The ultimate headlight upgrade H4 (not LED or HID)

Crashnburn80

I would like to do the ultimate headlight and fog light upgrades to a Tundra, do the same bulbs/harnesses work or would I have to do something else.

 

Welcome to TW! If your truck is a 2018 or older which takes H4s then yes, this mod with the harness and bulbs will work on the Tundra.

 

warm is good. The drive to work is dark and often foggy and the highway in black top.

 

A few questions...

I need new headlights for my 2011 Tacoma. Mine are hazed, and the lenses are also cracking. Do any of the aftermarket headlight assemblies actually put out more light? I see some dual bulb projector kits on various websites. Are they any better that OEM? I want to avoid OEM if possible, not because of the price, but the OEM lights are not all that good, and I'm afraid they will haze, crack again. I think lights with polycarbonate lenses hold up better, and they won't crack anyway. If OEM style is the way to go, are there any aftermarket lights with polycarbonate lenses that are good quality?

As far as bulbs with higher output, are there any without that idiotic blue coating? Most high output that I can find have the blue. I'm kind of afraid to try the Osram high wattage, as they aren't street legal, and my state does require annual inspection. If I can get much better than OEM output from bulbs with the blue coatings, I'm open to suggestions. I notice many aftermarket light assemblies, and bulbs have a lot negative ratings from those who have purchased them. After what I've read here, and on Daniel Stern's website, I know to avoid LED, or HID in OEM light assemblies.

I would certainly appreciate any advice forum members can give me. Thanks for your help! Also, thanks to Crashnburn80 for all the info about lighting.

 

No, they will project less. No aftermarket assemblies have precision optics like OEM.

No, they are much worse, typically the worst of the aftermarket as they are marketing to people who are buying for looks. Also larger reflectors far outperform smaller ones, the 2nd Gen reflectors are massive. Going to a small secondary reflector for high beam will perform poorly by comparison. And the low beam projectors are typically extremely poor quality, even on the expensive aftermarket lights.

You are likely running the defective OEM lights, the 2005-2011 lights had melting and cracking issues. Toyota issued a TSB and provided free headlight replacement with the new updated design which had fixed the issue. Unfortunately the free replacement period ended a while ago. There are 2 versions of the updated TSB lights, bright chrome and smoked chrome. I linked the TSB smoked chrome in the thread. I copied and pasted here:

OEM 2005-2011 smoked headlights:
These are like the Pro lights, but came on select Sport models. These are available loaded with bulbs, and unloaded w/o bulbs, saving $60 off the set . These part numbers are for the unloaded housings. These are the updated TSB version of the lights that do not have the melting DRL issue.
Right #81130-04173
Left #81170-04173

OEM lights are going to have the best UV stabilization of all lights, aftermarket is far worse. You can use UV stabilizing headlight coating products to further extend the lifespan, such as

$14 Meguiar's G17804 Keep Clear Headlight Coating - 4 Oz Spray

this one by Meguiars.

Real performance bulbs are not blue coated, blue coatings reduce output as well as bulb life. Blue bulbs like Sylvania Silverstar have very misleading advertising. For excellent performing stock wattage H4 bulbs, check out either:

GE Lighting H4 NHX/BP2 Nighthawk Xenon Replacement Headlight Bulb, 2-Pack

GE Nighthawk Xenon +120
GE Megalight +120

The Megalights are cheaper, but have to ship from Europe and will have long delivery lead time, whereas the Xenons are available domestically.

Note that performance bulbs have much shorter life. This typically leads to poor reviews/ratings by people that do not understand how the products work. You will find people say things like the stock bulbs where in my car for 7 years, and these bulbs didn't even last a year! And give the product a very poor rating, so don't put too much weight on reviews from the masses for bulbs.

Yep!

 

I believe the melting/cracking issue was for the inner turn signal lens and not the outer lens. I think it was also experienced by anyone where that bulb was also the DTRL.



Most OEM headlamps eventually haze over. Best thing to do is put some sort of protectant on them periodically.

 

I don't have the DTRL. My outer clear lens is hazed, and has hairline cracks. I have been using Zaino "plastic magic" on them, which has worked well on other vehicles I've owned. These are the first headlight assemblies that I've had do this. The 2003 Tundra that I had previously didn't have this problem, and it was outside all the time too. I did have to replace one light in a '94 Dodge Ram, but only because it had cracked somewhere, and got water in it. It wasn't hazed, nor was the lens cracked. I know not to use petroleum based products, or cleaners with ammonia on plastic. I don't know why these headlights have failed this way.

@ crashnburn80, I may try the GE Nighthawk Zenon. I wonder if I would get by on the inspection (or the police) if I got some of the high wattage bulbs? Also, according to the website the links point to for the OEM lights, the part numbers have been changed. That's not a bad price for the housings without any bulbs. Maybe I just go with the Nighthawk Zenon's, and if I'm not satisfied with them, I'll see about the high watt bulbs later.

I notice that most of the list of "currently the highest performing stock wattage bulbs on the market" are all much cheaper that the Nighthawk Zenons. I'm now even more confused??? Which are the best, the Nighthawk Zenons, or some of the other bulbs from that list?

My sincere thanks for all the advice, and info!

 

I'm not familiar with that plastic cleaner/polish, but googling it right on the front it says a "custom blend of plastic cleaners and mild abrasives". Abrasives remove the UV headlight coating causing rapid UV breakdown. While you might of had success on it with other vehicles, I would not recommend anything with abrasives in it for the headlights unless you are doing a restoration and then re-coating them in a UV stabilizer afterward. Going forward I would look at using products specifically marketed to preserve headlights, like the Meguiars one I linked earlier or similar.

The only way an inspector would notice your bulbs is if they physically removed them to see the wattage stamp, or happen to see the stamp through the headlight lens, or they measured the output. Color temp and pattern look exactly like stock, so there really isn't any 'red flags' to call attention to them, especially during the day time.

I know I've been promising it for a while, but I'll test and compare them all side-by-side to give a data backed answer to that question. I did that for 3rd Gen, and you can see the results in post #2 here:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...11-projector-headlights.589465/#post-19689309

You'll notice the GE Xenon +120 did the best save the Philips H9s, which are higher wattage. You can see in that post that the GE +130s are a close 2nd, and they are quite a bit cheaper. However, in an H4 the +130 cover the high beam filament with a blue coating reducing high beam performance. The +120s are the highest performing bulb that do not reduce high beam performance and GE seems to have better low beam performance with smaller more precise filaments than the competition. However the trade off for the great performance is the GEs also have the lowest bulb life.

 

Just ordered the Headlight Services Harness http://www.headlightservices.com/Wiring.html and the Osram 100/90 bulbs https://www.powerbulbs.com/us/product/osram-super-bright-premium-h4

 

Just finished this on my truck. Thank you so much for the good write up. I was about to make a mistake and go with some aftermarket stuff. It's amazing what just replacing the headlamp assembly can do! Thanks for linking the parts to make it easy.

Right now, I just kept the OEM wattage because I want to see how those do before upgrading the wire harness, etc. Really happy with the new OEM smoked headlamps though.

 

Looks really clean and sharp! You could throw in the GE Xenon +120s for a good bump in output at stock wattage.

 

The 2nd Gen lights are mounted!




Still need my high power leads for the space station power supplies, so I’m limited to stockish wattage till they arrive.

 

Training.

 

He needs his own white Lab coat at the very least if he is going to run instrumentation.

 

I like where your head is at. Looks like Amazon can get it here Monday for about $13.

 

I dug into my fog light to see if I could fix the flickering. There was a lot of corrosion on the connector and I think that is the culprit. Is that worth cleaning, normal wear and tear, or toast?

 

I had to keep replacing my passenger side connector on my Tacoma. Cleaning up the corrosion was only a short term fix.

 

Nope, it's toast. The factory connector is broken under all that corrosion. Frack.

 

A 9005 socket is the same as the H10/9145 socket.