after a few years of debating on the headlamp options, i decided to go with the fairly common H4 headlamp housing/bulb swap. few reasons. i think led's look ghetto, i think HIDs look even more ghetto. i am picky about tasteful mods to my build but i see the benefit in the H4 brightness over the conventional sealed beams that came stock. i ordered a set of the visionX housing and a set of their white bulbs. total cost about 100 bucks. i decided to do this job now because i was pulling my ARB bumper off for some winch work (clocking the ends a little) and it would be a perfect opportunity to get into the grill area. i stocked up some OEM parts, which i will provide for you. the job is very straight forward. i decided to also upgrade the headlamp harness with the H4 jumper harness that is also pretty common. ordered mien from lowrange offroad. it plugs into one of the original headlamp sockets, and has its own dedicated power from your alternator with some relays. no need to worry about burning up the undersized wiring now.

after i pluged in the new harness i pulled my bumper and grill. i cleaned up my headlamp buckets (NLA from toyota) and reinstalled them with new retention springs and adjuster nuts/bolts . P/N provided below. installed the housings and new retainer rings and screws (P/N below), tested the lighting to make sure it works and then reinstalled the grill with new clips and screws/grommets, P/N below. after install i adjusted the lamps at about 25 feet out and theyre amazingly brighter than sealed beams. right now the only thing im battling is that the high beam indicator light is dim. will dig into that later.

bumper removal made easy with engine hoist


winch to be clocked on both ends

naked

grill clips

retainer ring screws (8)

screws and grommets

retainer rings

springs

little plastic grommets for behind the buckets

new housings and bulbs

adjusters

back together

 

for your highbeam indicator, i bet you can install an LED in place of the original bulb and get it to be bright. i did so with mine after replacing the original headlight harness with an h4 harness (keeping the sealed beam headlamps), which caused a dim indicator.

details from my t4r thread

 

good idea Wally thanks! Will look into that soon. Thanks for the link too.

 

Thanks for the write up and parts info, much appreciated. I've been chasing those clips for two years and ended up using zip ties.

 

Great write up, Cody.
on the rare occasions when i use my high beams, i find the brightness of the blue indicator excessive, to the point that i want to put a piece of tape over it.

 

i actually agree with this haha. right now, when i engage the highbeams it doesnt turn on immediately, it kind of slowly turns on like a reverse dimming feature. when its on all the way it is very dim though. i think it similar to what wally talked about earlier with low voltage because the harness only plugs into one side of the oem harness.

 

here are some photos of low and high beams with the new setup for anyone interested. if you know how dim and useless the old sealed beams are then you will appreciate how bright these H4s are!



low beams

high beams