The ultimate headlight upgrade H4 (not LED or HID)

Thank you to Crash for starting this most informative topic, and for answering my PMs about the modifications and other questions that I had.

I performed the modifications last weekend, and am very impressed.

I had been running the stock bulbs (never changed since 2013) in moderatley oxidized assemblies. I had sanded and polished the OEM assemblies, and installed Sylvainia Silverstar Ultras but wanted more. I was preparing to either install LEDs into the housings, or possibly upgrading to the XB Hybrids. Glad I came across this topic.

A couple of questions for those that are still following:

Is it worth using any dielectric grease or similar on the new bulb plugs?

Also when checking the aim of the headlights, is there a trick anyone uses to get a better defined cutoff line. Please excuse my description for being inaccurate, but I used my hand to block the "uplight??" somewhat to help give a better defined cutoff. To my surprise, my lights were quite a bit high. Glad I adjusted before the modification.

 

Dielectric grease is already a good idea, that said I'm not religious about it.

You should be able to see the cut off line very well even with the uplight unless your lights are really badly hazed. When you restored your headlights, did you use a UV stabilizer coating afterward? When sanding you remove what was left of the original UV protective coating which will cause the lights to very rapidly degrade and haze if a new coating was not applied.

 

Had a tube of dielectric grease, but could not find in my mess of a garage. I'll search a little more for it this weekend.

Built an aiming board for use on the concrete pad alongside my house. That is my best bet for 25' of levelness that is devoid of street/parking lot lights. Saw the cutoff well, but did not know if there was a way to get it even more defined.

I used the turtlewax kit to restore my lights. The kit had a 2-stage wipe process after restoration, so I am guessing that was for UV stabilization? I was pleased with the immediate results, but we'll see about longevity. If I have to do again in the spring, I am going to go with the Meguiar's keep clear spray after restoration.

My headlights did not show the typical oxidation pattern. Only the top halves of my lights showed hazing, the lower halves were pristine. One thing is that I live 3 miles away from a major chemical company. On mornings that there is a fog, a nasty odor hangs in the air. I see many newer vehicles in my area that have the clearcoat eaten away.

 

If you’re in Kingsport, you are probably smelling Domtar.

 

Most decent kits come with a UV protective coating, but it isn't permanet. It will wear off like wax on a car. So you just need to remember to reapply a protective coating 1-2x a year. If you maintain the coating you won't need to do the restoration over again.

 

BINGO!

Gotta throw the sewage treatment plant stench as well, but i do not think that that affects the headlights!!!

 

I will probably need to touch up in spring anyways. The passenger assembly did not turn out as well as I could have gotten it.

They had really been needing to be done for about 2 yrs. Wanted to get done for the winter months.

i know you mentioned Meguiar's spray on coating once before. Is there any product that you recommend these days?

 

Use 2k high gloss clearcoat for a nearly permanent highly UV resistant clearcoat. Or, there's a UV curing product called "Litebright" which works well.

 

@crashnburn80 how do you recommend to aim the headlights after doing this upgrade? Now that I'm completed and re-aimed to where my previous lights were, the light seems like it cuts off very soon.

 

Headlight aiming procedure is the same.
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html

You shouldn’t need to re-aim after a bulb change, the cut off should remain at the same location. It isn’t like putting an improper LED in a halogen assembly that fudges the pattern. If you feel the light cuts off very soon it sounds like you aimed too low.

 

I replaced the housings, and aimed the new ones exactly where my Old ones were.

 

Anyone buy from headlightservices recently?

Their mobile site isn’t formatted correctly but when I went on my laptop to add a harness to car it pulled up a PayPal page with a 404 dialogue like the item can’t be purchased.

Sent them an email and heard nothing back.

 

Yeah, I just got my harness from them today, no issues!

 

Am I understanding the article correctly? You need approximately 2.5" of beam drop at 25'?

 

Hey @crashnburn80, quick question. I've been running the harness for quite a while now with the Osram 100W/90W Super Bright bulbs and this setup has been absolutely great. Without going back through pages of content here, is this still the best bulb to use for this setup, or are there other bulb options that would work also? I was looking for something a little "whiter" but not snowwhite or blue. I came across these, https://www.bulbamerica.com/product...p43t-xenon-white-twin-pack-halogen-light-bulb but I'm not sure if they are any good, or if there is something better. My current bulbs are still working and I probably have several months of life left in them, but I want to order some replacements for when they do burn out. Thanks for any additonal help you can provide.

 

@Tacoma13_NC The blue coating on those bulbs will reduce output, I would guess those aren't as good as a fresh new set of Osrams

 

Actually you'd be surprised what methane gas can do. When I maintained a fleet of Chevy square body pickups we were constantly replacing delicate gages that the caustic air born methane gases destroyed.

 

That would depend on the headlight markings, and the height of the center of the headlight from the ground. For my stock 2013, the drop is 2.0" @25'

I built an amiming board to use on my patio. I will post some pictures later, as I want to re-verify my aiming this weekend

 

These "mini projector" LEDs get recommended all the time in the forums/groups I frequent (I come from the 1st gen Tundra/Sequoia world). People seem to be fairly happy with them from a light output standpoint. And I must say the pictures look pretty convincing. If I wasn't a researching maniac and never came across your headlight/fog light threads I probably would have went with them too.
Though now that they've been out for a bit, people are starting to see failures. But because they require removal of the glare shield (which is not reversible) they are stuck replacing their bulbs with the same type of mini projector bulb, as that's all that works with their headlight assemblies now.

Trying to convince people that they aren't worth it is a losing battle too, as the pictures of their light output look decent and the cutoff is pretty good too. I'm sure they are actually an upgrade from old stock hazy halogens, but it would be nice to have data comparing them to the halogen upgrade bulbs.
I would be happy to donate a pair if you're willing to run them through your tests. I even have a set of old headlight assemblies I can clean up and send if you don't want to permanently damage any of yours by removing the glare shield.

 

Welcome to the forum!

As a general principle I try to not spend my time on lighting products that are absolute garbage (like those mentioned) vs lighting products that are working to advance automotive lighting. The amount of absolute trash that people request I review is a lot, and a waste of everyone's time.

Welcome to the information war against crap chinesium and the uneducated masses. Pictures lie unfortunately. The automatic camera will white balance the image to artificially enhance the illuminated area to make it appear brighter, which makes for a great light output photo, because the camera is designed to make a good photo not create an accurate image of lighting. But without measured data a photo is completely worthless. Cut offs are easy, any projector has cut offs. But chances are the cut offs are incorrect and not even compliant, since the lights are required to have uplight and most all low quality chinese projectors products don't have properly engineered uplight and instead use poorly engineered hard cut offs which is not compliant and not equivalent to an OEM lamp.

But let's just say that this was a quality engineered great product for arguments sake. All things being equal, optical performance is related to the size of the reflective housing. For a projector housing to fit though a halogen bulb opening, it is pathetically smaller than any OEM projector reflective housing by a huge margin. Performance by comparison will by abysmal as it just does not have the surface area to create an efficient projector. And then there is the "all things being equal" where OEMs are using highly engineered and precise optics made in Japan and the US by OEM suppliers to OEM specs, but that micro projector that is cut off at the knees before even having a chance with no optics standards leaving the engineering to off-brand garbage chinese alibaba companies claiming they make a better light than OEM despite their every engineering disadvantage... yeah ok.

I very rarely agree to do a review on what is so obviously a bad product. However, in your case I appreciate you wanting to spread knowledge with measured data to other groups. My personal main motivator for all these lighting threads is lighting education based on data. I will absolutely not destroy one of my OEM test headlights to test this product. But here is what I am willing to do. If you can provide me a decent condition OEM 12-15 Tacoma headlight assembly (single) and the LED lighting product in question, I'll put together a comparison/review post. If you are interested shoot me a PM.