Headlight Replacement Recommendations

Hey y'all, Im chipping away at small mods here and there on my 2019 Taco. Looking to increase brightness/visibility on the headlights. Would different bulbs be enough or should I look at complete headlight replacement? If the latter.. any recos?

 

here we go!!!!

 

Morimoto with amber DRL’s. $300 trade in oem headlights rebate

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-hid-vs-led-vs-halogen-h11-projector-headlights.589465/

TL;DR: LEDs and HIDs are illegal for on road use when used as a replacement in a halogen housing and not in their own dedicated housing. This is because your halogen housings are designed for the size and position of the halogen filament. HIDs and LEDs often don't do a good job replicating this and cause excessive glare and inadequate light throw. However, a few of the better ones are in this thread.

Another thing to remember is that this thread focuses a lot on Lux readings. What it doesn't really address is scotopic light content, which is what we're more sensitive to at night. LEDs have more scotopic light content than halogens starting around color temperature 3500K and above. Most LEDs operate around 5500K. What does it mean? You don't need as much light output for the same perceived light output. So Lux doesn't mean everything.

I have enjoyed my Headlight Revolution S-V.4s as well, which are not in the above linked thread. Also remember that LEDs don't produce heat in the light anywhere near as much as a halogen so that's something to keep in mind for winter.

 

I love my OEM LEDs. If you can find them on sale, they're great.

 

Philips H9 bulbs are the cheapest and easiest upgrade for the headlights (per the thread linked previously), I would try those first and see if it works for you. There is a small green adapter in the bulb connectors that needs to be removed for the H9's to be plug and play, comes out easy with some needle nose pliers.

$11 Philips 12361B1 H9 Standard Halogen Replacement Headlight Bulb, 1 Pack

https://www.amazon.com/Philips-12361B1-Standard-Replacement-Headlight/dp/B003YMPN3A

That was easily the best bang/buck mod I've done to my truck. My initial impression when I installed them and tested them at night was they are approximately the same brightness as the high beams, but retain the standard cutoff so you aren't blinding everyone on the road.

The tradeoff is lower life span than the OEM bulbs, and as they are halogens the output will reduce over time, but for ~$24 for two bulbs that have to be replaced every few years, I don't think there is a better upgrade that you can do to the truck for the cost.

 

@TacoGranny

Thanks very much for this! I'll give this a try first.

 

could these LED’s make the adjustment screws utterly useless? Impossible to adjust, thanks

 

the emitter faces are wider apart (~2mm) than the diameter of a wound filament (~1.5mm) that the reflector is designed for
the adjusters only adjust for horizontal and vertical, the do not reshape the reflector

 

Link to this ?

 

https://www.morimotohid.com/16-amber-tacoma-xb-led-headlights-morimoto?quantity=1

 

This doesn't really affect the adjustment screws and the adjustment screws aren't going to fix filament placement of something that is made differently than a halogen bulb since your adjustment screws will adjust the housing itself and not the bulb.

 

So the new Brock assembly from partsgeek must be no good because the adjustment screws don’t do anything to move the pattern up down left or right. I didn’t wanna spin it too much (if that’s possible) but like 5 full rotations of the adjustments do nothing

 

I didn’t expect the adjustment screws to reshape the reflector I’m pretty dumb I guess but not that dumb , I just thought they should move where the light hits . Hopefully I can return these since I didn’t know not to install LED’s like the company novsight says you can

 

They should be able to move the pattern. But they're not going to fix inadequate or improper light throw and/or glare.