Proper headlight upgrade

They are flashing you for blinding them, not the brightness. I bet your low beam are all over the place (unless you are converted to projectors then correct me). LED bulbs don't work (cut off) in low beam reflector housing. This subject has been beaten to death on many forums.

 

What? People are not flashing you for brightness, they are flashing you because you have modified your headlights incorrectly. You need a full projector retrofit for most LEDs.

Read this:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/

This halogen upgrade is brighter and outperforms LEDs as shown in that thread, and because it is done correctly you don't get flashed because it doesn't blind anyone.

 

I understand the need for directional lenses. I also dislike them. Most of the people with the problem are the people who cut me off... so meh. I like my lights...and lenses.

Edit: I read through most of that post. If Halogens are omnidirectional, that implies more scatter. I think the OP might have it a bit skewed. The LEDs I bought are tri-directional, not bi-directional like his. 3 COBs offset 120deg in a cocentric orientation, each with a radiation distribution of 120degrees, essentially creates a 360degree omnidirectional radiation pattern. So either my LEDs mimic halogens, or the OP of that post has it wrong.

 

I think you missed the one important fact. For reflector type lenses it is extremely important where the source of light is located. For propper focusing the output light pattern the source (fillament) must be in exact spot. Even 1mm off will make light pattern undesired. This is why it is important to use quality bulbs - geometry of some noname H4 bulbs is so bad that they are useless.

Any LED bulb us not able to replicate the position and pattern of H4 bulb. It is simple impossible. You bulbs may be oninidirectional but all LED chips are off center meaning each one is sending a "ghosts" out of the reflector. Just do the wall test an you will understand why are you flashed. Or simple stand in front of your car with eyes above the cut off line. You should be able to see only the light dispersed by front glass. If you see any light on the reflector it is bad.
Or even simpler park your car on the stret at night with low beams on. Walk 50 yards in front of your truck and level your eyes about 3-4 ft above the ground. Look at your headlights. You will understand why you are flashed.

One note to "proper headlight upgrade". Make sure your headlight glass is clean all the time. Plastic needs to be polished and free of brown spots. At high power bulbs the reflection of the glass makes the headlights glass blinding. Once driving in sheety weather I was flashed. I stopped, looked at my headlights and I understood why. Mud and dust on the glass made my lights glowing bright in all direction. Cleaning glass improved my visibility and cut off at the same time.

 

Wow. So selfish.

Your reply was to the OP of that thread.

 

I'll take another look.
I know yall are right and trying to get me to do the right thing...Unfortunately I just bought new headlight assemblies less than a month ago, after I ruled out that doing a projector conversion was out of my comfort zone. I wish this info would have revealed itself to me sooner. I could have sworn the my old halogens were the same aside from brightness and color temperature.

Thanks for the oh-so-helpful contribution.

 

I can certainly assure you I do not have my post wrong, and I can also assure you that your tri-directional LEDs do not mimic halogens and are not made by a reputable or credible manufacture, and you were sold cheap Chinese garbage. I did send you to my own thread to save time rehashing the same discussion I've had repetitively trying to educate others on lighting optics.

Omi-directional halogen in no-way implies more glare or scatter, as clearly shown in the thread if you actually read through it. Using the same light source as stock produces the same light pattern as stock. Changing the light source changes the light pattern. Pretty simple, I'm not sure why so many struggle to understand this, it does not take an advanced engineering degree.

Tri-directional LEDs are far worse off than bi-directional LEDs. Note how every leading LED manufacture uses a bi-directional design, including highly respected Philips which is the only mainstream LED manufacture that reputably claims to accurately reproduce halogen beam patterns in a reflective housing. There is no way you can accurately provide glare cut-off shields in a tri-directional design like you can in a bi-directional design. Not having precisely engineered glare shields in the same formation as the halogen design means you will omit excessive glare. Knowing this and continuing to run them anyway is an asshole move, I'm not going to give any sympathy. Just because you did not do your homework ahead of time is no reason not to correct and do it the right way now that you know better.

 

In California there is no "safety inspection" on cars, so people decorating they cars or trucks like a Christmas trees. If I flash everyone I see I would have to replace my burned high beam bulbs every month. I just settled for acknowledging the fact that ignorance and advanced technology don't mix. Many drivers think that lights on a car have decoration purpose only ("looks cool, dude").

Now in Poland it is different story. Each car has to pass safety inspection every year and that's including not only correct lighting pattern but also correct aiming (there are actually devices to measure that). On the top of that HIDs are allowed only if there is automatic headlight leveling system and wipers (with sprinklers) installed on headlights. The last one is for the reason I wrote before. It is nice for the change to actually see the road in your own headlights without not squinting when the oncoming traffic arrives.

Sorry, for venting out.

 

It turns out that my 03 with DRL's in the headlight is ground switched. I did the test multiple times and I always had some voltage on the common terminal. EDIT: It is conventionally switched and if you have DTRL, you will need to use the conventional harness and disable DTRL by snipping the white wire with green stripe on the DRL relay/box behind the lower panel between the steering wheel and the radio.

 

CA's "safety inspection" is when you get lit up by a CHP for blinding them on the highway and you get a fix it ticket. Happens all the time, well, at least it used to. Years ago, my brother was driving down the road, following a chippy, guy pulls over, lets my brother pass, then lights him up.

Having proper lights is *especially* important in trucks, and even more so when they're lifted 4x4's. Our lights start out so much higher than a car's, that even small amounts of scatter is really annoying to other motorists. People think that they're getting flashed just because they're in a truck, but that's not true, it because 1) you suck at aiming your lights, or 2) you did a poor job upgrading your lights.

The funny thing is that even though I drive a 4x4 truck, I still get blinded by stupid Civics with their "bro" headlights. I enjoy showing them my brights, although they are probably too dumb to realize why...

 

Thy think you are warning them about a speed trap. Quite common for old cars with plastic faded headlights. Guy thinks putting a HID or LED is a solution to his crappy headlights. They are hopeless.

If CHP would pull over every car with improper headlights there will be no officers to respond to accidents (at least in Sacramento area). On my daily commute I could count at least ten cars like that every evening.

 

Nah, one of the roads I drive (that I find myself having an issue with glare) is a two lane residential road with stop signs almost every block. No speed traps there...

Headlights aren't exactly an enforcement priority, that's true... That said, it can, and does happen. Hell, one of the more "popular" reasons to get lit up is a broken taillight (though more often than not, that's just a reason to pull over a "suspicious" vehicle)... I even got pulled over in OR because one of my license plate lights was out (he told me they were both out, but I realized later I still had a good one, so I was basically pulled over for CA plates...)

I did the "proper" headlight upgrade, minus the 80w bulbs. Though for the 1st gens, you don't have a lot of options for reflectors, so I just went with new CAPA certified housings, and the HD wiring harness. Just the now (non faded and cloudy) housing by themselves obviously made a big improvement, and I'm waiting on the 80w Osrams until either my current ones burn out or I find I wand more light. So far, though, I'm pretty happy.

 

For the proper upgrade the first thing I did was dumping factory H6054 for Autopal 200mm with H4 bulb (I also have Hela as a backup). The second was dumping junk H4 bulbs that came with the lamp and I put Sylvania SilverStar H4 bulbs. No glare and 100% of 55W is on the road. After that I never had any need for HID or LED.

High beam are also more focused with Autopal (compared to H6054). Strange pattern with two darker areas just in front of the truck which I think is good, because road close to the truck does not blind and over-shine the distant objects. I have never tried Hela, but I read only good thing about these lamps.

And lastly, I saved my SilverStar bulbs from being used as a DRL (required by the law in Poland) by installing real LED DRL certified by Osram in the inserts under the headlights. All legal, safe and proper .

 

You have E-codes lamps I'm guessing since you are in Poland, way better than the N.A. DOT headlight assemblies here. I always swap my headlight assemblies to E-code if possible.

Are you running sylvania silverstars or osram silverstars? Same parent manufacture but very different bulbs. I ask because in the EU I thought Osrams were more common. Sylvania silverstars are actually not a high performing bulb (just fully coated and whiter making it look brighter), you will get better results at stock wattage with the osram silverstars (not coated) or osram night breakers. Both are spec'd to put out noticeably more lumens that the sylvanias.

 

Guess what, it is next to impossible to buy 200mm lamps in Poland. I bought E-code Autopals on ebay almost 2 years ago and I used them in USA for almost year and half. This is why I brought German made Hela from USA, as somehow this size is not available here.

For sure they are Sylvania as I did not change bulbs here yet. They are from Walmart USA . Now I might messed up with "silverstar thing" as they are one dot lower price, without the blue coating (I knew better than that ). I need to find out what was the name of that model. There were like three types of Sylvania available: Long life, short life bright, and the blue thing. Mine was short life bright, but still I have them for more than a year.

When the time comes to replace them in Poland, I will get Osram without blue tint for sure.

 

Just did the upgrade on a 2003 Tacoma with this harness from Mike Cline http://www.headlightservices.com/Wiring.html

Looks like a high quality product and the install went without any issues. It is also not as expensive as the rally lights harness, which looks like it went up in price since it was originally mentioned in this and the related thread.

 

trying to find out if my 2004 has conventionally switched or ground switched and after testing i get conventionally switched.

when i hook up my multimeter and turn on truck with headlights OFF i get 14 Volts from "left" terminal of headlight plug to negative terminal on battery.

when i turn on the headlight 14V goes away and only mV is read (under 1V).

I assume this means I have the conventional type switching headlights like the 2015 models.

can anyone help confirm this

 

What the heck is "conventionally switched" or "ground switched"? If your truck (2004) is without DRL (used in Canada) it has the following headlight diagram:



Which is simply saying the same as all 1st gen Tacomas. In earlier models ECU did not control Head Relay for auto switch off lights feature. The rest is the same as everyone of us. The whole current from the bulb runs through headlight switch to the ground. Now if you have Canadian version with DRL the diagram is a way more complicated and whole bunch of relays is involved in switching the current (including DRL relay integrated circuit).

It is actually funny the way Toyota did Hi-beam indication on the dash. You can see that the indicator bulb is connected between ground and low beam filament. When lights are working at Low-beam, the low beam filament is grounded via the light switch so the Hi-beam indicator bulb is not illuminated. At High-beam, the low beam filament is not grounded so the current runs through low beam filament and Hi-beam indicator bulb. So all will work as long the low beam filament is not open (or high resistance) in both (left and right) bulbs. HID or LED drivers may not allow for current to flow via low beam connector when Hi-beam is turned on and this is why people are complaining about Hi-beam indicator light not working with some HID or LED bulbs (which is OK, because unless you have projector retrofit, you shouldn't be using HID or LED in 1st gen Tacoma headlights anyway).

 

The left terminal you are referring to is the left one when plugged into the bulb and viewed from the driver seat, correct? Not to be confused with left when facing the truck.

Aka is it the same as the picture I have in the Ultimate headlight upgrade thread showing the test configuration? I don't believe mine ever had any voltage in a 2015, does your truck have DRLs?

 

Others have purchased from there too, they look like equally as high quality kits.

Ground switched vs conventionally switched is the method Toyota uses to complete the circuit on the dual filament headlight, completing the ground to activate the circuit or completing the positive connection to activate the circuit. The different methods require different relay configurations on the standalone harness.