The ultimate headlight upgrade H4 (not LED or HID)

Thank you! Osram it is then.

 

Ive seen this thread a lot. Im plenty happy with installing a bright box with fog light control on my 2015 limited. What a differance. I also use the sylvania silverstar ultra bulbs. They are great. Only downfall is they dont last long. But they are stupid bright for the factory 55 60watt beam with my oem housings. Especially when I turn my high beam on, my lows and fog lights run to. And those bulbs I can always find around all my stores in my local area. Ive found that to get the best output, you cant just stuff leds or hids into a housing they wernt designed for. You have to upgrade it with the tech you have to make it brighter or completely change to a custom housing if your wanting to run led or hids.

 

90 watt plug and play no mods.

 

I’ve got the bulbs and the headlights but I’m chafing at the price of the harness. $140+ USD seems steep for 10 feet of 12 gauge wire and a couple relays. I guess I’ll have to get over it.

 

A bright box will burn out your bulbs quick running high and low simultaneously. It's also not a good idea to run your fogs when you don't need them, especially with the high beams. The high amounts of foreground light reduce your ability to see distance at night, they are meant for slow speed in limited visibility where it is challenging to see the roadway. You'll get better results using the recommended bulbs from the thread like the Philips Racing Vision +200s, instead of Silverstars, though they will not be available in your local autoparts store.

You mean with a harness? Without a harness those bulbs won't be much of an upgrade as the voltage will be insufficient to fully power them.

 

In addition to limiting the output of the upgraded bulbs, running them on the factory harness risks overloading (and overheating) the cicuit on which they run, which is designed for stock headlight power draw.

Assuming you you have the knowledge and time required, you COULD build your own harness.

 

Two of these:
https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/product/h4-9003-headlight-pigtails/

One of these for low beams:
https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/product/4-wire-relay-socket/

One of these for high beams:
https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/product/5-wire-relay-socket/

And a male pigtail for trigger input (I thought they had them, can't find 'em)

That plus some wire and ring terminals for power and ground, some way to fuse, some way to splice, and the actual relays gets you there. Maybe $50-$70 in parts and you just have to figure out how to connect everything together, and some loom or tubing to protect stuff, could be a semi-DIY approach with good results. Assuming you value your time somewhere near $40-$50 an hour, this might creep in under $100 total if you are pretty tight on managing everything.

Or their full harness:
https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/product/h4-headlight-relay-kits/

Which puts the HS option into focus as a competitively priced option.

Personally I intentionally avoid building these for anyone (even myself) because it turns into dozens of hours of effort and there's nobody on this planet willing to spend thousands on a wiring harness.

Specialization of labor is a fantastic thing. I've bought two HS harnesses and I would buy more from him if I had reason to, even though I have all the parts myself.

Of course, china made harnesses are available if you're into that. I bought one myself as a template and to see it, the quality was pretty nice and it worked just fine, got me going, but wasn't a long term strategy for me, I didn't love the lack of a common ground or the quality of the h4 connectors or the fuse holder very much. But it worked just fine for me for a few years.

 

Thanks for the info. If it’s $70 in parts $70 in labour is reasonable.

 

The harness is absolutely worth it. Considering it's a modification that you would use almost every day, the extra cost for superior light output is almost invaluable.

 

I've read a ton of this thread but hard to keep up with everything. Are there any options for as close to 5-6000k as possible that will perform better without upgrading the harness? At what point is the harness upgrade needed? I understand that moving away from the ~4300k loses a bit of performance but I really just want something nice and white-I hate the slightly yellow tint. I already have yellow SS3 fogs for nice golden yellow in inclement weather and would like my low/highs to contrast that.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...15-led-headlight-review.735867/#post-26199228

 

Thank you, yeah I have seen those but not looking to drop that much money on something right now especially something that isn't perfect. The mismatched color temps between DRL low beam and high beam would bother me and not a huge fan of the big orange reflectors on the sides. I'd rather do a retrofit on my oems at that point.

 

Try a brite box man, you'll love it. Its plug and play.

 

id say my tint is probably round 30-35%. So, its enough to affect visibility without running em to see beside you

 

Also, forgot to mention, as long as you get the proper config you need, it all works in the factory switch. They are bomb.

 

For those of you that don't know what a Brite Box is or how it works, here's the short version. It allows your low beams to stay on while your high beams are on. Although this may seem like a bright (sorry) idea, there are several things wrong with it. First, you don't want to flood the area directly in front of you when you're running your high beams. Why? Because if you do, your eyes will focus on the near field and give you virtually no long-range vision. Kind of defeats the purpose of high beams now, doesn't it?

Second - and maybe even more importantly - it causes both of the filaments in your dual filament headlight bulb to be energized at the same time. The glass capsule in your bulb has a limited capacity to shed heat. It's designed to have enough capacity when running either your low or high beam filament separately. Running both of them for any length of time is a recipe for exploding capsules. Yes, this is all thrown out the window when you have separate high and low beam bulbs, but second generation Tacomas do not.

 

Has anyone else had an issue with the Headlight Services website? I can’t add the harness to my cart for some reason

 

Fresh TRD Pro headlights and Osram bulbs both arrived today!

 

Works for me on my MacBook. Maybe try a desktop if using mobile.