Looking to upgrade factory headlights

I have no experience with changing headlights and don’t have unlimited money to try all options. I’m not afraid to pay a little extra on the correct choice.
LED ?
HID ?
Just change to a different standard bulb?
Thanks

 

You need to do a search. It’s been WELL covered by a TW resident lighting guru. Tons of reading. Search “ultimate headlight upgrade”

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

If you're looking at aftermarket options be careful, they likely will be worse light output than OEM. Well done retrofits are a worthy option as well if you don't like the look of the OEM lights.

 

Welcome to the forum! The link above has everything you could want to know about 2nd Gen headlight upgrades. In a halogen assembly, a halogen upgrade is by far the best performing option, see the thread for details.

 

Retro fit or you’ll just blind on coming traffic. Or check that thread posted

 

Headlamps america. $103 each lamp. install, adjust aim. done.

 

The cheapest way would be to just upgrade the halogen bulb or spend the coin on a retro fit to get those nice projectors with HID

 

First, read the following post to address the LED / HID part of your question:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/

Next, read at least the first part of this post to show you a better way:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

Finally, get back to us with any questions you might still have.

 

Yep. All I ever recommend for OEM replacements for a much better price than new. They do a great job at remanufacturing/refurbishing OEM to "new" condition. Aiming you can save yourself some work, I just taped a box where the "hot spot" was against the wall of my garage and used them to aim the replacements.

 

I went with a stand alone headlight wiring harness (really heavy duty stuff from rallylights.com) and I run 80/100w “off-road” bulbs. This is well documented in crashnburn80’s amazing thread. Stand alone wiring delivers full voltage to your headlights which on its own makes a big difference. 80w low beams aren’t an issue in the stock housings (I’ve run this setup for almost 5 years with no heat problems) and the stock housings provide the same light cutoff as stock, I’m just putting a lot more light down. That’s a tough one for people to grasp, and when the $30 eBay LED light urge hits, it can be strong. But RESIST! LED’s are really white (compared to halogen) and it fools you into thinking they are “brighter” Oh, they are bright, but that light isn’t focused and it’s scattered, poor cutoff, etc. Don’t take my word for it, read through all the options he lays out (there’s a lot). In the end, halogens upgraded to high wattage has been the answer for me, only thing I do differently from the process laid out by crashnburn- I found that the “expensive” bulbs he likes burn out pretty fast. Tried a couple sets before going to a CHEAP Hella 80/100- just to give them a try. I’m averaging 18 months with these and I drive a lot. And I’ve gotten these as cheap as $12 a pair!

Good luck whichever way you decide to go. Oh, I should mention... I drive a lot in heavy whitetail territory so I mounted a pair of Rigid 6x6 Duallys (the DOT lens ones) that are a “hybrid” pattern... I tie them out just slightly and they are AWESOME for near-field daylight and they fill the ditches on the sides of the road with bright, white, LED goodness (and amazingly do not blind oncoming traffic- handy for when you’re running desolate roads late at night and forget they are on in the rare instance I encounter another vehicle)

 

After reading this I’m going to try a high performance halogen bulb before I get into upgrading the electrical harness or upgrading the actual headlight. I used the website bulbfacts.com to compare what halogens are on the market. Ended up going with Philips XtremeVison +130. They were only $18.99 for the pair. Will keep y’all posted on looks and performance.

 

I just ordered 6 Hella 95/130w bulbs from Quadratec... doing a little interweb searching and they have them on super blowout! 6 of them shipped for under $20!!

 

Those are a decent upgrade but a bit dated compared to the latest offerings from Philips. Philips now has +150 and +200 bulbs. If you saw the headlight upgrade thread mentioned earlier, the +150s are the best stock wattage low beam though the +200s will be tested soon.

Hate to disappoint, but those bulbs are terrible. See the output charts in the headlight upgrade thread. The high beam will be stellar, but the low beam is pretty poor.

 

BUMMER!!!!

 

I had them, and they were pretty good but not a huge improvement over stock. From there it’s either the ultimate headlight upgrade or the HID retrofit. I went with the HID retrofit; it’s truly a night and day.

 

If you are going to do anything with your headlights, it’s worth doing the harness as well. If you put a voltmeter on the wires at the headlight, you would be shocked at how low the voltage is. You’ve got a ~$20K truck and you’re too cheap to spend ~$120 to be able to see better and drive safer? It’s plug and play. If you have the ability to change a bulb, you can install the harness.

 

I'm assuming that you have the upgraded / HD harness or you're not going to see much performance increase out of those bulbs. BTW, I think you'll find that the reason they're blowing them out is that they don't perform as well as certain other high performance bulbs. Remember, wattage is only one measurement of bulb output and realistically, it's only a measure of power consumption.

 

Just my opinion, but headlights are a very important safety system. Safety trumps cosmetics all day. Many folks are drawn into either a cosmetic changes or jumping to a different lighting technology thinking they will yield significant gains. Most are disappointed with the results. I was victim of my own ignorance (on another vehicle) and and the absence of any improvement was quite telling. The reality of it was in my case, my changing to a LED headlight was a significant downgrade.

Not wanting to repeat my mistake with my Tacomas, I needed to research the subject more. Crashnburn80's thread is extensive and revealing. I took his advice as outlined in his thread and I couldn't be more pleased with the results.

I'm sure there are headlight systems out there that are non-halogen and do deliver. My feeling is that they are in the minority.

A cost effective upgrade is the harness and bulb change. It doesn't break the bank and it will make it safer for both you and other drivers......

 

Take a look at the Sylvania Silverstar bulb series.

I first tried these on my motorcycle with a single headlight. The difference was pretty significant.

Since then, I've installed on the wife's car, daughter's car and on my truck.

Easy upgrade, plug-n-play, affordable. Available almost anywhere there is a WalMart or Auto store.

BTW, always replace headlights in pairs.

 

With all due respect, I think you'll find that Siverstars are mostly marketing hype and less on real performance. Lots of better performing bulbs out there as you'll see here: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

To cut (and paste) right to the chase:

Stock wattage performance bulbs
Stock wattage high performance bulbs do not actually put out more light, instead they use smaller high precision filaments to make the light more focused and intense for the headlight to use more efficiently and project a brighter hotspot further. You can see an short article by Philips explaining how these bulbs work here.

These are currently the highest performing stock wattage bulbs on the market:

• Philips Racing Vision +150 - Best low beam, reduced high beam output
• 
  
  
  
  $39 GE Lighting H4 NHX/BP2 Nighthawk Xenon Replacement Headlight Bulb, 2-Pack
  GE Nighthawk Xenon +120 - Full performance high beam

Which bulb is best? Depends on your needs. The +150 bulbs are going to provide excellent low beam performance, but coat the high beam reducing performance. The Philips are rated at 200hrs. The GE +120s have a blue coating on the tip but leave both the low and high beam uncoated giving superior high beam performance with a slightly lower low beam performance over the other bulbs.