Thanks, great rundown! Any links to recommended bulbs? The images in your post aren't showing up for me.
Headlight low beam/high beam recommendations?
- Thread starter psilocyBen
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
The problem with recommending the best bulbs is that the damn manufacturers are always relabelling or swapping parts.
There may still be South Korea made Sylvania 9011's around which are very good. The Toshiba 9011 is hard to find outside of Toyota sourcing, but it's very good (but expensive) and I've never seen a report of it being anything but a Toshiba.
You could try emailing Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply - http://www.danielsternlighting.com/ as he usually has high quality 9011's, and has had the Toshiba in the past but he usually doesn't have direct ordering activated because he really does want to make sure people get appropriate products.
For the H9 just buy a major brand bulb that doesn't have a gimmicky blue coating. They're all similar enough to not worry, and if you drive with them on a lot they will die often enough that buying any alleged fancy bulb will hurt your pocketbook more than anything.
There may still be South Korea made Sylvania 9011's around which are very good. The Toshiba 9011 is hard to find outside of Toyota sourcing, but it's very good (but expensive) and I've never seen a report of it being anything but a Toshiba.
You could try emailing Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply - http://www.danielsternlighting.com/ as he usually has high quality 9011's, and has had the Toshiba in the past but he usually doesn't have direct ordering activated because he really does want to make sure people get appropriate products.
For the H9 just buy a major brand bulb that doesn't have a gimmicky blue coating. They're all similar enough to not worry, and if you drive with them on a lot they will die often enough that buying any alleged fancy bulb will hurt your pocketbook more than anything.
This is great info. I'm looking at a gx BASE with halogens and was planning to simply replace the entire housing for HID type, not just bulbs. Has anyone here done this? I know its expensive but we drive a lot at night, I dont mess around with lighting.
Got a 460? I did a LED projector conversion on new 470 housings and it went pretty well, I used the BxBuilt parts. Not sure what's involved with the 460.
In case anybody finds value in my headlight bulb experience:
I’ve tried a handful of H11 LED bulbs, most of which have experienced a failure of some sort. I’ve been stuck driving at night with a single headlight bulb more times than I’d like as a result. I got sick of buying bulbs with some percentage of crappy components in them.
I found out about Diode Dynamics offering an H11 bulb. Also, they’re the only ones with good content that demonstrates that their engineers seem to enjoy doing detailed and reliable work (I’m a nerd so I really enjoy when companies let their nerds be the marketing for a technical product - https://youtu.be/3cGyEA8gtK ). They say it’s all designed and made in the US. I’ve been happy so far. Good amounts of useful light, no failures yet, beam pattern suits the stock housings well and are easily adjustable due to the sharp cutoff lines at the top of the light lattern (as is true for most H11 LED bulbs as long as you install them clocked at the correct orientation - ).
I use Diode Dynamics’ fog lights and mini light bars in my front bumper and am a happy customer with those products too.
I found my Amazon h11 bulb purchase history and thought it paints an entertaining picture of my headlight bulb experience so far w my GX470. (The DTP adaptors are in the screen shot, but are not related to my headlight bulb efforts)
I’ve tried a handful of H11 LED bulbs, most of which have experienced a failure of some sort. I’ve been stuck driving at night with a single headlight bulb more times than I’d like as a result. I got sick of buying bulbs with some percentage of crappy components in them.
I found out about Diode Dynamics offering an H11 bulb. Also, they’re the only ones with good content that demonstrates that their engineers seem to enjoy doing detailed and reliable work (I’m a nerd so I really enjoy when companies let their nerds be the marketing for a technical product - https://youtu.be/3cGyEA8gtK ). They say it’s all designed and made in the US. I’ve been happy so far. Good amounts of useful light, no failures yet, beam pattern suits the stock housings well and are easily adjustable due to the sharp cutoff lines at the top of the light lattern (as is true for most H11 LED bulbs as long as you install them clocked at the correct orientation - ).
I use Diode Dynamics’ fog lights and mini light bars in my front bumper and am a happy customer with those products too.
I found my Amazon h11 bulb purchase history and thought it paints an entertaining picture of my headlight bulb experience so far w my GX470. (The DTP adaptors are in the screen shot, but are not related to my headlight bulb efforts)
Still Happy with Diode Dynamics? Seems these and Morimoto are quite pricey, but they do have a lot of engineering and research info on their site. I'm still running the OEM style halogens and don't mind paying the price if they are truly worth it. Might try to replace the lenses since mine are still yellow and sun damaged on the back side after polishing.
Yes, they've been working great. No failures or issues otherwise. They illuminate the road well. I now have four Diode Dynamics products on my GX - the headlight bulbs, fog light LED pods, mini light bars in the front bumper and their trailer hitch light pod thing.
