This is the advise I got from
Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply
First, Take a hard and critical look at the headlamps
themselves; when lenses are yellowed or clouded or fogged,
pitted or sandblasted or cracked, it's really time to
replace the lamps with new original-equipment ones. There
are various polishing/restoration kits on the market for
plastic lenses, none of which will do anything but postpone
your need to install new headlamps because what you are
doing in "polishing" the headlamps is scrubbing off the
anti-UV/anti-scratch hardcoat that was applied and
crosslink-cured under cleanroom conditions when the lamps
were manufactured. With this coating gone, the degradation
will come back faster and worse than before.
Many of the kits contain what they claim to be a coating,
lotion, wax, protectant, sunscreen or other such goop; none
of these does much of anything to slow or stop the
degradation. There is no field-applicable coating that can
duplicate the factory coating's performance (which itself is
inadequate to the task, as a walk through any parking lot
shows -- the regulations are too lax), though if you need to
buy some time, you might try the technique at
DIY: Restoring Headlights with New UV coating - MY350Z.COM - Nissan 350Z and 370Z Forum Discussion .(or swap out the brush-on stuff they
used for 2-part/catalyzed clear in a spray can,
Amazon product ASIN B0043B7UQY ).
But even if the lenses look nice, they're not the only part
of the headlamp that ages badly. Optical degradation of the
reflector is grossly advanced well before you can see it
with the naked eye (which you sometimes can't; on a
projector-type headlamp the reflector is hidden behind the
projector lens). But hidden or not, looking at it wouldn't
do you much good; by the time the reflector has degraded
enough to be described as "just a little imperfect" the lamp
is past dead. For mental calibration on this point: even the
most costly, beautiful chrome plating, the kind that makes
bumpers look 10 feet deep on a show car, is only about 67%
reflective. That's not nearly good enough for optical
purposes; an as-new headlamp reflector is over 99%
reflective. Another note about projector-type reflectors:
they tend to run hot because of their proximity to the bulb,
and as a result they can cook to death faster than other
types. When this happens, the result is a correctly-shaped
beam pattern but without much light in it. There is no bulb
that can compensate.
Replacement headlamps, if you're due, need to be
original-equipment items (automaker's own brand, genuine
Toyota parts
Amazon product ASIN B004GF1X60 and
Amazon.com: Genuine Toyota Landcruiser Passenger Side Headlight Assembly Composite (Partslink Number TO2503180): Automotive ) if
you can afford them for this car, because the aftermarket
off-brand items -- TYC, Depo, DJAuto, Eagle Eye, Helix, and
a pretty long list of others -- are of much poorer quality,
performance, and durability despite flatly inaccurate claims
like "OEM quality" and "SAE/DOT approved", and
important-sounding but rather meaningless ones like "CAPA
certified" and "NSF certified". This is the case whether
they're original-lookalikes or restyled (with halo rings,
LEDs, blackout, projectors, or whatever). This is worth a
careful look at your present headlamps, too, in case the
vehicle received aftermarket replacement headlamps sometime
in the past.
If genuine headlamps aren't in the budget for this car, or
they're no longer available, then it'll take some careful,
choosy shopping to pick out the least-bad of the aftermarket
lamps.
I'm happy to help in detail with that on request.
With (preferably genuine) headlamps in perfect condition,
With genuine headlamps in perfect condition, your best
upgrade path is to replace your existing 9006/HB4 low beam
bulbs with 9012 (HIR2) +30 bulbs made in Germany by Vosla
and distributed in North America through the GM parts
system,
Amazon.com: Genuine GM Bulb Part# 23342527: Automotive
The new bulbs are not some tinted or overwattage item. They
are a newer, higher-efficacy design (Efficacy is the amount
of light out versus the amount of electricity in, expressed
as lumens per watt).
Here's the comparison of these bulbs to standard and
high-performance 9006 (HB4) bulbs. A "+130" bulb would be a
Philips Xtreme Vision, Osram Night Breaker, or GE Night Hawk
Xenon.
Regular 9006: 12.8V, 55W, 1000 lumens
9006+130: 12.8V, 55W, 1140 lumens
HIR2 (9012): 12.8V, 55W, 1875 lumens
These bulbs are very effective and cost-effective; compared
to standard bulbs, you're looking at 88 percent more light
from the low beams. The beam pattern will not change, but
there will be considerably more light within the beam pattern.
To upgrade the high beams, get
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00480J5CW/?tag=2402507-20 . These
are 9011 HIR1 bulbs. They share identical filament geometry
and base architecture as well as the same power consumption
as the original 9005 HB3 bulbs.
Here's the comparison:
stock: 9005, 12.8V, 65W, 1700 lumens
new: 9011, 12.8V, 65W, 2530 lumens
Disregard Amazon's warning that the bulbs won't fit your
car. With an easy, minor adjustment they will: these new
bulbs have a double-wide top ear on the plastic bulb base,
to comply with the law requiring different bulbs to have
different bases. The extra-wide plastic top ear is easily
trimmed or filed to make the bulb fit your headlamp's bulb
receptacle. Once that's done, they go directly into the
headlamp, and the existing sockets snap on. Please see
HIR bulb base modification for details.
Important: do not use 9011 bulb in a lamp originally
designed to accept a 9006 bulb, it's neither safe nor wise.
And most fog lamps cannot effectively focus the large amount
of light from these high-output bulbs without creating
dangerous (and illegal) levels of glare regardless of lamp aim.
Of course, your headlamps _must_ be aimed carefully and
correctly with any bulbs, but especially with these
high-output bulbs.
Lamp aim is by far the main thing that determines how well
you can (or can't) see at night with any given set of lamps,
so this is crucial: you will need to see to it that the
lamps are aimed carefully and correctly with an optical
aiming machine per the "VOR" instructions at
Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply . It
can be difficult to find a shop that has (and uses) an
optical aiming machine; keep calling around until you get
the right answer. "We shine them on a wall/on a screen" is
the wrong answer. To get an idea of what a proper lamp aim
job looks like, see this VW document:
http://www.torque.net/dastern/techdocs/VW_beamset.pdf .
Important notes:
Yours are halogen lamps. Halogen lamps need to use halogen
bulbs or they don't (can't, won't) work effectively, safely,
or legally. This is not like trying out different bulbs in
the kitchen or living room or garage, where all it has to do
is light up in a way you find adequate and pleasing.
Headlamps aren't just flood or spot lights; they are
precision optical instruments (yes, even a cheap and minimal
headlamp counts as a precision optical instrument) that have
a complex, difficult job to do in terms of simultaneously
putting light where it's needed, keeping it away from where
it's harmful, and controlling the amounts of light at
numerous locations within the beam to appropriate levels
(too much light in certain areas is just as dangerous as not
enough). Headlamps cannot just spray out a random blob of
light, and that's what they do with anything other than the
correct kind of light source.
The "LED bulbs" now flooding the market are not a
legitimate, safe, effective, or legal product. No matter
whose name is on them or what the vendor claims, these are a
fraudulent scam. They are not capable of producing even a
fraction of the amount of light produced by the filament
bulb they supposedly replace, let alone producing it in the
right pattern for the lamp's optics to work.
Same goes for "HID kits" in halogen-bulb headlamps or
fog/auxiliary lamps (any kit, any lamp, any vehicle no
matter whether it's a car, truck, motorcycle, etc.). They do
not work safely or effectively, which is why they are
illegal. See
Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply
-- the particulars are different for LED vs. HID, but the
principles and problems are the same overall. Again, halogen
lamps can only work right if they're equipped with halogen
bulbs.
Cheers DS
