Amazing 1st Gen Headlamp Upgrade

tl;dr version: Your light fixtures should a little bump (pimple) on the lens. Measure from the ground to that pimple with truck on flat ground. Put a long horizontal piece of painters tape at that height on whatever wall you'll test at. Pull your truck up to the wall so it's perpendicular, lights equidistant from the tape. Tape a cross straight out from the pimple for each light. Center of the tape crosses should measure same as the distance between the pimples. Back straight backwards, and use the crosses to center things.

Videos may help, these pretty much cover it, although either of these methods fully, dude in the 1st one goes overkill IMO. And I don't like how ChrisFix ignores the pimple - it's there for a reason. Actually, @Headlight Revolution has a good video, skip to the 3m04s mark if it doesn't jump there already, he points out the pimple also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIow5YgdRro#t=3m04s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuUTzbvm1SI​

 

Ha, for me the hardest part is find a nice wide wall with a flat surface you can backup 25ft from...I just rigged a landscape tarp under the house and it worked ok! The bulb itself has the horizontal level adjustment and there is not a side to side adjustment, thankfully they centered perfectly, a long thin phillips easily adjusts the vertical. LightWerkz also a good video, but the procedure is basically the same in all of them.

Also, since the Sequoia is lifted, I dropped 2.5" from the center mark on the assembly and they are a bit low. Going to raise it up an inch or so to get it dialed in.
@shifty` The fogs are going to need the same/similar bulbs...the oem's now look terrible by comparison.

 

I still need to align my fogs. It's the one thing I didn't do when I swapped out my factory fixtures for yellow-lens fixtures.

 

@shifty` our bulbs do not have the fans and they required the resistors.

 

Hmmm, bad guess on my part then. Back to the drawing board!

 

Super tricky to find a good spot to aim vehicle headlights. Definitely the hardest part.

I see a lot of photos in here which look to me like excessive foreground light. Which is common with many cheaper led products.

I hear mention of “20 year old tech”. By comparison, my wife has a vintage halogen desk lamp. I’ve tried all sorts of led bulbs in it and I’ve also purchased a $50 led desk lamp. Nothing comes close to matching the halogen bulb output. It’s crazy better. Just hot and kinda ugly and rusted. blows everything else I’ve tried out of the water.

Honestly, one thing I love about these older trucks is the halogen reflectors. They are freaking awesome. Pair 100w bulbs with a harness and agm battery with voltage booster and it’s crazy good output and tons of heat to shed rain and snow. I would not want it any way other than that for road driving.

I’m not trying to piss in anyone’s Cheerios at all. I may try an led bar for fun sometime. And I’m definitely doing some LED DRL’s once I get a chance, probably in the corner assemblies w switchback.

But I just wanted to contribute an alternative angle for those reading this and assuming everyone things the same way about these headlights.

 

That’s awesome, just to be clear are you running just normal halogen bulbs in the OEM housing? Happen to have any pics lol

 

I am running osram 100w bulbs in new Oem housings. Housings were around $100 each? I bought 3 cause the first set allowed a tiny bit of moisture inside the passenger one. That pissed me off.

Harness from Headlight Services but I bought the wrong one, I’m power switched because DRL, so I swapped out the relays for something I built myself. But buying the proper harness would work. I have his power switched harness on my ‘05 Tacoma.

then an HKB voltage booster and x2 27F agm battery from batteries plus.

still need to do the big 3, parts sitting for years now. Haven’t aimed yet either. They are way down, on purpose, cause I never get to go anywhere. It’s definitely overdue for aiming.

I love the output.

I run OEM LED in my ‘16, it’s superior to a halogen projector. But old school halogen reflectors outperform halogen projectors by a significant amount because of the size of the reflector. Good optics work well, heck, the James Webb telescope is old school reflector tech, so is EV, just a matter of quality.

to me it’s a small bummer to stuff mini projectors in a large reflector, but I will say there are many who swear by led projectors so I’m not here to say they are wrong. Just saying I think the Oem headlights can be great with some work and mods.

 

Do you guys still recommend these bulbs? I eventually going to upgrade my housing or just get new OEM housing, they are fogged up. But for now I think I'm going to run a cleaning kit on the lenses and get new bulbs.

 

You're in a great position. Your housings are fogged. With a $10-20 kit (either 3M or Cerakote) you can get them shiny again, but it's going to be a repeated exercise, refreshing every other year now they've oxidized (most likely).

That said, why not seize the opportunity, since you need to permanently modify your housing in order to use these bulbs? This way, if you don't like them, you needed to replace the housings anyway, so you can get some new CAPA-certified housings, which will come fully-loaded with bulbs if you buy from any of the better brands. And at worst, if you love them, by the time you burn these out, there will probably be a better H4 mini projector available.

Just sayin'.

 

I like that idea if I'm following along correctly. Clean the housing, modify it for these bulbs, and run it.

 

Hell yeah. What've you got to lose? You're looking at less than $80 probably for the housing kit and bulbs. And if you gotta buy new housings because you don't like it, you were already gonna be out $50-80/ea on those.

If you've never polished headlight housings before, the key is to take your time, and the critical piece is the clearcoat process after. That's what decides how long they'll be good for.

 

Cool that's what I was thinking. Yeah I've cleaned my share of headlights. Have a kit in the garage I forget which brand it is. I'll check when I get home later. Thanks for the help!

 

The one linked in the original post seems to be out of stock. Any recommendations from Amazon?

 

Ha! I called it dammit! I knew they were about to sell off stock! CO Light and Braveway's version of that bulb are both gone. So typical.

I don't see a replacement ... yet. You can still buy directly from CO Light's store the 'new' variation:

Fanless: https://www.led-colight.com/product...flector-headlight?_pos=1&_psq=H4&_ss=e&_v=1.0

Fan: https://www.led-colight.com/product...-blub-h4-9003-hb2?_pos=3&_psq=H4&_ss=e&_v=1.0

I personally prefer fanless; I want something that doesn't need a fan to survive, if the fan dies, your shit's on fire. Plus all the complaints about radio interference from the fan'd bulbs is offputting.

 

My last headlight upgrade was only slightly better than stock.

 

Do the Y7s have the blue chromatic abberation?

 

I mean, even OEM projectors have a slight purplish blue line at the cutoff.

 

Yep. Pretty much all projectors have some. Just the nature of the beast.

 

This is a great performance/value mod, but really wish they made these in a 5000K, my son keeps telling me everyone says his headlights are purple!
We may converts to H1 Bi-Xeons over his Christmas break.

 

The most distinctive feature of this bulb is the three-color light, which is 6500K white light, 4300K yellow-white light, and 3000K yellow light. for the Y7S. just ordered.

 

Yeah, but it looks like it defaults back to 6500K each time you start the vehicle, and you have to turn the headlights on/off to toggle to 4300K, and on/off again to toggle to 3000K? It's the only reason I'm not biting. I love the cutoff, though. Looks clean, if accurate.

 

Wait what? You can change the color?

Edit- Oh I see its a different bulb than the Co Light I installed. Please post up your results as they would be much easier and cheaper than the H1 conversion.

 

Yeah I know. Just gonna deal with it. 6500 is the only option on the other light so I figure with this, worst case scenario I forget to switch it to 4300. I don't drive a lot at night anyways

 

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOWhpo0

 

Word of warning on these. If you can see the led it will most likely bounce in the reflector and could create some narly hotspots that are out of place. Had to do some minor surgery on the bulbs I put in my own truck for that reason.

 

Picture wouldn’t attach….

 

LED is exposed on mine (BraveWAY); I haven't found what you're saying to be true, but those ones on Ali look cheap af, not sure I'd be willing to buy them.

Is the problem just with that specific bulb? I notice they're screwing in the LED chip pretty crudely, in a way that it appears to just be sitting there. I'm not surprised to hear about it bouncing.

 

I'm surprised that you missed the fact that PalmTree has a 12 and you are comparing it to an 06. 2 completely different housings to lead to 2 completely different experiences.

 

The high beam is... The low beam is tucked into the top part with the full shield on the bulbs that started this thread and the bulbs that went into my brother's truck. My truck only has one COB light on the bulb (its an h11) and it was throwing a high beam pattern because it was in the top of the reflector. Not sure it would do the same thing on a 1st gen it was just a heads up.