Headlight improvements...looking for NEW information

[harper7]

This is what steered me away from retrofit. I do not want the M projected on the ground in front of me. It is a “feature” that I wish was an option

The newer Morimoto M-LED 2.0's do not have an "M" projected on the ground. Plenty of youtube reviews with output/cutoff views on them. I think their old LED's had it as an option which could be covered or not when retrofitting them.

I retrofitted the MLED 2.0's on my 3rd gen 4runner last year and are a little better then my 22 Bi-LEDs ,especially the high beams.

 

[?????]

Local lighting engineer tested the OEM LED Low Beam headlights. I can attest they are a substantial upgrade over any LED drop in bulb and HID kit.

To put it in perspective, my Diode Dynamics SS3 MAX foglights no longer overpower the headlights.

The only other contender currently available is the Morimoto headlight but you will see why it may not be the best option unless you are dead set on the aesthetic of them.

3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Here's a link of output and install. I will note the polarity was reversed when swapping the connectors.
Imgur: The magic of the Internet

 

[JaSC1]

I changed out H11s for H9s for my Halogen projector 2018 4Runner. I believe they are 65watts vs 55. I can tell a small difference but thinking I need to read this thread carefully and consider a different route.

 

[Xtremluck]

This is good info. Thank you. The M LED 2.0 has been the direction I've been leaning and it's good to know the retrofit is pretty straight forward. I saw somewhere that they project an "M" on the ground in front of the vehicle. Is that true? I can't remember where it was but the site listed the "feature" like it was something desirable. I hope this in not the case.

I've questioned what to do with the high beam despite the M LED 2.0 having beam limiters that move for the high beams. I'm considering going with a set of Profile Hi-Lens 2.0 LEDs. I've seen a few examples of this in my searching. This would allow me to black out the whole headlight assembly and I think it would look nice.

What do you mean "cut open" the assemblies? Got any pics of where to cut them? Honestly, I've never had any issues with baking lights open. About 7 min in the oven at 250* F and they almost come open by hand without the use of a tool.

I assume you used the OEM housings when you did your retrofit. I'm entertaining getting a cheap set of OEM style housings found on eBay or Amazon to do mine. I've done this with a couple of other sets of lights that didn't originally have projectors in them. This allows for retaining the OEM housings intact as a spare set and provides new base parts for the retrofit. I'm just a bit concerned that the projector mounting in those housings from the likes of DT Moto and OEMassive are a little different making the retro-quik kit difficult.

As others have mentioned the MLED 2.0 does not have the silly "M" logo being projected into the foreground. I actually baked the OEM housings open as well but it took me a significant amount of time to do it. I've had my share of retrofits in the past but Toyota seems to use a really resilient permaseal. 75% of the time it took to do my retro was just opening the headlights.

For high beams I'm actually using a combo of the original OEM halogen reflector + the MLED 2.0 high beam. This was accomplished by using a splitter coming off of the OEM headlight harness. The output honestly is pretty substantial.

 

[jojotheduck]

I did this too, using connector adaptors - one of which melted after about a year. Spooked me enough to go back to the original bulbs.

I changed out H11s for H9s for my Halogen projector 2018 4Runner. I believe they are 65watts vs 55. I can tell a small difference but thinking I need to read this thread carefully and consider a different route.

 

[Xtremluck]

Does this get rid of the mysterious shadow (an L shaped clip?) present in the OEM bi-LEDs?

It’s NOT the cutoff / drop down for the oncoming lane, I see and understand that part. But this was a separate artifact in my OEM bi-LED headlights.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes it would because in this retrofit I am using a completely different Bi-LED projector in a 2014-2020 OEM halogen housing.