What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

I haven't really considered polishing the lenses, for a couple reasons:

1. From everything I've heard, that's a pretty temporary thing - like annually. After a few years, the price to just buy new housings would be similar
2. I already need new rubber boots for the rear; so that's another $40 that I'm already into the housings.
3. I don't mind spending the money on new OEM headlights if it's an "every 20 years" thing. hahaha

For the wiring - I am definitely considering that. I mean, I'd make my own harness, but conceptually the same - use the OEM wiring to drive the relays (which I'd use in the Bussmann), and then use some heavier gauge wiring to the lights.

 

I polished my foggy headlights back in March, looked brand new afterward using Meguiars Heavy Duty kit. Used the power drill brush and clear coated them. Been 7 months now and they are fogging up again.

 

Race truck parts needs race truck budget.

 

Trick is to spray them with

$259 uv100 8 gang programmable switch panel power control system for truck UTV side by side boat 12V battery use

uv100. Not just clear coat. Should last a good long while.

 

There spray and burnish ceramic coating proves to keep em clear as well

 

Yeah I'm about to do that to Devin's Honda. Just put new hids in the projectors.

 

Since y’all’s are still on headlights n shit

something I noticed this morning with the fancy shroud LEDS , doesn’t seem to affect anything, but funny it picks up the headlights and not 8 bulbs in my ditch lights.

Headlights Off
Headlights On

 

Touche!

 

You talking about the radio? Thats cheap filtering in the electronics of those lights. Same thing to my dust light, when on it makes my CB useless.

 

Yea, they don’t seem to affect much with the Ham, the headlights or ditches. But the ditches would make a mess of my stereo in my other truck

 

Did a satoshi mod to the grill today. Keep the original symbol instead of the typical Toyota lettering.

 

Seems to clear for me.
I guess it depends on tire width and wheel back spacing. I'm currently running 16 inch steelies so this might not work if I upgrade to alloys.

 

I noticed the same thing on my last trip (the first with the LEDs), and though I haven't posted my review of the LEDs yet, this is the main reason I'm still in search of a headlight solution.

Ehh, I mean I know it lasts longer, but my Dad has done that a couple times and neither of us find it impressive.

 

So it's a filtering, EMI, issue for you huh? I got lucky on my last set of LED sealed beams. Have you tried some torroid coils over the lines to and from the bulbs.

 

I have. No change.

It's worse than that though - the LEDs are air-gapped from an electrical POV, from the ham radio. They are on the starting battery; radio is on the house battery. Even when the batteries are unlinked, the ham busy signal is at full.

Shoot, here's my full review. Only reason I haven't posted it yet is I was waiting for some photos of the new lights.

My Headlights are Too Dim (partially resolved, but not totally)
TL;DR - the headlights are better, but I still have work to do. The LEDs have too much RFI.

I tweaked the headlights in several ways after returning from The 3C Trip - I replaced the headlight bulbs with LEDs, upgraded the Hella 700s with HIDs, and fixed the interaction between the Hellas and DRLs when the hi-beams are switched on and off (see HIDs and LEDs - Finally, I Can See Again! and *Fixing* My First Mod - Really Disabling the Daytime Running Lights). I'm very happy with two aspects of this work: first, the HID upgrade for the Hella's. The light output from them now is simply amazing - it's like running in daylight (ok, not really, but it is SO bright). Second, the DRL/Hi/Low/Hella interaction is now perfect - the Hellas come on when the hi-beams are on, and are off at all other times.

What I'm not so happy with are the new LEDs, and that deserves a bit more explanation - because it's not for the reason I thought it would be. My review of the BEAMTECH H4 LED Headlight (9003 Hi/Lo) is actually a mixed bag. In good weather, they actually seemed quite nice - significantly better than I'd expected after I'd see the bright white light they emit when I first turned them on in the garage. In fact, after about 8 hours of night driving on the first trip down to Death Valley, I was pretty sure I was going to keep the LEDs.

• While the light is a little white for me, their brightness is so much better than the stock bulbs that I actually REALLY liked them when we were driving for hours and hours at night and the weather was good.
• The cut-off seems really good. I never got flashed by oncoming traffic when the low-beams were on. Even with the cut-off shield, I was worried about whether it would work, and I'm really glad that it seemed to work well.
• The hi-beams seemed just OK. This surprised me bit - they were not dramatically brighter than the lows (though perhaps this indicates how good the lows are).

But, on the way back from Death Valley, we hit bad weather - snow. Heavy snow. Unfortunately, this changed my mind on the LEDs.

• The low-beams were darn good in snow, even the heavy snow. I didn't get too much glare and yet still got enough light to see well. We ran this way for nearly 12 hours on the way home - essentially from Bishop, CA to Eugene, OR.
• The hi-beams on the other hand were terrible. The light scatter with them on made the snow blinding - I litterally couldn't see more than about 10 feet in front of the truck. Part of this was due to beam pattern, but a big part of it was due to light color. A yellower would be a lot better in this situation.

Still, overall I was quite happy with them from a light performance perspective - happier than I thought I'd be, even with the poor weather, hi-beam situation. After all, I knew that I wouldn't be able to use the Hellas in the snow, and hi-beams seem somewhat similar.

But then - something I totally didn't expect. I noticed on the way home that when the headlights - low- or hi-beams - are on, my ham radio "busy" indicator is always on. Like full on. So, the ham thinks that it's receiving a transmission all the time. So, the RFI the headlights put out is terrible. I don't think they are shielded at all. And, they are on a completely separate electrical system (air gapped) than my radio, so there's nothing I can do to fix it. ...And for that reason, I'm going to at least try some other non-LED bulbs.

 

The clear coat, while more involved, has held up on 3 cars of mine. The 06 corolla had 2 years on its clear coat covered lights and they were just starting to yellow again. Total cost was like 30 bucks to do them.

 

It didn't really seem to affect how well I could communicate with other, at least not that I noticed.

 

every light I've had has RF on it thats an LED or HID.

You could try using Chokes though all over, that does help @turbodb Just Ferite beads

And you'll get noise on either battery because the ground is the same regardless of the power source. Keep in mind how electricity flows, it's - to + as it's electrons moving.

 

Man, that looks great. Never a big fan of the Toyota lettering.

Excellent choice.

 

I like the Toyota lettering on the 1995.5 - 2000 front ends, but I don't think it matches up well with the 01-04 front. The Toyota emblem looks better on the later model front end