LED headlight and fog light upgrade / replacement

[Adoniram]

So the Limited trim comes with projector housings but not HID/LED bulbs. Swapping to LED seemed an obvious choice, and I hope this post helps others who are considering doing the same. I used DDM Tuning for parts as I've good experiences with them in the past.

I used their 40W LED kit plus the decoders. I'm not sure the decoders were necessary, but they weren't expensive and the last thing I wanted was a CEL down the road.

The bulbs require a little ballast thing attached to the bulb wire. Not a big deal but another complication. The decoders are another box in the linkage.
Comparison of the OEM bulb vs DDM Tuning LED:


Before:


To do this, I had to drill a hole in the dust cover for the headlight bulbs. There isn't enough room the housing to hold the various pieces, and this was exactly what I did with a Subaru once upon a time. For the passenger side, I decided to zip-tie the ballast(?) and decoder to the top of the dust cover for the air pump thing (at least I think that's what it is).


Before mounting, I put a little strip of closed-cell foam on the back of the ballast and decoder just to reduce any vibrations:


Tied down:


On the driver's side, I had to zip-tie the ballast and decoder to the stock wiring harness as there was no good place to put this...


After, you can see a big color difference. Never mind the relative brightness as this was shot in a well-lit garage. I promise it's quite an improvement.

 

[Adoniram]

So now onto fog lights. I saw several posts and youtube videos about accessing the fog light bulbs, but decided on a different approach. Under the vehicle, there's a small dust cover in each front corner with 3 10mm bolts plus one pop-it.


Remove the 10 mm bolts, and swing the plastic out of the way. You will need to reach far to feel the fogs, but they are accessible! And you didn't even need to remove your wheel well dust cover, or bend anything.

Now, the 4Runner states it takes an H16 bulb, but it's a special type with "OSRAM" written on back. After discussing this with the people at DDM Tuning, they recommended one of their H11 fog light bulbs (much lower power than the typical headlight bulbs). I used one that looked to have a more uniform spread of light. Some of the bulbs had only 4 or 6 diodes, and I thought that would create some weird lines/shadows.


THESE BULBS DID NOT FIT (at first). I had to use my dremel tool with a grinder attachment to trim down the three little fins to make it fit. It is VERY close, but not quite there. The gasket is also a wee tad thicker so I swapped with the original gasket. Now they fit just fine.

After install:


Final thoughts: Well worth the money, and I really like the look. If I had known about the fitment issue with the fogs, it would have taken only an hour to do everything. Hopefully this guide helps someone else do the same.