Consolidated Lighting Info Thread
- Thread starter Angelo
- Start date
Saker
Senior Member
Saker
Senior Member
> ? <
New 4Runner owner here, just 2 days in. So I drove last night in very dark conditions, not pitch black like we get on county roads here but still pretty bad visibility. And I'm appalled at the performance of the low beam on this truck. On 70mph winding highway with reflective lane separators I could barely do 60mph because the low beam is so poor. I'm not sure how it passed safety test. I have good vision and drove that road many times. My old 2003 Pilot with washed out and scratched lenses is allot better than my 5th gen 4Runner in terms of illuminating the road. How do you take this thing on forest roads where it's pitch black? All those off-road capabilities means crap if I can't see where I'm going. These are the worse stock headlights I've encountered so far in my 30 years of driving.
Now that my ranting is over, I'm going to install the H9's in low beam and see if it will be enough. Not willing to do HID's because blinding oncoming traffic is a no go and realibiliy is a concern.
Now that my ranting is over, I'm going to install the H9's in low beam and see if it will be enough. Not willing to do HID's because blinding oncoming traffic is a no go and realibiliy is a concern.
Rapid_Amble
New member
LOL they aren’t the best headlights. FWIW I’ve been using the Xenon Depot HID kit with Philips 4300k bulbs for almost 2 yrs with zero issues with the lights, much better visibility, and no flashing from opposing traffic. I did adjust levels after installing.
Let us know if you get these. Because casting is a weakness of LED's, I wonder how the GTR2's performs at the distance in a Toyota projector.
"LED fails (in nearly all cases) at reproducing the same light source characteristics that they replace. In some lamps, they come close but its not perfect. You can't just look at a beam on a wall and say "yeah the LED looks like it matches the same pattern". Or put up a cheap lux meter on the beam and find the brightest point of intensity and then say "yeah this LED is 497% brighter than halogen so it definitely is better". No - that's not how it works. A headlamp is designed and engineered to produce a specific unique beam pattern that distributes light at specific angles on the road for safe visibility while being in compliance to the federal lighting standards. Change the light source type, size, shape, luminous flux and it throws all the optical engineering out the window and ultimately the beam pattern. You could end up having only a 20% increase at the 75 meter angle test point even if the LED measured at 497% more lux. How? Because of the focus. It shifted the intensity to an angle that doesn't help you see farther."
Author Evo77 @ hidplanet.com
I'm not sure how much I buy into this any more. It seems as though LED bulbs have evolved immensely in recent years, and I certainly don't buy into the fact that the stock projector housing was specifically engineered for the stock halogen bulb in the 4Runner. if so, it's an engineering failure. I'll let you know how the new bulbs work out. Hopefully they're not aa waste of money.
mynameistory
New member
I have the extreme LED high beams (w/DRL drivers) and Morimoto 2stroke 2.0 for the low beams.
I've switched back to halogen. H9 for the low beams and 9011 HIR for the high beams.
The problem isn't that LED lights aren't bright-they're SUPER bright. The problem is that they're trying to replicate a halogen filament size and placement, and there's just no way to get the emitters and blades thin enough to do that. So the lights are bright, but only your near-field view improves because the focal point of the light source is off. You THINK it's an improvement, but you need to pay attention to realize you're only seeing things 50 feet in front of your truck, and nothing beyond that.
This is exactly the issue that is preventing me from trying LED's. And also a potential problem with them not heating the front lens enough to prevent icy film and wet snow build up. I do drive 5 month out of the year in winter conditions.
The thing is that even if the LED's do project more light at the same distance as halogen say at the distance of 150 feet, it will be negated because your eyes just won't be able to perceive it. The way the pupils work, is when you look at the light source they get smaller. The brighter the source the smaller they get. So that first 50 feet that are super bright will be a detriment, it will simply light blind you. Add to that its usually the distance where most of us focus our eyes when driving and it's impossible to overlook. Same principal as looking at the starry sky. Your eyes need time to adjust to the faint light so you can see better.
Light science is complicated and balance between foreground and background is the key.
Even the low beam h9 replacement is not perfect because the focal point is shifted one degree to the right at 25 feet vs the standard bulb. As distance increases so will the spread as it increases exponentially. I haven't done the math but at 200 feet it could be as much as 25 degrees of to the right. Should really help when taking that left turn on a highway at night
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I'm no lighting engineer, but I'm not exactly sure that's how it works. I would think the point of peak brightness is shifted by 1 degree to the right no matter the distance, it's just that the distance offset would be further to the right as you get further from the headlight (roughly 3.5' to the right at 200' and double that at 400'), so more linear than exponential. By 200', the hotspot would be so wide that there's no doubt the H9 is still going to perform better for the entire visible width across the road.
This is kind of a tough question, because many people are probably going to say that what they have chosen is the best.
In my experience with my 2018 4Runner, H9s were far superior to the Xenon Depot Xtreme LEDs. Trust me, I wanted to like them because I forked over a pretty penny and I liked the way they looked, but there was no denying that distance illumination was not nearly as good as the H9s. I ultimately ripped them out and put the H9s back in. I know many are happy with their HIDs too, and I would imagine that would offer the most brightness out of any of the options - I just wasn't too certain about the glare level and didn't want to deal with ballast etc.
I'm not certain the stock headlights are awful (look up the IIHS test on the 2018 F-150 halogens if you want to see awful), but they certainly aren't as great as I think they should be for a modern projector. Funny thing is, I think the reflectors in my 2012 are actually superior to the projectors that were in my 2018!
mynameistory
New member
Read this thread on Tacoma World. It's huge but most of the pertinent info and testing is on the first page.
3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights | Tacoma World
Also, lots of people on here seem to like their HID adaptations, and the HID bulb can more closely imitate the size of a halogen filament, preserving focus and throw.
But for me, I decided to revert back to (upgraded) halogen. To me, the benefits of the HID kits don't cancel out the drawbacks:
- a fraction of the IR output (heat) so it won't melt snow collecting on the headlights. LEDs are even worse, they produce no infrared.
- finicky ballasts. I still haven't met one person that hasn't replaced a burnt ballast or three during ownership.
- difficulty of replacements: you can go into any auto store and get a bulb off the shelf, so you won't ruin a trip. The HID kits are made of Frankenstein parts, a xenon bulb mashed into a halogen base, with a brandless Chinese ballast. You have to order new parts and wait a week.
mynameistory
New member
jmickle11
New member
$15 worth of lights is that much better than OEM? Sounds like a good gamble to me!
