Headlight bulb out... what replacement bulb kicks @ss?

PIAA Night tech

 

Hi, I recently put these in. I'm happy with their performance. HELLA H4 Yellow-60/55W YL Xtreme Yellow Bulbs, 12V, 60/55W, 2 Pack

 

Yes, terrible scatter. They literally took one of the best OEM headlight patterns I've ever seen and pretty well destroyed it.

 

Thiat also doesn’t even begin to talk about projection efficiency, which LEDs do terribly. So you can easily get a closer reading showing higher lux, but they cannot carry the beam intensity so it rapidly falls off.

It is a bit of a long read, but take a look at this thread to better understand why LEDs are so fundamentally flawed for a halogen housing, with measured results.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-hid-vs-led-vs-halogen-h11-projector-headlights.589465/

And LEDs will still cause scatter, offsetting the chips from center which has to be done in LED construction causes the scatter.

 

As I am driving more with this setup there is a down side. When you change from low to high and the low stays on, it keeps your eyes focused on the brightest area of light, the low beam area. With the stock setup, the low turns off as the high turns on, this makes you look farther out to where the brightest light is. The mod does allow a greater light output, but it keeps your eyes from going farther down the road.

I really just wanted to keep the fogs on with high beam, so I might look into the alternative fog light mod. I do want the fog lights to go off with the headlights though.

 

Absolutely agree with the first paragraph of your post. And there's a good deal of science to back that point up. What I'm struggling with though is your desire to run your fog beams with your high beams. True fog beams only illuminate a short distance out in front of a vehicle and more out to the sides. That said, running fog beams with any kind of longer distance beams should cause the same problem.

 

@crashnburn80 I wanted to pick your brain since you seem to be knowledgeable on the fact.

In summary, I installed a set of Philips X-tremeVision +130% on my 2007 and now my automatic light function no longer seems to work.

When I shut off the truck and lock the doors, the lights stay on. A few times now I've left them on accidently most of the night.

Any idea why they don't shut themselves off anymore when the door is shut and locked?

 

Your bulb swap is unrelated, the bulbs themselves will draw very similar if not the same current from the truck meaning your truck doesn’t know the difference. Your lights should turn off when you open the door after the truck is off. If they don’t my fist suspect would be the door switch in the door jam. Does your dome light work when you open the driver door?

 

I’ll also cross-quote this great point from @Muddinfun here, as another possibility.

 

I do agree with both points. Originally when I first "discovered" the feature, I had messed around with turning the lights on and off to see if it would affect the auto mode and as @Muddinfun mentioned, it did.

My camry has the auto function built into the stalk with sensors for the lights so it's a little different than the Tacoma.

@crashnburn80 Again tonight no luck as the lights stayed on, so I took your advice and messed around with the door light switch. You were right, the dome lights stopped coming on. So I pushed the button a few times and the headlights shut off and the dome lights came on.

Now my follow up question, is there a way to fix the door switch button? Or replace? I compared it to my camry which have the same buttons and the camry's is in better shape than the Tacoma.

 

First try just cleaning the contacts on the switch, which may require removal. If the contacts are dirty it may block the signal. If that doesn’t work then replace.

 

Appreciate the advice! Ill take a look this week when we get some warm weather. Nice to know the solution either way!