FJ40 Head Light Upgrade - LED Bulbs (1 Viewer)
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77mustard40
SILVER Star
New lights on the way for my 40’s Christmas present
77mustard40
SILVER Star
Santa’s gift installed today, super upgrade for the $. May take a swing at the whiter bulbs in Nolan’s test to see how the fit with my old man eyes.
Thanks gents to those that contributed to this thread.
Thanks gents to those that contributed to this thread.
iptman
SILVER Star
Can you guys show how you routed the loom between the headlights? I pulled the 40 in the garage and unrolled the harness and was surprised how long it was between the headlight plugs. Decided to hold off and see how you all tidied up the wiring.
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I ran mine under the radiator
I just installed mine on an uninstalled bib. I was curious about this also. Seems like there’s a ton of extra wire. I considered shortening the harness, but for now, I wrapped it over itself and plan to zip tie it on the bottom/back side of the bib. Not zip tied yet, but something like this, obviously the relays and fuses will be run up near the battery.
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You can cut it if you are capable of crimping 2 wires together 
I have been using a Hella Vision Plus lamp for about 20 years. They are a conversion lamp, which accepts a H4 or HB3 bulb. It has a front bulb shield, which cuts the glare to oncoming traffic. A HID conversion kit fits just fine in these, with similar performance and cut off (the arc is approximately in the same position as the bulb filament). There are bi-xenon kits that give you high beam by tilting the bulb with a magnet (it really just defocuses the lamp to offer the glare above the horizontal). Any LED solution would have to be designed with the lamp housing to be effective. There are lots of choices, but I would not suggest LED bulb replacements in a housing made for a halogen. HID will be more robust than LED (LED's are susceptible to heat). I agree that a relay harness is a good upgrade to eliminate the wiring loss in our aging vehicles.
wngrog, sorry to go backwards here, but what what year is your 40? The reason I ask is that on my 66 I don't have "Plug B", the vehicle side plug. Someone else mentioned that one would have to go "upstream" with the harness, in this instance, but I am not tracking as to where. The RY and RG wires that come from my dash go to the "dopey wire bar" and then from there they split to the two headlights. I'm thinking I'll need to disassemble "plug A" and put spade connectors on them to then connect them to the dopey wire bar, which it is. Thoughts?
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That’s pretty much how I did it. Just used spade connectors
Gracias.
I put a set of cityracer leds in and love them.
I love the idea of LED's, and City Racers lights get great reviews. Unfortunately I live where it snows and as such would only purchase heated LED headlights, and those are out of my price range. Good ones easily get into the $500 price range for a pair. For now, these Koito lights seem great. My 40 is a daily driver, so I need the lights to work in snow.
1966 FJ40 Koito headlight kit install: So I installed my Koito light kit today. As wngrog had previously stated, it is not plug and play for my year. There were a few variances: one was the headlight bucket (as previously mentioned). Second was the lack of a "plug B", the vehicle side plug. Third involved slight mods to the harness. I don't know what year the closed bucket style stopped, and also I don't know when Toyota started adding the vehicle side 3 prong plug that the Koito harness plugs into, but early 70's somewhere.
It is possible to remove the prongs from the headlight plug that connects to the actual headlight. Then one can, one by one, maneuver the individual prongs through the small hole, use a different hole grommet to protect the wires, and reinstall the plug with its weather condom. It's finicky, but doable. Instead of cutting a larger hole in the back of the bucket, I think I'd rather find a compatible part from a newer year and just have the backs of the headlights exposed, but the bucket is integral to the aiming mechanism. Inside the bucket, there is a welded tab that holds a spring, so getting a big enough hole isn't really solving the problem, per se, and you'll end up with a bunch of rust inside the bucket where the water collects. One could cut it, but I elected not to. I also had to lengthen the harness on the passenger side headlight, as finessing all the wires through the bottom of the bucket ate up precious length the harness didn't have. Not difficult, but certainly not a "1 banana" situation. LAST, I had to just cut "plug A" ( harness side of the plug) off and install a ring connector on the ground and spade connectors on the high and low beams.
The cool thing is that, Toyota being Toyota, all the wires coming from my light switch are the same colors as this new harness (red/yellow, red/green, and white/black). And all the plugs are labeled. So you can see which color goes to the Drive beam, and which goes to the Pass beam (low, high). I just hooked up the RY, RG, and GRND wires to where the old ones were on my passenger side wire bus. The wiring diagram in my manual did mostly agree with reality as to where the RY, RG and WB wires hit on the fender junction boxes, so that was also nice.
I am not INTO wiring, and this was doable for me. Took the afternoon to do it all. I'd call it a 2.5 banana.
Big shout out to wngrog!! Thanks for kickstarting me. This forum is awesome.
It is possible to remove the prongs from the headlight plug that connects to the actual headlight. Then one can, one by one, maneuver the individual prongs through the small hole, use a different hole grommet to protect the wires, and reinstall the plug with its weather condom. It's finicky, but doable. Instead of cutting a larger hole in the back of the bucket, I think I'd rather find a compatible part from a newer year and just have the backs of the headlights exposed, but the bucket is integral to the aiming mechanism. Inside the bucket, there is a welded tab that holds a spring, so getting a big enough hole isn't really solving the problem, per se, and you'll end up with a bunch of rust inside the bucket where the water collects. One could cut it, but I elected not to. I also had to lengthen the harness on the passenger side headlight, as finessing all the wires through the bottom of the bucket ate up precious length the harness didn't have. Not difficult, but certainly not a "1 banana" situation. LAST, I had to just cut "plug A" ( harness side of the plug) off and install a ring connector on the ground and spade connectors on the high and low beams.
The cool thing is that, Toyota being Toyota, all the wires coming from my light switch are the same colors as this new harness (red/yellow, red/green, and white/black). And all the plugs are labeled. So you can see which color goes to the Drive beam, and which goes to the Pass beam (low, high). I just hooked up the RY, RG, and GRND wires to where the old ones were on my passenger side wire bus. The wiring diagram in my manual did mostly agree with reality as to where the RY, RG and WB wires hit on the fender junction boxes, so that was also nice.
I am not INTO wiring, and this was doable for me. Took the afternoon to do it all. I'd call it a 2.5 banana.
Big shout out to wngrog!! Thanks for kickstarting me. This forum is awesome.
The Koito upgrade is amazing. How about a pic or two of your rig with the lights installed? A build thread would suffice as well.
The Koito upgrade is amazing. How about a pic or two of your rig with the lights installed? A build thread would suffice as well.
Looking at getting the head light upgrade kit, does it suit both LH and RH drive vehicles?
Is the head light cut off just in the adjustment of the head lights, thanks
Is the head light cut off just in the adjustment of the head lights, thanks
Roastchestnuts
TLCA #28675 Salt wagon Fj40
Old post but I am going through this now. I have a 64 fj40 that I am wanting to do this headlight upgrade. I already have the Kit to do it. Another member said you had done this upgrade on an earlier fj40. my question is how did you adapt the wiring? any pictures?
I used Deutsch connectors. They do require a special set of crimpers. Good news it is a 4-way crimp which is super solid and they don't require soldering, so it actually saves time. You'll find yourself using them everywhere. PM me if you want a parts list, but I get all my wiring stuff from ProWire USA. Iwiss makes an affordable pair of crimpers. Think I got mine from amazon for less than $50. The crimpers on the ProWire USA site are hella expensive. Another nice thing about this connector is that it is easy to disassemble if you need to run the wires back through holes and such.
As for the harness, I enlarged the hole in the bottom of the headlight bucket so it would allow the harness to exit the hole with a rubber grommet in place. I then terminated the headlight harness about 4" after that and installed the Deutsch connector there. I'm out of town but can send pics when I get back if it helps.
Cheers.
FJ40Savvy
SILVER Star
I installed the kit this winter. I cut the wiring harness to shorten the wires and fabricated a relay/fuse holder. I also replaced the plastic wiring loom with fiber tap to clean up under the hood. The wiring between the headlights was run along the bottom of the front bib. I dropped it forward to make the installation easier.
Builds - Louie - 1973 FJ40 - A OEM work in Progress
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