'23 Tacoma SR Headlight Solution

Going to try and get this done this weekend now that I have everything at hand.

 

EDIT: Got it, I was just being too careful. The trick was to pull it backwards and toward the bottom and it came right out.

 

Pull it out towards yourself from bottom of the grill? Lol I’m not mechanically inclined and I’m changing the grill this week on my brand new sr5.

 

Got through that part thankfully. Now the next challenge. Every video I've watched has a plastic trim piece by the wheel well. This does not exist on my SR haha.

What's the best way to separate this part of the bumper?

 

Bumper separation should be the same on your truck once the screws are removed.

 

Made some progress, I ended up taking out the entire bumper. Now I've got everything hooked up. I cannot seem to get the low beams to work, however the high beams do work. I imagine the cluster on the right is the low beam on the new light housing. There's really no wrong way to wire the harness other than swapping the high and low beams. I don't imagine this is normal?

 

I mentioned in the SR thread. Polarity can be done wrong on the H9 connectors.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/sr-sr5-oem-led-headlight-harness-v2.736263/page-5#post-28592843

 

That was it, I thought I really made sure the colors matched but I just looked and the lows were reversed. The red was swapped. I believe I am set to do the passenger side now.

 

The new headlight looks so much cooler, even with the truck in pieces. Now I gotta get some. My wallet hates this place.

 

Just a suggestion I would put multiple layers of wide painters Tape on the complete Face of the New Headlights before remounting the bumper and grille.

 

10-4! Great suggestion. Almost done mounting the passenger side, gonna do a quick test and start taping. Definitely dont want to scratch or dent these beauties.

 

Yeah if the bumper doesn’t play nice going back on and you don’t have an extra set of hands to help out it’s a good practice to Tape them off.

 

Y'all.. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. The truck looks eons better. This was worth all the pain and then some.

One last question, if everything is working as intended, do I need to use the resistors?

If not, should I weather seal their connections in the harness?

Really appreciate everyone's help here. While I was doing this by myself I felt like I had a lifeline here. Thanks for being patient with my not so bright questions.

Last thing, because I was wondering this myself. DRL mode currently doesn't do anything anymore. I have to put the stalk in the accessory mode to get them to work. I am assuming this is intended behavior.

 

No, don't add resistance unless you need to.

You could potentially tape or heat shrink over them but that's really overkill since they already are a weather resistant connection and they don't carry signals. I don't think anyone else has done anything to seal them off.

Since you posted one photo of parking lights which indicates the DRL signal is present, the signal appears to come through. Note that with the SR harness it takes about 1s worth of delay before DRL activates after turns/hazards. Other things which apply to anyone troubleshooting DRL:

1. Ignition must be on
2. Parking brake must be released (you can re-set after dropping it)
3. DRL must be enabled in head unit settings

Presumably if you had DRL before then 3 is not the issue but always worth double checking.

Likely given the questions posed previously you simply don't know about the magic parking brake bit?

 

Did you try it with the engine running? Because they won't come on with just the key on. Ask me how I know.

 

You sir are right on the money. You know what it was? The damn parking brake. I just have a habit of always yanking that thing when I park, it's like muscle memory. But it behaved exactly as you described, the hazards came on, flashed once, turned off, a second later the halos came on. I didn't have to touch anything.

That was the second piece of the puzzle haha, I was testing with the car parked, off and parking brake engaged. Complete user error but today I learned so much it's fantastic. I will be ready to rock and roll when it comes time to install some fog lights on this thing, not going to bother with the stalk, just a clean switch in the dash on my left side would be solid. Already got cargo light harness for that project.

This was a huge success, beyond happy with the investment and the effort it took. Couldn't have done it without Dave's magical harness. Appreciate yall!