Came home today to this beast of a box waiting for me:
The headlights were individually boxed inside with four foam bags on each. Definitely well secured.
The install was pretty much a piece of cake. The fit on everything was reasonably accurate with the exception of a single arm that was bent, likely from packaging:
Everything else fit well enough so I flexed it down and screwed it into place without much effort and just went with it. Gotta say these are really nicely made, well finished, and overall pretty great from a manufacturing quality standpoint.
I have the USR full LED blackout taillights in my truck and have intermittent hyper-flash with the turn signals in the headlights. I don’t have the sequential signals active on mine. Hazards seem to work fine. Turn signals work fine with the headlights on (edit: mostly, lol). But with just the DRLs, the left signal hyper-flashes every eighth or so blink and the right does it about every fourth. Interestingly, once they’re warmed up they tend to do it less... Likely not a terribly difficult fix with a resistor or LED flash module. If anyone knows of a module cross compatible with ours (Toyota part # 81980-60160) I’d be stoked to check it out. A quick Google-Fu found nothing.
So, I haven’t been able to check the actual performance yet, but goddddamn they look fcuking spectacular on my MGM Nightshade:
And I definitely dig the look of the DRLs:
Anyway, some of the other initial light assessments have me a little worried, but I’ll hold judgment till tonight and update this with my impressions coming from Morimoto 2-Stroke 2.0 lows and stock highs...
EDIT #1: First drive impressions:
I didn't adjust mine before going for a drive and they seemed a bit low, even with a 2.5" front lift. Not a big deal though. Low beam forward light quality and brightness is good. Nice even light and a crispy cutoff. Definitely on par with the 2-Stroke bulbs. High beams are plenty bright enough. Much better than stock. I have a light bar if I need crazy total light.
All of that said, I don't think I can keep these lights (which seriously bums me out). The side cutoff really is really bad like others have said. I had to slow way, way down making turns (even on streets I know well) because I couldn't see into the corner
AT ALL. It's no joke. I didn't believe it could be as bad as people were saying, but it is. Honestly, I don't know how this could have passed ANY on-road testing. One decent LED that's only on with the headlights located near the side marker would solve that. But for now, it's not something that's safe to drive in residential/suburban areas without streetlights. Between that and the hyper-flash, these really aren't production ready. I mean, it's 2019, you have to anticipate people who will be making this upgrade are likely going to also have put LEDs in their taillights.
EDIT #2: Like
@
mrblah
has already discovered, removing the DRL harness completely eliminates the hyperflash (and the DRLs, sadly). Updating that small "harness" should be an easy fix.
EDIT #3: Emailed with XD this morning. Got an RMA without hassle. Really wish they just worked properly and I didn't have to deal with this...
Edit #4: Despite planning to return them, my morbid curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see if the hyperflash was really as easy to fix as I expected... I just ghetto’d out and jammed a 12v 6ohm resistor I had in the shop between the harness and the light and that fixed it completely. Checked both sides individually, hazards, w/DRL, w/parking lights, and w/headlights, and nothing fazed them. So, yeah. Turn back your LED clock to a decade ago before load balanced lights were a thing and there’s your answer. I don’t know if this is awesome or pathetic that it was this easy a fix and they didn’t solve it before shipping.
