    skierd Well-Known Member

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    You can do the tests yourself, assuming you have a garage and an iPhone. There are free light meter apps that will let you measure lux. Aim the bike at a wall with a stock halogen and measure, then follow up with whatever LEDs you have to try. You’ll have different numbers than crashes but it’s the comparison that counts not the absolute values.
     
  20. Nov 10, 2019 at 11:49 AM
    #1860
    crashnburn80

    crashnburn80 [OP] Vehicle Design Engineer

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    Those are not accurate. And while you could make the case for using an inaccurate meter to use as a representative comparison of two of the same light sources, it will be wildly off when measuring two different types of light sources. Here is a post I have on the topic:

     
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