2004 Tacoma DC- Headlight Replacement and Upgrade

Yes. They are quite poor.

 

I just read the post before your last one. So in your opinion, why do retrofits (even the $200 Morimoto retrofits on TRFS) allow you to see much better than the stock halogen headlights, even with upgraded bulbs?

I have some Osram bulbs on my stock housings and I've been in vehicles with the $200 H1 retrofits and the retrofits allow you to see much better. Why do you say they aren't good? I'm just trying to understand your point of view.

I get that the quality of the $200 retrofits is pretty low compared to more expensive retrofits, but I can't deny they they still allow you to see much better than stock housings with my Osram bulbs.

 

They don’t. Cheap retrofits will look great in urban environments where high ambient light from street lights and such will negate the need for uplight and the high intensity low beam below the cut off will appear impressive. But as soon as you are somewhere without high ambient light, it is extremely apparent how limiting and short sighted cheap retrofits are, especially at high speed where it is easy to outdrive the headlights because of the faulty beam pattern.

Do you have the HD harness installed with your Osrams?

 

I must have good eyes because I have not experienced that personally.

Nope, just a bulb replacement.

 

The Osrams will be a downgrade from stock without the harness. The OEM wiring is insufficient to provide them with their extreme power needs. Voltage drop is exponential to the power of 3.4 in halogen bulb illumination, without the harness on the Osrams you are causing serious exponential losses to your output. You’d be better off with stock bulbs.

 

There was no recommended harness or anything when I bought them. Literally just the bulbs. I don't remember which ones they were as I bought them around 5 years ago.

 

What type of OEM HID projector should we get with our first gens if they didn't come with them? Would you grab them from a Lexus in a junkyard?

 

If you found the bulbs reference on this site, it definitely stated the harness is required. The headlight thread is 8 years old and one of the most popular halogen headlight threads on the internet. It has always stated the harness is required for any performance gains. The bulbs should last about a year. Bulbs last extra long when voltage and power is greatly reduced by inadequate wiring, which exponentially reduces their output and also significantly increases their bulb life. The fact your bulbs have lasted 5 years either says that you never use the headlights or that the bulbs are so starved of power they are lasting 5x the expected life and producing a small fraction of the expected output.

There are a wide variety of high quality OEM projectors from various makes. The Lexus RX350s are some of the best in a relatively compact platform. No need to climb though a junk yard, though that could be one approach. Many retrofit suppliers sell the Lexus OEM projectors, including TRS:
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/bi-xenon-lexus-rx350

If you'd like to see some RX350 retro testing using TRS/Morimoto bulbs and ballasts vs OEM grade components, check out post #5502. Both sets of components were run in RX350 OEM projectors retro'd into 3rd Gen assemblies.

 

i've never personally had retrofits, but i can say, their output in the middle of nowhere sucks in my friends cars running morimotos.. my tundra and 95 taco running the headlight solutions harness and 100w halogens destroys them in output

 

I never seen or heard of your thread until today. I bought the Osram because it was referred to me from a friend that had them on a car some years back. They did look better than stock, by a small margin. At the the time I didn't feel like they were a huge upgrade. You're right though, I didn't use them for 5 years straight, I had retrofits that I most recently took off for personal reasons. I don't know the specifics of the retrofits but they're not the cheap $200 Morimotos we were talking about. Going from those to these halogen headlights definitely feels like a major downgrade.

All in all, I'm down to try out your setup. I'll look into your thread and see how good I can get these Osram to look. If I feel it's not as good, I'll chime in to those wondering if all the extra work is not worth it and to just do the $200 retrofit.