Morimoto XB LED Headlights for 2nd Gen Tacos!

Exactly. That jagged notched middle in the beam cutoff is a real annoyance when driving down the road. The rest of the area being lit up is decent enough, although not great, but I'm having a hard time getting used to that middle part. The housing itself seems to be good quality and I'm overall pleased with them, but long-term is still up in the air due to this issue.

 

It annoyed the hell out of me at first, after a month or 2, you won't notice. My other suggestion which helped is to upgrade your fogs to the Diode Dynamics Elite Fog, they are really bright...aim a little up to match the beam pattern of your headlights and it will really help wash out the cutoff lights....it smooths out the light in the beam pattern
See my post here.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/what-are-good-headlights-for-2nd-gen.831222/#post-29794000

 

Just installed mine today. I had an arb single compressor on a slee mount in my engine bay, and had to remove it because the passenger side light wouldn’t fit with the compressor mounted. Anyone run into this issue? Or have an idea for a solution?

 

Wish they made them for gen 2.0

Very few options that look decent.

 

Updated - work is complete and wanted to write up the details as they are a bit hard to follow in the posts in this thread. ALL info came from @Fixxxer and @caribe makaira - so all credit goes to them.

Let's begin:

Step 1 - buy and install the Morimoto XB lights with DRLs. Go ahead and fully install them per their instructions, up to and including running their DRL 12v power light into the cab of the truck through the firewall grommet. Installing the headlights was a bit of a pain - so carve out an evening to do this and get the lights all aimed and stuff when you are done. May as well tap the fuse box and see the DRLs working before you start cutting everything up. My guess is you already bought them, already installed them, and already realized the DRL on the factory headlight controls didn't work before you came to this thread.

Step 2 - Order the rest of the parts for this install. You need a harness clip (several options) and a relay (2 options)

• Harness Clip / Terminals / Wire:
  • OEM Option:
    • I called up Toyota and asked for part 90980-10802. They quoted me $19.20 before tax. This harness has NO metal terminals or wire pigtails coming out of it - just a piece of useless plastic. If you want to go this route, you will need to order terminals and grab some wire if you don't have a garage full of remnants of all your old projects laying around. You need 5 terminals (but buy extras because they are fragile and if you aren't used to crimping these delicate things - easy to damage or mangle slightly and they don't slide into the plastic housing of the clip. You should really have special tools for crimping these too - not you standard wire crimper. Built a motorcycle harness once and had all these tools laying around - but alas.
    • Terminals - According to @caribe makaira - you need 2.3ii/090 terminals. These are the MALE terminal side. They also can be called 2.3mm2 (where the 2 is an exponent for squared). These are all over the internet but I can't find one that exactly matches the OEM Tacoma clip retention. Maybe these would work with the OEM harness?
    • I ended up not going this route in the end.
  • Non OEM Option:
    • You can buy a generic version of the same clip but won't find it by that part number - requires some internet sleuthing. The bonus of finding a place that sells the generic is they probably also sell the terminals to match (I found these mostly on electronics parts websites). Here's an example of a matched set of harness clips with the matching terminals for $13 if you are willing to order from AliExpress
    • I ended up not going this route in the end.
  • Amazon Special:
    • Found some TW post about something else where someone had found a 12pin splitter harness with terminals and wires on Amazon and just cut it for their use. The links on Amazon are always changing - so I will put the
      $16 One Male to Two Female 12Pin Wire Harness Compatible with Toyota Factory Audio Stereo
      link here but you need to search through Amazon and find whatever company is selling something that looks like this today
    • This gives you both options listed in the posts above - you can replace the BECU harness with a single new part and leave the old one dangling or you can use this as a non-OEM part that goes between the factory connectors allowing you to cut on wires that are not factory - leaving you OEM harness intact
    • On the right in the photo, there are two clips that are the same. Cut one of these off and leave yourself half the wire it came with. Carefully match this up to the images shared by @caribe makaira and you can make the jumper harness:
    • Just leave wires on 1 and 2, 11 and 12 - then strip the ends and put a terminal crimp on them. Those pairs are now 'jumper-ed'. I used these closed end crimp terminals for the job.
    • Make sure you have the wire that corresponds to 10 (this is the ground circuit signal that comes from your headlight controls in the DRL position). You will need this to activate a relay in the next steps. On this - I put a male insulated 1/4" disconnect (link)
• Relay:
  • OEM Style Small Relay (if you plan to use an open space in your engine bay fuse box like in this photo in the bottom right spot reserved for "heated seats" according to my diagram)
    
    • Relay: Can find Amazon
      $12 90987-02027 156700-2870 Relay 4 pcs 12V 4 pin Multi Relay Compatible with Toyota AVALON COROLLA CAMRY TUNDRA TACOMA RAV4 4RUNNER PRIUS Compatible with LEXUS RX350 IS300 GX460 90080-87026 90987-02028
      knock offs, can call Toyota and get a matching one to an OEM, can find generic alternatives - here is a link to Summit Racing for an example
    • Terminals for Relay: 2x 1/4" and 2x 3/16" worked for me. Remove the plastic insulation off these if it has any - these need to slide into the back of the fuse box.
    • Fused wire pigtail (similar to this although there are many options/variants). I have a Blue Sea fuse panel under hood on my PowerTray so I just ran a wire to this and tossed a 10amp fuse in the slot
      
  • Standard 12v Relay (if you just want to mount to side of engine bay firewall or wherever).
    • any 4 pin 12v relay and corresponding housing should in theory be able to do the same thing - you'll need to find one and make sure you can get the proper wires mapped to the proper relays pin out locations.
• Parts Summary:
  • Connecting the factory DRL to the Morimoto DRL line:
    • 1/4" insulated female connector appropriate for 22-18 awg: qty 1
    • 1/4" insulated male connector appropriate for 22-18 awg: qty 1
    • Harness/Terminals/Wire to connect to the BECU without cutting into your factory harness
  • Adding Relay under hood:
    • Relay
    • appropriate connectors for relay (if using a factory relay spot) or a relay/relay mount set if using a generic one
    • Fuse to add in line
    • Fuse tap suited to your underhood fuse panel
  • Assorted wire connectors and some scraps of wire

Installation:

1. Install Morimoto headlights
2. Inside truck cab, remove the coin tray at driver side door. Remove the coin tray on other side of steering column - both just pull out with clips. Remove the plastic surrounding the steering column - there are two 10mm bolts I believe - then it just pops out. Remove the metal brace under the steering column with 2 10mm bolts. Remove the BECU bolts and nuts (the fuse panel - that's what this is going to look like). Think it is 3 or 4 bolts and 2 nuts, all 10mm. Disconnect the harness clips on the BECU so it can wiggle freely a bit - that will get you just enough play to lay on your back and look behind it to see the clip you will be replacing. it is on the very bottom, just behind where the OBD2 port. I also popped the port out and moved it and was later able to access without detaching everything. Unclip the harness that is on the BECU (has only the three wires coming out (blue, yellow, and red/green) - and tape it up out of the way - that is no longer in use for this install. Attach your new harness piece with the 2 jumpers and the 5th wire with a connector on it ready to go
3. Cut off the fuse tap end of the Morimoto DRL wire that was run into the cab during headlight install. You will put a connector on the end instead to correspond with the 5th wire of the harness you built. Connect those, zip tie and tidy things up, reinstall all your BECU connections and dashboard trim pieces - you are done in the cab.
4. Under the hood - you will trace the Morimoto DRL wire (red wire in black sheathing for my install kit) back to roughly where you want to put your relay. Plan this out a little so when you cut the Morimoto wire here you leave enough slack to get your connections to the relay. If you don't have it - you will just need to add wire (of the same gauge for the load bearing side to the DRL themselves) and heat shrink and insulate all that. Cut the wire - this one wire now has two different purposes. The side coming from the cab (and connected to your new harness) is actually not a signal - it is a ground that gets activated when it is turned on. This is now the "from cab DRL" wire. The other side is the 12v load needed to power the driving lights. This is now the "to DRL" wire. Two other wires are needed to complete the relay - both are 12v. One needs to be on only when the car is on (I chose IGN over ACC because it was available in the fuse panel under the hood). You want these lights to turn off when your key isn't turned or they will just always stay on and kill your battery like the old days where you had to remember to turn off your headlights. I used a fuse tap to an EFI fuse (feel free to explore other options - this one was already installed for the Switch Pros and I just tapped it for this use case too). What you are looking for is a circuit that is hot while the car is running. Suppose you could go seek out an ACC spot too but those tend to be back inside the cab in the BECU. Once you have this done and fuse tap in, call this "IGN 12v" wire. Finally - run a 12v fused line to the battery and connect it - this should have the same size fuse the Morimoto DRL fuse tap came with.
5. Installing the relay:
   1. Relays use a signal to activate an internal switch and are useful to use grounds or low power signals to activate a higher amperage circuit. The way this one works is the two smaller (3/16") terminals on the OEM type relay are connected to "IGN 12v" and "from cab DRL". When the circuit is powered (meaning the engine is running for EFI fuse) AND the headlight control is put in the DRL position, this creates a circuit for the 12v power to flow from the "IGN 12v" to the now completed ground via "from cab DRL". That is what flips the relay switch and will hold it on until that circuit is broken. To break that circuit, either turn off the engine (EFI likes to keep going for a few seconds after shut down) or change the position of the headlight controls. This breaks the circuit and turns off the switch - thus disconnected the power source from the headlights. The other two (1/4") positions on the relay are the 12v load - so one side will be the "IGN 12v" and the other will be the "to DRL". Get your wires dressed up, get the proper terminals/female spade connectors on them, and test it out.
   2. Note - engine must be running for EFI circuit. I was testing this in ACC and nothing was happening until I had my idiot realization moment. Heard that parking brake must be off for this to work - but that is not the case for me. This works with or without the parking brake. Remember to check the connection of that wire connector in the cab if you have issues - if that didn't get connected, you won't get the ground circuit from the DRL position of the headlight switch.
   3. Most relays say what pins are what - but the tiny ones don't - so I referenced this image to make sure I had things correct:
   4. If you are installing in the fuse box, route your wires first, then install your relay (you will need to freely access the back of the board you are installing the relay in - so get that loosened up), and put the wires with their 1/4" and 3"16" female spade bits into the openings. Look how the other relays have those positioned as there is a proper orientation. I used a small flathead screwdriver to help me get them seated onto the pins of the relay.
   5. Test it all out, tidy up, reassemble the fuse box.
   6. Fin

So yea again - this is all from what other members posted, but I found the various threads and paging through the forum to be a bit annoying so here it is all in one place with links to things and steps to install. Took me about 2 hours but I was doing something dumb - after realizing that, could have shaved an hour off. It was also 90 degrees out when I was working so I kept going inside to do anything I could away from the truck. I suspect you could get this down to 30 minutes if you had everything ready to go.

Final note - the only modifications I made to anything OEM was to disconnect a harness and tuck it away and out of use as well as add a relay to an open relay spot. Both of these are reversible. The two changes I made to the Morimoto kit was to cut their 12v DRL line in two places (once in the cab to tap the DRL ground circuit signal from the harness) and once in the engine bay to split that into two different circuits. You could have easily ran a new wire from the cab to the relay, and kept all the Morimoto stuff intact and coiled up if you chose to.

When I installed the headlights - my first thought was "if I could find the DRL signal, I could use a relay to make this work" - and this thread saved me the hassle of having to find the DRL signal along with a number of helpful hints to make it faster.