Brighter Headlights?!

There is an adjustment screw on the top of the headlight housing.

 

Thanks brother.

 

I REALLY want to love LEDs as they are the newest technology. Simple design, reliable, and last tens of thousands of hours. Whats not the love right??

Well the optics are improving every year so I think LEDs are certainly the future, but for right NOW they still suck for what lighting is supposed to do... light up whats down the road ahead of you.

The problem isn't lumen output as you can get a 100,000 lumen LED setup if you really wanted to... the problem is DISTANCE and more specifically the LUX rating at distances of 200m+. This is where even super nice LED setups crap out unless you get a really good mixture of dedicated spots and separate flood lights. But since we're talking HEADLIGHTS the difference in distance in LED vs HID is very apparent. Even my stock halogen high beams throw light farther than even expensive LED pods, when I switched my high beams to LED it cut my light distance by almost half, they SUCKED at distances over 100m, so I switched back to 55w halogen Osram Nightbreakers instead (didn't want the delay of HIDs in my high beams).

Take a look at these lux ratings of LED vs HID both made by the same company (Australian brand Narva)



This is there 17,600 lumen combo lightbar, that's a shitload of lumens and even then at 200m the lux rating is only 5... at 300m it drops to TWO.


Compare to their HID setup:



At 200M the lux rating is 23!! over four times higher than the LED.

At 300m its still rated at 10.... FIVE times higher than the LED.

In conclusion LED is great for lighting up whats right in front of you, for rock crawlers or slow offroading this is great. But for us desert guys that like blasting through trails at 50mph at night we NEED distance and LEDs just don't cut it.

I still like LEDs for shorter distance flood lights though so they do have their uses. My ideal setup would be LED flood ditch lights, radius LED bar up top to lightup the 100m right in front of me... then two lightforce HIDs to see whats down the road.

If you aren't getting exterior lighting my current setup does great: Xenon Depot HID in low beams, Osram nightbreaker halogen high beams, Phillipos LED fog lights (fogs aren't for distance but more for wide angle up close so LEDs still work great there in my opinion). Plus I have the CaliRaised LED bar mounted in my lower valence, but honestly that thing doesn't help with distance my high beams still go much farther... its really good for getting left lane squatters out of the way though

 

PIAA night tech bulbs . Done !

 

agree.

 

I would go with these Philips.

Philips 12834UNIX2 X-tremeVision LED Fog Light, Fits Fog H8, H11, H16, 2 Pack

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U2NHLTI

My question is, how come car LED lights are so expensive and regular home LED light bulbs are $10?
Can anyone answer?

 

I have these exact ones as my fog lights... they match the daytime running light LEDs as close as I could find and do a really good job at lighting up the sides of the road on street use. Plus I've submerged them in water, mud, sand, snow pretty much everything I could put them through and they still work great.

 

20 minutes plug in play is a pain the ass? I see more people scratching their heads trying to squeeze in the LED bulb that's too big and breaking connectors than people having issues installing HIDs.

 

Xenon Depot 5000k
HID only-


HID + XB Fogs-

 

I just installed the Hikari H11 led lights and they look good to me. Compared my lights to another stock 3Gen side by side and looks way better and cleaner white. People talk about light scatter but I did not notice any of that with these LEDs. If your looking for that clean white look and the same performance as stock you won't regret it, I didn't.$.02

 

Morimoto h11 his setup for me with Cali raised fogs. i Love the setup I currently have.

 

Any fitment issues with these?

 

I just installed these HID ballasts last week:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2017-Genuine-HYLUX-A2088-FAST-BRIGHT-CNLIGHT-HID-Conversion-Kit-Round-ball-bulb/282734567993?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

I had the Morimoto ballasts initially, one went out after about 6 months, the other 2 months later. I had no problem getting free replacements shipped, but don't want to keep changing them out so I decided to try something else. I've seen a lot of good reviews on the HYLUX, so we'll see how they hold up.

 

Wow!!! Ok that’s pretty damn nice.

 

Looks great! Glad to see you're enjoying your new lights.

~Robert

 

Check out Headlight Revolution.
Lots of great information/videos on there including the big bulb shootout and Tacoma specific brightness tests. Very good information if you're simply wanting to just switch out the bulbs. LEDs are getting better by the day.

They have Morimoto setups also, which are obviously really good.

I bought the OPT7 bulbs thinking they were great. They came in second to last in their test...oops.

 

Links would be good boss. Thanks, this is great info, but links would help out a lot.

 

Just google search Headlight Revolution.

 

This thread is full of so much garbage mis-information it hurts.

You should not run LEDs in a halogen reflector. Much less a fog halogen reflector, about the worst setup possible. And those photos just illustrate the glare caused by improper lighting upgrades.
Read this: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/

Again, LEDs in halogen reflectors are crap. Especially the popular Opt7s.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/

I have every single LED Tacoma fog/pod. I'll publish a comprehensive review of all available LED options to help determine what is best.

Your household LEDs are steeply subsidized by the govt/utilities as part of making homes more efficient. Buy some high definition (HD, high CRI) LEDs and you will see what the real price is as those are above the subsidization level.

Caliraised does not make fogs. They make pods that are good for off road use only. I have them for testing purposes, the fact that people would attempt to run these as fogs is completely laughable as there is zero cut off or any kind of engineered beam pattern. Your CaliRaised pods should never be run on the street unless as a high beam.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/led-lighting-conversion.436865/page-53#post-16900011

I’ll just leave this here for you and anyone else that thinks they know EVERYTHING

There is a better way of addressing what you believe to be incorrect rather than being a toolbag.