3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

@tektaco84

Just spend $20 on the H9's and forget about LED drop ins. The best crash has tested so far is the hikari ultra, which was only marginally mire intense than the long life OEM H11. High "+ Focus" rated H11's and the H9 simply blow these LED retrofit bulbs out of the water in terms of performance, especially given the price point. As a bonus, you now only have one type of replacement bulb to keep on hand in case of either a low or high heam bulb failure.

 

Hyper Arros will actually put out less light than the stock H11s, it will just be whiter so it may have the appearance of being brighter. A 5000k filter on a halogen bulb will simply remove too much light to not obtain losses over stock, despite whatever PIAA's misleading marketing may claim. The H9 swap offers the best performance for a replacement bulb, the Philips H9s are tested to be the best performing but if you wanted something slightly whiter the Hella 2.0 performance 3900k H9s are not far behind.

As to the LEDs you reference, both the G3 and High Output models are very dated designs. The emitters do not attempt to replicate a halogen filament at all, the result will be lack of focus and poor performance. The Platinum kit, looks pretty wide, they don't give any direct pictures of width, but wide LEDs will also lack focus and perform poorly. The fanless design will also have high stable output losses. Needless to say I would not recommend any of those products.

If you want to run LED, the best tested so far are the Hikari Ultras. This is because they are the thinnest LED tested yet, and the emitters replicate a halogen filament size and location, both combined provide best focus which is more important to beam performance than raw output. The new Morimoto 3.0s spec to be even thinner than Hikari, and the emitters look to be the appropriate size and position. Both these should lead to better focus and output performance than Hikari, but I have not yet personally tested them to definitely answer with data.

 

Harder to take a picture than to see when driving. Also more apparent at moderate distance. The left side has a more apparent step-off while the right is more of a gentle curve. I took this at lower exposure to try to illustrate it.

 

That is a quality shot, nicely done. Photographing headlight output can be tricky. I’d say that is intended for the reasons discussed earlier.

I was just reevaluating the Gladiator LED lights, and the step actually occurs on both sides. The cut off is nowhere as good as Toyota. I think in the Gladiator case it is just a crappy pattern design. I really haven’t driven much with it at night working from home now.

 

So when following Stern’s aiming guidelines, we would pretend the notch doesn’t exist? And go off height of hot spot?

 

Correct. Otherwise your hot spot would end up above the beam cut off guideline.

 

I know you've posted these photos but I don't recall a ton of description on what you actually did in terms of playing with them What adjustments did you end up making? I've been driving with mine for a few months now and with the shorter days I'm finally driving in the dark with some regularity. Maybe I'm asking too much for distance out of these lamps, but I'm finding wanting more distance throw, so I'm wondering if I need to aim up, but of course the risk of blinding other motorists in play (and I've got high beams and a 30" bar if I need OMG light). The actual light output is excellent, but maybe I've got a bad perspective on what I can get out of these.

 

Photo from the location where I noticed the notch. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It’s comforting to know it’s an expected feature vs something I messed up on with the install.

Distance is more than 25 feet, rough estimate of 30-40 range and slight uphill.

 

Solid investment on those lights. That is a great pattern that checks all the boxes.

 

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

So, I apologize in advance but I did not document the number of clicks on each side. If I had, I would probably hesitate to share them as I suspect they aren’t perfect.

I also didn’t use blue painters tape for the install and put the driver side inside the metal vs outside the first time. So I have a bigger scratch than yours.

I want to redo the alignment. Perhaps if I do so I can count the clicks from max down angle? Still not sure I know what I’m doing though.

TLDR: I followed the Daniel Stern article on headlight and fog light alignment and assumed the configuration of downward trajectory is based on headlight height from the ground since it makes sense to have lower vehicles with less downward angle and higher vehicles with more. IIRC that boiled down to the cutoff at 39” above grade from 25’ away for the headlights. I forget the fog light number but the cutoffs there aren’t as tight and adjustment isn’t as controlled.

 

I emphasize this all the time. The easiest way by far for alignment is to install one light at a time, then match the alignment of the existing OEM light. Then swap the 2nd light and match the alignment of the already aligned light. Takes all the guess work out and doesn't even require a level surface. Starting from scratch with 2 new lights installed is far more difficult to dial in the aim.

 

Sorry. I forgot to put the link for the video. Here it is

My headlights are h7 with projector. After the leds I bought a pair of Bosch gigalight plus 120. They brighter, but I cannot say it is a night and day difference, but on projector headlights from my experience with expensive halogens, the difference is not that big. Also, a negative thing about bosch gigalight plus 120 is that after about a month of use, I removed the bulb and that silver cap started to peel away and I think the material droped in the projector, hope it hasn't done any damage.

 

Thanks for the reply! I'll do some digging in this thread for the H9 conversion.

I'm out of my element with this lighting stuff, especially with the LED options. I don't know what bulbs were in the truck when I bought it (pre-owned) but they were absolute shit; I can't imagine they were OEM.

It's disappointing to see a manufacturer like PIAA putting out crappy products and spurious claims, as well as Toyota putting such a shitty headlight unit on the 3rd gen Tacoma.

I think I'll go with the H9 conversion based on cost and performance. I will keep my eye on the new Morimoto kit as it sounds promising. Thank you for the helpful reply, @crashnburn80!

 

Hikari ultras are about 50% off on Amazon. For $42.47 I’m going to give them a try as I wasn’t happy with my Osram H9 mod. If I’m still not happy I guess I’ll try Phillip h9s. Maybe I’m struggling with lighting color or something.

How does replacing the headlight fixtures to led stack up? Would it be much brighter/clearer going with a high quality full replacements?

not really thrilled to even think about doing a full swap but I need the lighting to step up big time.

 

Where are you seeing that deal? Just paid normal price on my order yesterday...

 

Not sure where he is seeing $42, but they have been $54 for about a week and a half now...
Hikari Ultra H11 on sale again | Tacoma World

Nevermind, just noticed the extra 20% off coupon. Great deal!

 

Puppypunters link is correct

 

Let me rephrase. Compared to how they were aimed as-installed, did you go up or down in terms of the cutoff? I'm curious if out of the box they're aimed high or low relative to what I'm seeing on the truck unaimed. Or did you ultimately not drive the truck at night without them aimed.

 

Yes, agreed, provided you trust the existing lights. Which I didn’t since I bought used. The Stern article indicates that manufacturers aren’t required to align headlights nor are dealers. I don’t trust the minivan either, though I haven’t touched the headlight alignment and we bought that new. And of course things change based on payload, tire pressure, suspension, etc.

Auto leveling headlights sound like a fantastic solution. Even better would be terrain auto adjustment on the fly.

So the Dirty Harry quote was intentional. I simply don’t remember in all the excitement. I fidgeted with the adjustment trying to find the best screwdriver. Then I did the alignment. I should have paid more attention to whether I went up or down. Instead I was in Dirty Harry mode.