I know the ***le doesn't sound too off topic but wait. If you want your sealed beam headlights brighter, but still a focused beam (not a flood pattern) and a stockish looking (not convex but flat) bulb that's great quality. Retofit for older Toyota Land Cruisers 81110-60p70, Made by Toyota and can be had at online dealers for anywhere from $16-$55. I personally bought some last year for $17 each kit, the key is it HAS to be online (if you walk into a dealer it will be $200-$300). Look online to see if your local dealer has an online store, order them and have them sent to the dealer for free shipping. It's been getting harder to get them and you might have to wait if you get multiples but it's worth it. I have them on my panel truck and they work great. I don't know why they went down in price the last few years (you where lucky to find a kit for $150 before). The kit comes with a harness and relays of great quality (everything in the first picture is the kit). Here a write up on them: https://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html Check these out:
About 20 years ago I bought almost identical lights from a Volkswagen Air Cooled store here in Riverside California. The lights were sold as EMPI H4 conversion lights. The store I got them at is long gone but apparently you can buy the lights from Speedway and they are the same ones I bought 20 or 25 years ago they pretty much identical to the Toyota lights although I'm sure probably not the same quality but the price is also 18 bucks each which is probably about what I paid for the 25 years ago. Anyways here is the link. My experience years ago this is before modern LED lights obviously, the lights were pretty bright, but still had a warm feel to them. So if you glanced at them they looked traditional. Unlike the ultra white lights we see today. https://www.speedwaymotors.com/EMPI..._content=be202f5d-5139-4565-80f1-f310502cc1e9
The Toyota ones are gl*** with steel locating tabs, have a spread pattern on the face REAL close to a sealed beam and take a regular bulb that you can get at any parts store in different hues and brightness to your liking. It'll be a LONG time before they stop making the bulbs since they fit a LOT of cars (9003) and the housings will last a lifetime. I've seen the post on the Holley LED, but I'm not sold on them yet. I want to see them in person and see how long they last and Holley continues to make the insert. The Empis don't look too bad.
Thanks for posting this. I just got a set for $23 including shipping! I previously picked up these H4 Hella's a few years ago, still on the shelf for the wife's wagon when its gets built up https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FKIURK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_***le?ie=UTF8&psc=1
You are correct they were plastic lenses, if I remember correctly it was actually perfectly flat also. They used a standard H4 bulb if I remember correctly and back in the late 90s to early 2000s they were some of the brightest headlights on the road, I never got pulled over with them but they were really bright for that time frame and I was in my early twenties so I hung out all night long whenever I didn't have to work in the morning so I used those lights in everything where they would fit. My buddy had them in a pre-67 Volkswagen (the ones that have the headlight covers and you could not tell any difference until they were on. Now that being said today I have a few extra dollars I would probably go with the gl*** lenses but if you're building a budget-friendly car the plastic ones on speedway I think would be just fine for the average person.
These are budget friendly. If you get them online at a local Toyota dealer and have them sent to the same dealer they're $17-$50 for the WHOLE kit. I bought my last few at $17.85 EACH. I sold some parts today and he noticed the headlights while looking at my panel. I sent the guy an email with the part number and a link to his semi local Toyota online dealer......kit is $18.70. Your dealer in Riverside is $17.33 for the kit but it says they can't order them. They might be running low, they can't be at this price forever. https://autoparts.toyotaofriverside.com/products/product/headlamp-***y-8111060p70
They do and I'm trying to find the factory part number to see if the dealers stock those also (My '60 Elco is the only one I have with the 5.75"). If you want to see the bulbs or buy them check out this guys website. https://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html I've been reading that he (Daniel Stern) has connections outside the US and that's how he gets the Koito rectangles and maybe the 5.75" kits. IF I can find the factory part numbers, might not mean I can find them at US dealers. Also I've been reading some people using 9003 to LED conversion bulbs in these housing with success.
Just replaced my square ones on my 91 S-10. A-M-A-Z-O-N ! Super bright and no where near 100 bux. for both 6sally6
Here's a post on another car site that Daniel Stern made in 2019: "The 5-3/4" quad-round system is different in some key ways from the 7" system. All sealed beams in this size are useless, no matter what brand or when made, plain or halogen. There is no Night Hawk (or functional equivalent) in this size. Be picky and shop carefully because much (or most) of what's on the market is junk, though of course all of it is hyped as an "upgrade", so it's very easy to waste money on unsafe, illegal headlite-shaped trinkets. On the other hand, if you have a mountain of cash burning a hole in your pocket for top-of-the-world headlamps, then it's two or four of these amaze-o American-made full LED headlamp/turn signal/DRL units...got $800 to $1,600 for headlamps, and time and inclination to mod the headlight bucket cups to accept 'em? Stepping back onto planet Earth: the good replaceable-bulb halogen headlamps in this size are made by Koito. They are the most efficient (greatest amount of light on the road), best focused (most useful distribution of light), best-built (sturdiest gl*** and metal materials, most careful build quality) lamps of their type in this size. Cibies are a fairly large step down in performance and build quality, and they cost more. Considerably below the Cibies in this size are Hella units. I can supply all three of these brands, but I will not sell the Hella 5-3/4" H4 high/low beam, which is dangerously weak. Just plain not adequate no matter what might be done with it in terms of different bulbs, etc. You will definitely need to install relays and stout wiring; the factory circuitry was marginally adequate for low-wattage sealed beams when everything was new and perfect, and it does not improve with age. You can do this with a build-it-yourself parts kit or a built-up/ready-to-install harness ***embly for your particular car; I supply both options. This will also take a lot of the current off the bulkhead connectors and ammeter, which is a nice side benefit. Bulb selection matters a lot to how well you can (or can't) see at night. Please see bulb test results posted by my colleague Virgil here. The current best pick in 60/55w bulbs is made by Tungsram (GE of Europe); it is a +120 item that is a few developmental iterations improved over the +80/+90 bulbs in the linked comparison. I keep them in stock in both the H4 (high/low beam) and H1 (high-beam) variety. Send me an email ( dastern@torque.net ) to ask about or buy any of this stuff. The correct operation of this system is outboard lamps lit in low beam mode when you select low beam, outboard lamps in high beam mode + inboard lamps when you select high beam. There are good upgrades (and bad downgrades) for the brake lights on a '62 Valiant, too; put in these bulbs and this turn signal flasher (2-prong like original; connect its ground wire conveniently). Reversing lamps, if your '62 has them, use these. Don't subs***ute; there's a lot of unsafe rinky-dink junk in this segment, too. There's no legitimate LED bulb that will work safely in the front turn signals, so keep those incandescent for now. You might also want to add one of these. As is the case with all headlamp installs, there are some important things to keep in mind: • 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. Low beams per "VOL" and high beams per the "VO" instructions here. 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 do***ent. Note that every headlamp producing both a high and a low beam is aimed on its low beam setting. • 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 here -- 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. • And even if you stick to halogen bulbs, it's still easy to fall for marketeering BS. Any of the bulbs claiming to produce "extra white" light (or super white, hyper white, platinum white, metal white, xenon white, etc) as its main promotional "benefit" is best avoided. It doesn't matter whose name is on the bulb -- Sylvania SilverStar/Ultra or ZxE, Philips BlueVision or CrystalVision, Wagner TruView, anything from PIAA or Hoen,, Nokya, Polarg, etc. -- all the same scam. They have a blue-tinted gl***, which changes the light color a little, but blocks light that would reach the road if the gl*** weren't tinted, so they give you _less_ light than ordinary bulbs (not more). To get legal-minimum levels of light through the blue gl***, the filament has to be driven very hard so these bulbs have a very short lifespan, and there's nothing about the tinted light that improves your ability to see -- the opposite is true (less light = less seeing, no matter about the tint). Sylvania got spanked to the tune of thirty million(!) dollars for false and misleading "upgrade" claims for Silver Star bulbs (see here ) -- and those are a**** the least-bad of an overall bad product category, so the math kind of does itself."
The Jalopy Journal
