Proper headlight upgrade

I have DRL's on my 01, can I still use that harness if I disable them?

 

Actually sorry after rereading some of this thread and refreshing my memory, if you have DRLs it will most likely be a conventionally switched harness not ground switched. Follow the testing procedure in crashnburn80s thread to confirm. It is recommended to disable the DRLs because they run the high beam on a very low output which will shorten the bulb life. With higher wattage bulbs this makes the life even shorter.

 

So I am on the fence on the bulb/wiring harness upgrade or doing a projector retrofit. Last night I did a test out in the desert with Osram's OEM bulbs and the 100/90W bulbs. I'm still using stock wiring and the lenses are pretty clear, I'd say at least 90% of looking new. Here are the results. The 90W bulbs are a little brighter but I'm not blown away. There was a full moon out so I don't know how much that would affect things. I'm sure the harness upgrade will make the lights brighter but I assume it would be proportionally.

 

I hardlly see a difference in those pictures, you should have a much more noticeable difference between the 100W bulbs and stock bulbs.

 

The 100/90w bulbs will not be much better than stock without the wiring harness. Stock wiring will not provide sufficient voltage for them to preterm, so without the harness the bulbs are worthless. And you risk melting your connectors with the high beam. Several have tried bulbs alone first. It doesn’t work, then we’re significantly impressed once they added the harness so that the bulbs could get the power they need to perform.

 

That's what I thought. I bought them from BulbAmerica. They do run hotter, the lens gets about 15 degrees warmer but I don't really want to spend $100+ bucks for that type of gain. If I'm on a remote backroad I just hit the cheap light bar I installed.

 

You don’t want to spend $100 to double your output by using a harness but are looking at retros?

 

Okay, thanks. Yeah I don't keep the 90W bulbs in. I just wanted to see what they looked like. But will the stock bulbs also become brighter with the wiring harness therefore negating some of the bump up in brightness.

 

Retros also have a cool look to them though.

 

All halogens run exponentially brighter to the power ^3.4 with voltage increase as provided by a harness. The difference is the power draw from stock wattage isn’t high enough to require a harness, they still can get normal voltage from the OEM wiring. As halogens run exponentially brighter with increased voltage, they also run exponentially dimmer with reduced voltage. Since those high power bulbs exceed what your stock wiring can provide, they are taking a significant voltage loss and therefore and exponential loss in in output relative to the voltage drop. The bulbs alone are completely worthless, they require the harness to get adequate power to run. Without it it is like turning down the light dimmer in a house and you have it all the way to the dimmest setting when the lights can go to full power, but you are holding back.

 

Nailed it as usual. If you look at my pics on the first page, those are 85W Osrams with the upgraded harness and the difference is very noticeable and impressive. I can't even imagine what the 100W would look like with my setup...

 

The box says 100/90W so I assume it means 90W if that makes a difference. I thought you tested these bulbs before or someone did on another post. Yeah I'll give the harness a try and do another before and after. Maybe the guy will have a Black Friday sale as I'm a cheap bastard..

 

I believe 100W is the high beam wattage and 90W is the low beam wattage. @crashnburn80 would be the one who did all the tests and comparisons, I just brought the thread over to the 1st gen section.

 

Well if you're just going for looks, but some cheap Spyder lights or whatever you think looks cool off Amazon. Don't waste your money on Retros.

Besides, at least for offroad, your lightbar, even if cheap, is far better than anything in the stock housing location. You want the light as high as possible.

FWIW, I did the upgraded harness and new CAPA certified housings in my 2004. Even with the "stockish" Sylvania bulbs, I noticed a decent difference in brightness, but combined with the new housings, the difference was night and day. Fogged lenses not only make the light not as bright, but smear your light output.

Before: (lowbeams, orig housings, sylvania bulbs) Notice how my gutters are illuminated!


After: (low beams, new CAPA housings, same sylvania bulbs as before and "ultimate" wire harness)

 

How is the fitment on those CAPA lights? Years ago I bought some non-CAPA off Amazon and the fitment and throw were horrible and sent them back. The gap between the headlight and sidelight was pretty far off and stuck out a little. Rock Auto has CAPA lights for about $30. Time to use that 5% coupon and get some poly LCA bushings as well. My cheap light bar setup. Looks discrete and have a factory lighted switch installed in the lower console rectanglur cut-out. Would like to get all the chrome up front color matched and maybe do the front blinker mod.

 

Original thread here:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

100/90w means 100w high beam, 90w low beam. The High Beam is superior to the 85/80w discontinued hypers, but the hypers have a higher intensity low beam due to their better focus.

Aftermarket, CAPA or not, can be all over the map. See post #2541 as an example.

As for light bars, we did a fun experiment a while back on a friends truck with a 30" aux beam light bar, 4 aux beam pods, plus LED bulbs in the headlights. Everything on at once at peak pattern intensity was within less than 10% of a single headlight on my truck with a correctly designed halogen upgrade. Not a super scientific test, as his setup definitely threw more light everywhere, but very amusing to see that those cheap LED products don't really focus or project light at all. They just dump it out there in very poor performing optics that are basically short range flood. After having all his lights nearly outperformed by a single headlight he removed everything and started over. Step 1 was trash that auxbeam combo bar and buy a several year old used Rigid combo bar. Note the peak intensity lux numbers in the comparison below.

 

CAPA is the same qa/qc process OEM goes through. They were as far as I could tell identical. The light cutoff in teh pics I posted obviously aren't quite as good as modern projectors, but not bad for 20 year old technology, especially considering the cost.

It was the TYC brand from Rock Auto. I think mine were like $40-45 but still easily worth it - half the cost of OEM.

 

Exposure must be lower in the second picture (look at the speedo brightness), exaggerating the effect of the cutoff. If you post exif data, we can adjust exposure in post processing, better approximating a true comparison.

 

Note this post is using TYC units (non-CAPA IIRC) vs OEM on a 1st Gen, in post #2541.

 

Those are cell phone pics, the exposure is whatever it chose to be. I'm not doing peer reviewed research here.

You're free to photoshop those pics all you want to get whatever exposure level will satisfy you, but it's a pretty clear and simple comparison.