The ultimate headlight upgrade H4 (not LED or HID)

I emailed Headlight Services letting them know of my ordering the wrong part and Mike went above and beyond and went to the post office in time to get the package before they sent it out and emailed me saying he would ship out the correct harness this Monday. Great customer service. Mike is the man.

 

It is amazing what a difference a small business owner that takes personal pride in his work can make. I've reached out to Mike in a jam and he went above and beyond on his personal time on vacation to make sure I had what I needed. His customer service is exceptional.

 

Wow plenty of places that wouldn’t do that. Awesome to hear.

 

Interesting thread, thanks for you work on this Crash. I wish I had seen this before I was buying PIIA Extreme whites every year at $85 cad a set. Just switched over to Hella H4 high wattage for $20 a set to see what they are like. I will definitely be building a harness in the near future.

 

Anything ‘extreme white’ in halogen = loss in output. You go with the 100/80w Hellas?

 

Yes those are the ones I went with. I had previously ran them, well a different version of them. I thought they had been discontinued so i switch to the PIAAs on a lot of recommendations, have never really been happy with their output for the price. Stumbled across the Hellas and placed an order, should be installed Monday. Next will be some DD SS3 pro selective yellow fog lights.

 

2012 Tacoma TRD Sport (Ground Switched or Conventional?)

I've read through quite a lot of this thread, but can't figure out if my 2012 TRD sport requires a conventional or ground switch harness. I saw the test, but figured one of you already has this sorted. I'm looking to change to some brighter halogens. Getting old and wise is all fine, but night blindness sucks.

 

2012 should be conventional. Ground switched is 1st Gen and earlier.

 

It is conventional....

 

I haven't heard back from Powerbulb after a few calls and an email. I want to order the Phillips Racing Vision GT 200% and some interior leds. I am running Spyder projectors and wanted some input. Anyone else have the GT200s or150s with projection headlights?

 

PowerBulbs is based out of England, so by phone may not be the best way to reach them. Keep in mind that headlight performance is composed of two parts, the performance of the headlight assembly and the performance of the bulb. A performance bulb works with the engineered optical performance of the headlight to boost output intensity. In the case of Spyder lights, you don't have a highly engineered optical assembly, you have a very poor one. So a performance bulb isn't going to work the same way in an aftermarket assembly like that as it will in a high quality OEM one. The output with a performance bulb should still be better, but the gains will not be the same.

I believe the Spyder projectors take H1s. The GT200s are not offered in an H1 bulb, just the +150s. If you follow the 3rd Gen thread where I test the products in projector headlights, the Philips +150s did not outperform the long standing best performing GE/Tungsram performance bulbs, as shown here. In a projector having the most precise filaments has the biggest impact to give you the highest intensity hot spot, and GE/Tungsram appear to do this best. While the Philips +150s are good, in a projector the GE/Tungsram Megalight +130s are better. GE Lighting recently sold to their partner Tungsram, nothing has changed with the products but they are rebranding and there have been product shortages making them more difficult to find. They are sold out on PowerBulbs, but here are some on ebay. (Confirm your headlights take H1s before ordering). Going back to OEM headlight assemblies will give you the best performance.

 

Thanks man. High is H1 and low is H7. I will take your advice and order the Megalights.

 

PowerBulbs does have the Tungsram +130 H7s in stock: https://www.powerbulbs.com/us/product/tungsram-megalight-ultra-h7-twin

However, I haven't yet tried the Philips +200 which are also available in H7, so I cannot comment on how the performance compares between the two. And the +200s are not available in H11, so I won't be testing them in a projector which would be most relevant for your setup.

 

Thank you very much. Done and done. I wish power bulb had the H1s in stock. Ebay said my order should be here by Dec 15. No worries.

 

Powerbulbs has the Philips Racing Vision GT200s back in stock. I signed up for an email notification for when they were available again but did not see one come across my inbox.
https://www.powerbulbs.com/us/product/philips-racingvision-gt200-h4-twin

25% off this week on Philips products with code CLOCKS25

 

you tested these right?

 

No, I just ordered them. I tested the previous version Racing Vision +150 H4 bulb, and it has the best stock wattage low beam performance, but does lose some high beam performance due to the blue coating over the high beam filament.

 

i shall patiently await the results. the 100w bulbs harness dont play nice with my tundra without resistors..

 

Mine are on the way to

 

Ran the Hella H4’s 80/100w last night on the way to work from Edmonton to Fort McMurray, didn’t get flashed once, On the single or double lane highways. hit a bad snow storm for the last hour of the drive. The reflection off the snow was minimal compared to the PIAAs. We were down to 60Km/hr in a 110 zone the snow was so bad.