2020 Tacoma OEM LED Headlight Megathread

X2

 

Not the greatest lighting, but here ya’ go!

before and after

 

Anyone know what the little reflectors under the DRL strip is for? The ones where it would say "TRD" "PRO" on the TRD Pro models. Is it just a squirrel finder/uplight? Or just more DRL.

Edit: Also just installed the OEM LED headlights on my truck. Didn't realize Dave included two "dummy" plugs for the unused parking light connectors to keep it sealed and water tight. However, I'm noticing an issue with the passenger side light. It'll turn on just fine but after two minutes, it dims about 25 percent. Anyone ever have this issue before?

 

Just part of the DRL design in the headlight

Never heard of or seen the second question issue? Seems odd though

 

you may have crossed the low and high beam plug up.

 

The lower front lighting and sidemarker are only on with the parking light circuit. DRL is full bright on the C. Parking lights are dim on the C, sidemarker and 3 lower lights where the TRD and PRO trim plates are.

However, DRL (when active) trumps parking light so there are actually 3 modes:

DRL only == full bright C, sidemarker and trim plate lights off
Parking Lights == full bright C, sidemarker and trim plate lights on
Low and high beams == dim C, sidemarker and trim lights on

the ECU has the DRL signal active with DRL and parking lights on the stalk but kills it when low beams are on.

I haven’t tested stalk in parking light mode and pull back to activate high beams. I would expect that to look the same as push forward would look but not sure if DRL is on or off for that.

For your observation of dimming at 2 minutes, could you post some before and after photos?

 

Remove the fuses to both low & high beam circuits and take a look.

 

I made sure the low beam on the harness connected to the low beam plug in the truck and made sure to match the high beam/ground as well. Maybe I just got a faulty headlight unit. I'll try to switch the harnesses on each headlight to the other when I have a day off. It's a weird issue that I've never experienced even when dealing with retrofiting projectors in my old car.

 

I can get since photos later tonight. I'm guessing it might be a faulty headlight unit I got. With my luck, it's not impossible, lol. Just to confirm, the high/ground plug on the harness had to match the connector from the truck right? If I accidentally plug it in the wrong way it can blow a fuse? At least that's what I got from Chloe Kuo's video on YouTube

 

Yes. Easiest way to check is make sure any OEM white w black stripe wire connects to harness solid black or (if it’s my harness) white w black. The colors are for positive, solid white is high beam positive on the driver side, solid yellow on the passenger side. Low beam is solid red driver side and solid blue passenger side.

If you’re talking about the C itself and you have an upper trim which has auto on the stalk then it may be working as designed. But what I think I read does sound peculiar and unexpected. I’ve only ever seen dim trouble with the C, one guy has a headlight which never dimmed or never went full bright.

 

Here's the harness hooked up to the trucking wiring on the passenger side, the side with the headlight that dims after 2 minutes. I think I have everything hooked up right.

 

I don’t see problems so far. The dimming is one side or both?

 

With my harness you can’t blow a fuse. You can only get nothing working at all (swap high beam orientation / polarity) or low beam not working (swap low beam orientation / polarity).

 

Just the passenger light. Looks like it's time to call sparks parts about it then.

 

Get a fused jumper wire and test the passenger low beam (wire) and ground, on its own.

 

Here's some photos. I think the first is dimmed. Second is full brightness when I first start up the lights. You can see in the top first photo all the way to the right, it's a bit dimmer than the second photo. More noticeable when driving and suddenly the light dims down like an led diode died.
Trying to upload the short vid I took of it dimming.

Edit: vid uploaded, happens around the 12 second mark
https://youtu.be/CP_8KdiJukY

 

Can you look to see if there is in fact an issue with a diode? There are 3 LEDs in the low beam (I think, I’m usually wrong though so double check that). Maybe one or more is turning off after a bit?

 

There's five diodes for the low beam but it's hard to see which one is dimmer than the others. I looked up at the diodes and it looks like the further one in the corner, nearest the fender is dimmer than the equivalent furthest corner diode in the other headlight. Maybe the LED drivers in the headlight is bad.

 

Yeah, I suspect you’d need a welding mask to be able to tell. But looking at your video, there is something up for sure in that low beam. If you have a way to test amperage, I’d be happy to send you a harness to test it.