3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Not light related, but does anyone have trusted friends/family in Australia? I'm looking to buy/ship some wheels from there, but the Aussie companies will only ship domestically. I could use some help from the international Tacoma community.

 

I don't know anyone there anymore, what wheels are you looking at?

 

Don't want to sidetrack the thread with wheel talk, but Method 313 17x8.5 5x5/5x127 +25. The wheels were discontinued and are no longer available in the US. I can find 3 domestically combining multiple colors and new/used. Australia has a bunch but vendors there don't seem willing to ship to the US. My Gladiator 17s weight 24.4lbs. To run the new Ford Raptor ultralight 37s, specs call for an 8.5" wide wheel and AEV specs an +25 offset to prevent rubbing on a 37 with a JL/JT while keeping the wheel under the truck with minimal poke. AEVs wheels for 37s are unacceptable at over 30lbs. Method 313s weigh an impressive 23.5lbs, shaving almost 1lb off compared to stock. The 313s are flow formed instead of cast for better strength and lighter weight and have a higher load rating than competing wheels. With 313s and the new Raptor based 37 KO2s, my OEM 33s->37s transition will only gain 0.5lb. Less. than. one. pound. gain. for 37s. Pair that with my latest generation Magnuson 440hp blower that sees a tire shredding +15psi at partial throttle, and I am looking to defy what people think is remotely possible for performance in a lifted truck.

 

Where in Ausie are you finding them? I have a contact there, I don’t know if he’d help out, but give me some details of the plan.

 

I want to get rid of the amber color that came stock with my truck. I just put in some bright white raptor lights and want to match the rest of the bulbs to the same color. I dont care so much about the performance, but I just want to change the color of them. Whats a high quality bulb that will last and put out about 4000k? There are so many options. Idk what one to trust

 

So,

my original post was going to be the following:

Nobody has don it so I am going to do it:

This is a serious thread about lights! Not rims in Australia or whatever other bulls@it… get the f@ck out of here!

thanks!

BUT THEN, I saw that @crashnburn80 was posting about Australia and rims and other sh@t so I shut my mouth.

So if OP wants to talk about rims, OP can talk about rims…

good bye, peace!

 

Figure out what city the vendor is in and search for a freight forwarder. You can usually get a quote pretty easily from them. Air freight is going to cost more than the wheels and in a container by boat will probably be 2-6 months depending upon how their ports are doing.

 

I’ll move related discussion over here:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/crashnburn80s-supercharged-gladiator-mojave-build.700918/

This is a light thread, not trying to derail it but just wanted to cast as wide a net as possible for help.

 

Silverstar bulbs are about 4000k and can be found at your local autocrats store, performance isn't great through. All the performance halogens are less than 4000k. But if trying to match LED raptor lights, then you are really looking at 6000k to match. For that Hikari Ultra LED or Morimoto 2stroke 2.0s would be the best bet.

 

I just bought the Osram 615905-35W 12V GY6.35 For my reverse lights. I googled your TW name and the tread came right away. You are famous! Thanks for all the informative threads.

 

Maybe @G.T. or @Crikeymike might know someone

 

Oh man im stupid I just remembered Kelvins for car lights are different than Kelvins from like a normal light bulb. Pretty sure thats what I was confusing. But thanks for the tip! I'll check those out. I wanna get rid of all the amber but idk. Does bright white raptor lights and amber headlights look stupid?

 

All white will look good imo, just look at the rivian and the new Ford lightning running white drl across the grille.

 

So there's a ton of information in this thread and I'm not smart enough to understand it all. I've looked at your two recommendations and they are decently priced too. So thats good news. What im trying to understand tho is that what it seems like is that the H11 is for your low beams, H9 is for high beams and you can also use H11 for your fog lights. In my 2017 sr5, the DLR lights are the blinkers as well. Can I use those bulbs you recommended for the fogs and the low beams? Then I need something different for the high beams? Is it a good idea to change out the DLR/blinker? Or not even worth it?? It also sounds like that halogens are preferable instead of LED in your projector lights, which are the low beams, yes? If I want to replace what I need to get rid of the amber without replacing all of them, which ones should I change? I dont necessarily need the LEDs if they aren't what would be best for performance. But I would like to have some decent bulbs that last more than a year. I mean I've had the stock bulbs since I bought the truck so 4 years seems like a Hella good lifespan to me. You obviously know what you're talking about when it comes to light, so whatever you would do is what I'm gonna do, I didn't realize how amber my stock lights were until I put in those white raptor lights. And now it just seems weird.
I appreciate your effort in all this research and helping me out.

 

>H11 is for your low beams, H9 is for high beams and you can also use H11 for your fog lights.

The lowbeam projector was designed around an H11 bulb, yes. The H9 is optically compatible, meaning the filament is roughly the same dimensions (length, diameter) as well as placement in relation to the base as the H11. The H9, however, was intended to be a high flux (output) bulb for high beam type headlamps, because high beam regulations the world over allow for significantly more intense high beams than low beams (because hi's need to illuminate further down the road). Because the H9 is optically compatible with H11, it can be a significant upgrade. The higher flux (total light output) translates to noticably more light throughout the entire beam pattern- but this means more glare will be produced as well, so its not necessarily suitable for *Every* H11 headlamp.

Some model years used H11 for the fog lights, some later models (the year has been mentioned, I don't recall it off the top of my head) use H16 bulbs. The H16 model fog lamps are worse performing lamps, but the H11 fog lamp isnt necessarily that great either. The H9 bulb is not a suitable upgrade for the H11 fog lamps - it has no glare cap (opaque coating on the tip of the bulb) and the fog lamp itself doesn't have a built in one. Without the glare cap of the H11, the filament of the bulb is directly exposed to oncoming traffic, and effects the perceived cut off of the beam pattern, making it less useful in bad weather/fog.

There is an excellent thread in the Lighting subforum with lots of comparisons of different aftermarket LED fog lamps, if you are looking for upgraded fog lights, for use in bad weather. Fogs have very limited usefulness outside of bad weather, and despite the extra light near the vehicle being comforting, are generally diminishing your ability to see objects at far distances when they're on.

>Then I need something different for the high beams?

No. Continue using H9's in the high beams. The Philips H9 is about the best available on the market. An added benefit of using H9's in your low beam projectors, is that if you have a low beam bulb burn out, you can use a high beam bulb, if you don't routinely carry spare bulbs. Also decreases the number of spare bulb types you need to keep track of. Plus the Philips H9 is generally much cheaper than the performance H11 bulbs on the market.

>It also sounds like that halogens are preferable instead of LED in your projector lights, which are the low beams, yes?

Yes. While there are a lot of products out there marketed/claimed to be direct replacements for halogen bulbs of different types, they all suffer from a few basic problems. Even the Hikari Ultra and Morimoto bulb that CrashnBurn80 recommended, based on his testing, are lower performing than a decent/mid range H11 halogen bulb. In simplest terms, the design of LED retrofit bulbs causes them to be out of focus within the headlamp, compared to the very small and precisely placed halogen filaments they are intended to mimic/replicate. The Hikari and the morimoto are much smaller than most of the LED bulbs on the market, so they perform Better, but still nowhere near what could be considered a real, effective "upgrade" bulb. Crash bases his LED retrofit testing on the idea that some people, regardless of the decrease in performance they will see, are going to want LED bulbs for the look. So hos testing has largely been to see what is the most effective retrofit bulb and steer people towards those, with the caveat that there are significantly better bulbs in the halogen realm.

>But I would like to have some decent bulbs that last more than a year.

That depends on how you use them. If you're someone who always uses their low beams, you'll still be happy with H9's. They are rated at 400hr lifespan, as opposed to 250hrs for most high performance H11 bulbs. Frequent short trips with the lights being turned on and off will reduce any bulbs lifespan, so keep that in mind.

>amber lowbeams

Halogens will have a lower color temperature. They produce very small amounts of blue light, so any bulb that claims a higher color tempersture is using a filter that reduces the amount of red and green light the filament is producing, meaning even a small amount of blue tint on the bulb to increase color temp will have a significant effect on the amount of light making it out of the bulb, on to the road. Hella's performance H9 has been tested by Crash, and is a good bulb. It has a noticably higher color temperature, but it still produces a much lower color temp than any cold white LED light. Thats just reality.

Halogen color temp is effected by the voltage the bulb is seeing, to some amount. Higher voltage will see the color temp creeping up without any need for filtering, but only a few hundred kelvin, tops. If your stock lowbeams are 4 years old, the reason they probably appear so amber, is that they are long lifespan bulbs, and are not getting optimal voltage. A new bulb will probably be a noticable improvement in perceived color temp. Just dont go with long life bulbs.

 

As much as I despise chat bots I think one could be really useful in a data driven thread like this

 

Pretty much run h9 Phillips bulbs in both your low beam and high beam locations. For fog light options there is a thread about it but the tldr version is it’s hard to beat the Diode Dynamics SS3’s in any of the fog patterns at their price point.

 

this is the way.

 

This was so helpful! Thanks for explaining this. I really appreciate it. Sounds like I'll be getting those philips

Edit: was wondering if those philips h9s are just plug and play, like I wont need to modify it if I just wanted to put it where my standard low beams are. Ive already got h9s in my high beams so do the h9s just fit right into the h11 spot?

 

You'll have to trim one of the three mounting tabs in order to get an H9 to fit. One of the tabs on the H9 is just a bit wider than the H11, and then you also have to grind or scrape off a tiny groove in the electrical connection so it will slip on to the back of the H9. It will still work on an H11 after though, so they're sort of but not really plug and play. You'll have to do the tab trim every time you put a new H9 but the electrical trim only once. And of course, wear latex gloves to avoid getting skin oil on the glass capsule, which will cause them to burn out much faster, as you're undoubtedly going to need to hold on to the business end of the bulb to trim the tab.

Personally I found it was just easier, albeit more expensive to use the high performance H11's for virtually the exact same output - y'know - until I just replaced the entire assemblies with the 2020 Tacoma LEDs, which take your lighting to a whole new level.