Changing Out TRD Pro Headlights for Aftermarket?

I’ve seen trd pros on Instagram swap for alpharex for fancy light shows and amber drl

 

I do like the amber drl's.

 

I would need to get behind the wheel of an OEM-LED-equipped Tacoma to know for sure, but its quite possible I'd be another one to do that too (OEM LEDs to OEM halogens).
I say that only because I've yet to come across an LED offroad light that performs at distance as well as a quality halogen or HID light does (talking Hella 4000 or similar). Most LEDs have a very intense output of blue light, which makes them look impressively bright up close, but offers little light reflection in the distance (not to mention renders colors poorly). If the OEM Tacoma LEDs are less bluish than aftermarket offerings, then maybe I'd be OK with them.

 

some of you folks forget that LED’s barely create any heat thus cannot melt snow..

 

I am not sure if they were aftermarket or just the TRD halogens, but I have made 4 harnesses for people to downgrade, so I know it’s been done at least 4 times.

 

I love that part of the lights, the turn signals have some serious output!

 

Have you seen these threads?

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2023-trd-or-–-oem-led-headlights.788685/#post-28231925

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

That's what the ss3 max fogs and ss3 pro ditch lights are for.

 

Ah, Ah, Ahhhh…. It’s a yes or no question and also Friday. Move token back 3 spaces and lose a turn, sir.

 

I have seen your 2nd link before.

I don't doubt one bit that the optics of the OEM LEDs are excellent, my issue is the color temperature (CCT) LED chips most manufacturers use for vehicle lighting (5000-6500°K). It's too bluish for best distance penetration. The spike in blue light at these CCTs causes more glare than I like. I've put my Hella 4000 halogen lights against many LED bars and lights, and have yet to see one that pierced through the distance half as well as the Hellas do (a 4500K HID is the only thing that has done better, but HID also brings radio static interference, so I stick with halogen for that reason).

I am in agreement the OEM halogen low-beams are mediocre (the H9 swap helps), but the high beams are probably best OEM lights I've had on any vehicle.

 

Go directly to jail ... do not pass Go ... do not collect $200

 

When I first put the OEM LED assemblies in my 2018 Tacoma on New Year's Day 2020, I measured them with my Sekonic C-700U meter and the color temp then was about 6800K. Four years later after some use, but not as much as you'd think, they've settled in at around 6200K. They don't have a spike in blue as much as they're slightly deficient in the R9 red band which is very common in automotive lighting but has little if any effect on night time color perception. Through your eyes' own automatic white point adaptation, after you're using them for a few minutes, you eyes will adapt to that light and they just feel normal. What you will see is the difference in the color of the various headlights of oncoming traffic but the overall color rendition just feels like you're looking at daylight.

Proper headlight aim is critical with these lights, and they're more difficult to aim than the factory halogens because the beam cutoff is not as distinct in the LED's, but when you get it right, you experience an extremely smooth light pattern which is wider and far smoother in terms of hot spots than the halogens and let you see effectively much farther down the road. When you add the high beam to that, it's more like the high beam pattern fills in and greatly extends the center of the low beam in such a smooth manner that you're not really aware that there are high beam and low beams on at the same time. It's just one smooth effective swath of iight where the foreground is not over lit. This was particularly evident on a trip from L.A. out to the Salton Sea a couple of years ago in the parts or CA111 South where it was quite dark with very few city lights anywhere near and no street lights and very little traffic in either direction, so you could use the high beams for fairly long stretches.

What I found is that it was the single most effective headlight I've ever used on any vehicle and even driving at night you would not be over driving your headlights at 75 mph. And because the low beam portion, which of course stays on with the high beams, have an extended output about 30 degrees to the left and right, that really opens up that area for anything potentially coming in from the sides a quarter mile up. Truly magnificent lights. I used to run those old Cibié 5-3/4" H1 pencil beams back in the day on various vehicles. Still have a couple laying around. Are those brighter? I'm sure they are, but how much light do you really need and how fast are you really going to drive at night. I've been a headlight junkie since the mid 1970's and these are it for me.

I'm also a long time commercial photographer (why I have the Sekonic meter) who is extremely sensitive to light and lighting and I have not found these lights to be in the least bit fatiguing at night. In fact, coming home last August from Lee Vining and going over the Sierras to miss the brunt of the hurricane coming up from L.A. about six hours of that ten hour drive were in the dark and in the rain. As others have mentioned, probably the only time I might have a second thought about these would be if I lived in heavy snow environment. But I have not heard of any complaints of lack of distance efficacy for these LED high beams.

 

The LEDs on my PRO are as good if not better than the HIDs on my wife's Mercedes with projector and adaptive HIDs. We've taken trips with both vehicles to the dark Texas Hill Country and are impressed by both.

 

That is the silliest argument against LED lights.

Unless I live in a region where it's dark and snowy for the majority of my driving the LED lights are going to be a better choice.

 

Appreciate your responses.
Its the 6800°K (6200°K) / LED red light deficiency thing that gives me pause... I dunno, it just looks "off" to my eyes, even after a half-hour or more. I've toyed around with LED chips in the 3500-4200K region and found those to be a lot better compared to the higher CCT ones (more red-yellow light/less blue light). I'm open to the possibility though there's something else I'm not aware of since I haven't yet been behind a set of Tacoma LEDs. I have driven a Camry with OEM LEDs (I know, different) and thought they were certainly adequate, but they still didn't impress me as much as when I hit the brights on my '18 Tacoma for the first time (That felt more like daylight... to the point I almost thought 'Do I even need auxiliary offroad lights on this thing?' I'm putting them on anyway though )

Great discussion, BTW.

 

I don't think the red R9 deficiency is an issue for driving. It is for photography and video especially when you're looking at human faces which are predominately red or reddish in color, and just having an LED with a lower Kelvin rating does not address that. I have a couple of LED panels in my photo studio that are adjustable for Kelvin and luminance, and maintain their CRI 98 readings and actually exceed the manufacturer's claims in a good way and still have a slight R9 drop even at the low end of the Kelvin range.

I should probably take a color temperature reading after my lights have been on for an hour and see what that yields. I know that the drop in Kelvin after using them for a few years was not something that was noticeably to my eyes, and I'm probably one of the more sensitive people to color you're gonna run into. When we still had color labs in L.A. and people processed film, a couple of them had my number on their wall to call me when they had color issues they couldn't figure out. I was initially worried about the color temperature and the overall CRI before I upgraded, and even took my Sekonic to a dealer and measured one of their trucks to get an idea, which is probably what gave me pause, but in the end, any worries I had were for naught and what happened with me was that I pretty much fully adapted to the new lights within a few minutes of using them, and the darker the road was, the better the lights performed. Would they be even better with better chips? Maybe, but this is what we've got. Could it be that your particular set of eyes just don't jive with these lights? Yep, but there's only one way to find out and for me, the $1500 I spent to do the upgrade was, in the end, the least expensive safety upgrade with the biggest bang for the buck.

When we were shopping for a new car for my gf four and a half years ago, and were looking at RAV4 type of cars from Toyota, Mazda, Honda and Subaru, headlight performance was a definite and deciding factor and the 2020 RAV4 LED's were simply awful and that alone pushed us into the Forester whose factory LED's are projectors and have performance virtually equal to the Tacoma headlights. She could not be happier, and if she's happy, so am I.

Another factor that is rarely discussed is that most people lose a lot of their night vision as they age, and since people are generally living longer and staying active longer and driving older and older, having good lighting all around makes it safer for everyone, but that night time degradation is not uniform and it's clear to me that my gf's night vision is far inferior to my own where she just doesn't see as well at night as I do. That she survived driving a 2005 Nissan Sentra that had probably the worst factory headlights I have ever seen, is some kind of miracle, even though the CRI on those crappy lights would have been close to 99.

Last note. The absolute best performing LED chip I have ever measured - and you end up measuring a lot of lights when you first get your Sekonic - was the tiny LED on the back of my iPhone. CRI of 99 with no red deficiency and just beautiful, but obviously, not a very good headlight. I'm guessing that that quality chip exists for the headlights but to put seven of them in each unit would be prohibitively expensive. Maybe that will change over time as better technology tends to be less expensive over time. While there's always room for improvement, we're also in the best place in history, overall, for vehicle lighting.

 

You make some good points. You're probably right about people's eyes being different. Unfortunately the ones I have I can't change. So I just have to use what works best for them.

BTW, I could tell the camera LEDs on phones were something of exceptional quality just by looking at them. I'd love to swap one of those into an LED flashlight.


Anyway I guess we pretty much hijacked BigJanko's thread, huh... ? Alright, back to our regularly-scheduled banter. Oh wait... It isn't Friday anymore. Hmmm...

 

yea no sh*t.. it doesn't snow everywhere in the US.