Tacoma Headlight Bulb Replacement Tutorial?

So why the snide comment? I'm sure it's not just me who reads it as such.....

 

Wife has LED bulbs in her fogs, talk about glare city! She has China D2S 8000k bulbs in her FX35 projectors, clearly doesn’t not care about performance LOL!

 

After reading all of the replys and having actually tried the BeamTech bulbs in the truck, I removed them, and returned them, going back with my original bulbs. Thanks again to everyone for their input on this subject.

 

You can run a FMVSS-108 headlight compliance test in a garage with a quality light meter and some basic math and measurements to determine the test points, you don't have to send it to a lab. It isn't difficult, but it is time consuming and not something I'm interested in investing my time in. Getting raw data from a lab though does provide the opportunity to do some pretty cool analysis, like I did in the bottom of my post here, where I called out a product for not being complaint to J583 F. Correct that headlight requirements are set at the federal level, and also replacement LED headlights are not legal at the federal level, leading to statements like this from reputable manufactures.

Agreed there is good and bad products in LED headlights, I certainly wouldn't say they all 'work' though. Many of these products increase foreground light and reduce distance light/distance projection allowing drivers to now outrun their headlights at speed. I've also tested lights where the output is so low that it seems to fall below the minimum legal level for a headlight, yet people "feel" they worked better because of the whiter foreground light when the opposite was true. A headlight is a vehicle safety item and having that item not work correctly endangers the occupants of the vehicle, especially when the driver thinks they can see better than they actually can.

There certainly can be some variance in headlight patterns. I listed above what types of assemblies LEDs work better in and why. Large round reflectors like 2nd Gen are not one of them.

Note the reflector is not illuminated above the LED, leaving many flutes dark which causes blotchy/uneven headlight patterns.


Halogen headlight upgrade left, Philips LEDs right (not the best pic I know)


While the picture isn't great, the LEDs lack the pattern saturation of the halogens and you can see that light to the sides of the pattern is especially lacking, which is consistent with the wall shots posted earlier where the halogen has a greater intensity out to the sides of the beam and the replacement LEDs create an uneven beam pattern. And this is with major name brand quality Philips LEDs, not the typical garbage that many get lured to on Amazon.

So no, I don't produce a compliance report. I produce fiercely independent data backed product reviews that are simple to understand to help steer people to the best performing solution for their platform. I don't do this as a job and I don't get paid for doing this, I do this because I am an extreme lighting enthusiast. Take it for what it is worth.

 

Fogs should not look bright looking at them unless you are laying on the ground in front of the truck. If you were standing, them being uncomfortable to look at means they were not keeping the stock pattern cut offs and causing excessive glare. This is typical of poorly designed LEDs, and causes glare to oncoming drivers as well as reduces the actual performance of the beam pattern.

Good call. Take a look at this thread for 2nd Gen headlight upgrades. Scroll down in the thread to see comparison charts for stock wattage performance bulb options as well. The latest Philips +200s look promising, but are currently out of stock. I hope to try them out soon.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-headlight-upgrade-h4-not-led-or-hid.398066/

 

I bet those 200’s are gonna be intense in the 2nd gen bowls. Particularly high beam.

 

Likely not great on the high beam actually. The blue coating covers the high beam filament unfortunately reducing output. The previous Philips Racing +150 had the best stock wattage low beam, so I’m curious how the new +200 will compare. For best high beam the Osram Superbrights with the 100w high beam will perform best.

 

How do you think the the new 150 Pro's will do over my Race Vision +150's?

 

Good question, I’ve thought the same. Hard to say if any changes were made to the filaments on those for H4 or if they just relabeled the Racing Vision +150 to the Pro +150 now that a new higher performing Racing Vision was launched. The Pro does look to have a lighter color coating on the blue bands, so I’d expect possibly slightly warmer color output and possibly slightly higher peak intensity (due to less filtration loss) with slightly better high beam performance also due to less filtration loss. All speculation though, I’d have to test them to compare.