2014+ T4R Tri-LED Projector / Sequential Headlights
- Thread starter XenonDepot
- Start date
lenkerg
New member
Its a switch back like a lot of newer cars. The DRL turns off and it turns into a Yellow/Orange on-off or sequential turn signal. When you're done signaling it turns back to a DRL.
XenonDepot
New member
Thank you everyone for the support and feedback. We will definitely pass that on to Morimoto. The install pictures do look good!
Pm us your order number and we'll take care of you!
Pm us your order number and we'll take care of you!
Well, this has certainly turned out to be less than ideal overall. Not so sure about trying out a set now. A local guy has these installed currently, he hates them, and said that he can't see **** all at night. He was coming from a 50 watt HID kit though. He didn't say if he would be returning them though, and I didn't pry. I'm sure he hated being pestered about his headlights in a Publix parking lot...
I do wish that a mini H1 7.0 or one of the new D2S projectors would fit in our headlights. I miss lighting up every lane on the interstate with my old FXRs. Amazing cut-off, even light distribution, and width for days. I know a vendor offers retrofits with MLED projectors, but I would like to be able to service my headlights when a bulb burns out.
I do wish that a mini H1 7.0 or one of the new D2S projectors would fit in our headlights. I miss lighting up every lane on the interstate with my old FXRs. Amazing cut-off, even light distribution, and width for days. I know a vendor offers retrofits with MLED projectors, but I would like to be able to service my headlights when a bulb burns out.
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ForRun
New member
Yep that's the place for directions. One thing I noticed it doesn't say, I went to tap the fuse wire and then couldn't close the fuse box cover. couple minutes of google showed nothing so I took a dremmel and notched a slot for the wire. If you ever pull it I just used refrigerant tape to seal the hole... similar to this
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mrblah
Senior Member
Yep that's the place for directions. One thing I noticed it doesn't say, I went to tap the fuse wire and then couldn't close the fuse box cover. couple minutes of google showed nothing so I took a dremmel and notched a slot for the wire. If you ever pull it I just used refrigerant tape to seal the hole... similar to this
i couldn't get that shit to work for the life of me...I ended up with hyperblinkers everytime I tried to tap the fuse box, so in the end I gave up and didn't tap the box.. I kinda dont wanna put a hole in my fuse box anyways, due to dust, and I don't really care for DRL's since I have DRL's in my fogs....
I also found out that the directions are available at moromotohid.com or something....lol.
mrblah
Senior Member
My mini review:
1. packaging was awesome. 40lb's of awesomeness..... thats how much packaging material they used per shipping label.
2. (edited) So the LED side cutoff is real, its a bit annoying, but if you run fogs all the time, it will more than make up for that annoying side cutoff. It does make pedestrians a little bit harder to see at crosswalks, especially if you have tinted windows, etc....
3. HID bulbs in OEM housing will give better performance due to the light scatter. What I mean is, everything below the oem +HID cutoff will be lit up very brightly, which makes it outperform LED's. This is also why everybody hates it when you are driving behind them and can also result in more eye fatique. The XB's on the other hand has the same throw as the OEM+HID, but the light output is much softer the farther you move away from the cutoff. The bonus is you won't get people flashing their lights at you, can aim your headlights higher (without annoying people), and less likely to get eye fatique. Con's is that if you are use to OEM + HID, the light output might not be up to your standards.
4. (edited: fixed) I couldn't for the life of me get the DRL to work on its own. They give you a wiring harness that taps into the heated mirrors in your fuse box, but I couldn't get it to work without hyperblinkers. So I installed a resistor (inline to the fusebox per @dr.monkeypants) and that fixed this known issue.
5. Sequential blinking when the headlights were turned on resulted in hyperblinking. However, sequential blinking worked fine if I didn't turn my headlights on. if I disconnected the sequential blinking function, the blinkers ran normally. On a side note, I am running LED's in the rear taillights which is probably the culprit. (see post below mine). Adding a resistor leading to the fuse box did not fix this issue, so I probably have to add separate resistors to each headlight and/or remove my LED rear blinkers (not optional for me). It's okay, I'm not a fan of sequential blinking anyway. Maybe I'll fix this in the future, but for now its a nonissue for me.
6. Install was pretty easy, and instructions can be found on the moromoto website.
7. (edited) My lenses had DOT/SAE stamped on them.
Conclusion: I like it, and plan on keeping them. I knew going into this that this wasn't going to be better than OEM+HID upgrade, but I just hate chrome........As long as the light output was better than OEM, I would have been happy. Fit and finish is very good. Luckily for me, I don't care for sequential blinking and DRL, but some of you might be disappointed that these functions won't work if you have LED's in your taillights. You can probably fix this with resistors though.. Remember people, life is about looking cool!!!!!! buahahaha..
I plan on keeping my old oem housings just in case I get tired of crawlin dem mallz....
1. packaging was awesome. 40lb's of awesomeness..... thats how much packaging material they used per shipping label.
2. (edited) So the LED side cutoff is real, its a bit annoying, but if you run fogs all the time, it will more than make up for that annoying side cutoff. It does make pedestrians a little bit harder to see at crosswalks, especially if you have tinted windows, etc....
3. HID bulbs in OEM housing will give better performance due to the light scatter. What I mean is, everything below the oem +HID cutoff will be lit up very brightly, which makes it outperform LED's. This is also why everybody hates it when you are driving behind them and can also result in more eye fatique. The XB's on the other hand has the same throw as the OEM+HID, but the light output is much softer the farther you move away from the cutoff. The bonus is you won't get people flashing their lights at you, can aim your headlights higher (without annoying people), and less likely to get eye fatique. Con's is that if you are use to OEM + HID, the light output might not be up to your standards.
4. (edited: fixed) I couldn't for the life of me get the DRL to work on its own. They give you a wiring harness that taps into the heated mirrors in your fuse box, but I couldn't get it to work without hyperblinkers. So I installed a resistor (inline to the fusebox per @dr.monkeypants) and that fixed this known issue.
5. Sequential blinking when the headlights were turned on resulted in hyperblinking. However, sequential blinking worked fine if I didn't turn my headlights on. if I disconnected the sequential blinking function, the blinkers ran normally. On a side note, I am running LED's in the rear taillights which is probably the culprit. (see post below mine). Adding a resistor leading to the fuse box did not fix this issue, so I probably have to add separate resistors to each headlight and/or remove my LED rear blinkers (not optional for me). It's okay, I'm not a fan of sequential blinking anyway. Maybe I'll fix this in the future, but for now its a nonissue for me.
6. Install was pretty easy, and instructions can be found on the moromoto website.
7. (edited) My lenses had DOT/SAE stamped on them.
Conclusion: I like it, and plan on keeping them. I knew going into this that this wasn't going to be better than OEM+HID upgrade, but I just hate chrome........As long as the light output was better than OEM, I would have been happy. Fit and finish is very good. Luckily for me, I don't care for sequential blinking and DRL, but some of you might be disappointed that these functions won't work if you have LED's in your taillights. You can probably fix this with resistors though.. Remember people, life is about looking cool!!!!!! buahahaha..
I plan on keeping my old oem housings just in case I get tired of crawlin dem mallz....
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ForRun
New member
in the directions says if you run aftermarket LED's pretty much anywhere on the vehicle it causes hyper flash due to some imbalance.
Looks great though, glad you like them!
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Dr. Monkeypants
New member
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 [MENTION=151737]mrblah[/MENTION] 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.
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 [MENTION=151737]mrblah[/MENTION] 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.
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Mine are arriving today which I planned to install. I gotta say, I'm a bit sad to read about everyone planning to return them as it makes me want to just not even mess with installing them.
I'm in the heart of the city so I won't actually be able to do a good test of the side cut-off since the closest area without street lights is far our and it gets dark late here.
I was hoping for at least one person to say "I got them adjusted and they're good enough" but since I'm not seeing that, I may just return them. Super bummed as this is easily the best looking light on the market and looks gnarly on the MGM color.
I'm in the heart of the city so I won't actually be able to do a good test of the side cut-off since the closest area without street lights is far our and it gets dark late here.
I was hoping for at least one person to say "I got them adjusted and they're good enough" but since I'm not seeing that, I may just return them. Super bummed as this is easily the best looking light on the market and looks gnarly on the MGM color.
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ForRun
New member
Xenon told me they are going to let Morimoto know and hopefully they fix it before production.
If that happens I'll buy another set!
97BlackAckCL
Elite Member
Thank you for sharing your honest opinion and review. As much as I wanted to jump on these, I was hesitant due to all of the mixed reviews on the Taco headlights, and having already bought a full MLED retrofit kit and spare set of headlights. I'm glad to hear honest opinions about the real issues with these, given how much they were hyped up.
Dr. Monkeypants
New member
It's hard to get a clear picture because the outer plastic is so reflective, but the individual projectors are deeply set in a single housing for all three, so there's really no way to get one of them adjusted to a point that would make any appreciable difference. I suggested adding a side illuminating LED near the marker lights. We'll see what they come up with...
So is anybody planning on keeping theirs? Are returns to XenonDepot a possibility?
I really don't want to yank my bumper off any more than I have to and I didn't realize you had to run a wire to the fuse box. I know none of this shit is difficult in any definition of the word, but going through the hassle only to have to do it again to pull them off seems annoying.
I personally don't mind running fog lights at all times, even though I know some people said they don't want to have to do that. So if the fog lights (especially if I upgrade to the TRD Pro LED ones) make up the gap, I may be okay with it, especially since I primarily drive in the city.
I really don't want to yank my bumper off any more than I have to and I didn't realize you had to run a wire to the fuse box. I know none of this shit is difficult in any definition of the word, but going through the hassle only to have to do it again to pull them off seems annoying.
I personally don't mind running fog lights at all times, even though I know some people said they don't want to have to do that. So if the fog lights (especially if I upgrade to the TRD Pro LED ones) make up the gap, I may be okay with it, especially since I primarily drive in the city.
Dr. Monkeypants
New member
For those that plan on keeping their lights and have hyperflash issues, don’t fret. 2010 is calling and their old 12v 6ohm resistor trick works like a charm. I put one on each side of the DRL harness and it cured the hyperflash.
Edit: I cut the harness (guess I’m keeping them now, lol) and put a single resistor in before the split instead of the pair of resistors after the split and that also solves the hyperflash.
Pic of ghetto test bench:
And a picture of a non-hyperflashing LED turn signal:
Now, who has a solution to side illumination? My fogs are a bit TOO bright and too yellow for consistent use, lol:
Edit: I cut the harness (guess I’m keeping them now, lol) and put a single resistor in before the split instead of the pair of resistors after the split and that also solves the hyperflash.
Pic of ghetto test bench:
And a picture of a non-hyperflashing LED turn signal:
Now, who has a solution to side illumination? My fogs are a bit TOO bright and too yellow for consistent use, lol:
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