They are adequate. They work well enough, but I wish they were brighter. I do need to aim mine, as they seem a tad bit off from factory. I put the 2019 Tundra lights in my 2016 Tundra, and those are nice lights. These have a nice color, but the throw could stand to be better. Side of the road lighting is absolutely good enough, just not far enough forward. Then again, that could be an aiming adjustment that I haven't done yet.

 

Are they actually height adjustable?


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I have noticed that the drive side headlight is aimed slightly lower to compensate for oncoming traffic. If you look up the IIHS report it shows up on their tests too.

 

That is the aiming I was going to try to fix. The driver side seems weird when you're on a road alone.

 

I haven't messed with any factory LED headlight implementation. But I'd be really surprised if there are no aiming adjustments possible. There are variabilities in how the front end comes together from the factory. And with an front end collision, there is a chance even when all new OE parts are used that things will be off with the headlight aim.

I installed the factory LED fog lights on my C-HR and there was a height adjustment on the housing. And yes, the fog lights required aiming. Neither side was even close to where it needed to be mounted on my car.

Also as a point of reference, my BMW 135i has the upgraded factory HID headlights. From the factory, the lights were aimed way low. Even though the lights were plenty bright, the cut off or drop off of illumination ahead of the car was too dangerous in my mind. I went back to the dealership twice to get the lights aimed where I thought they should be. First time I was told the headlights were at the proper factory specs. Complained again and my service adviser had to go back to the service bay to relay where I wanted the aim to be. With his involvement, the lights were finally aimed, in my mind, correctly.

I did an HID upgrade on my C-HR from the awful factory halogens. Fortunately, I didn't have to mess too much with the aim. I did have to raise them up to where I felt there was a balance of proper forward illumination without blinding oncoming cars.

 

I did an HID upgrade on my C-HR from the awful factory halogens. Fortunately, I didn't have to mess too much with the aim. I did have to raise them up to where I felt there was a balance of proper forward illumination without blinding oncoming cars.

So did you do a proper HID retrofit or just install HID bulbs into the halogen housing?

 

Does anyone think that the 3 stock LED "lines" that are in the headlight are really dim? I wish they were as bright as the Lexus's "swoosh" are. I wonder if there is a way to make them brighter. For BMW you can switch out the bulb that illuminates the halos in the headlight, at least on the older models before they switched to full LED headlights.

 

Yes, the halos or angel eyes can be made brighter and a different color. My 2013 135i had the yellow halos. The problem with replacing the bulbs which illuminate the halos for DRL is the headlight setup and the amount of space available to access the back of the headlight assembly. Why I bring this up is the HID headlights are also adaptive headlights. What this means is the headlights will move side to side based on steering wheel input along with going up and down based off of a rod that is attached to the front suspension that adjusts for surface height such as going up a hill. The control module for this system (and I think this includes the ballast) are inside of the headlight housing. If you pop off the rubber cap behind the headlight to change out any of the bulbs, you better make sure you get them on with a seal all the way around. If moisture gets into the headlight assembly, it'll short out the electronics and you're staring at over $1000 a headlight.

Because of the risk of possibly frying the electronics, I've left my headlights alone.

 

I'm very mechanically inclined, for my G37S I've switched all the incandescent bulbs to LED in the leadlight minus the stock HID, which are adaptive. Coming from multiple sports cars this forum is very lacking in DIY's or informative write-ups. I'll have to look around the headlight housing for an access point for the stock LED strips. I don't mind removing the front bumper and/or headlight to do so.

 

Being Canadian, DRL is required... and it sucks because I rather have the "triple-J" light up instead.

I notice the cut off on the driver side is slightly lower than on the passenger side.

 

After re-aiming mine, life was much better. I think Toyota aims them low because of how bright they are. And they are stupid bright. Toyota's always used really bright headlights.

The down side is, once every now and then someone flashes their high beams at me thinking my brights are on. But it's usually a older car with dimmer lights aimed poorly. For example, in my MX5 with the stock sealed beam glass headlights everyones headlights over powered mine and blinded me at night. I switched the to a H4 housing with just typical bulbs in them. Now they have enough light output to cancel out some of the oncoming headlights and I can see!

So yeah re-aiming the headlights does wonders. The LED output is more than enough to get the job done.

 

After re-aiming mine, life was much better. I think Toyota aims them low because of how bright they are. And they are stupid bright. Toyota's always used really bright headlights.

Except in the C-HR where the halogens are so bad I had to run with the high beams on to get any kind of acceptable illumination. I get the C-HR is an exercise in cost cutting. But I would have gladly paid a bit more to spread the cost over the entire production run for proper LEDs or HIDs.

 

Something for people to think about is vinyl wrapping their headlight housings. I did this on both my BMW 135i and C-HR on the headlight housings before they had many miles on them exposed to road rash hazards. For the cost I think it's worth it to see if the clear vinyl wrap will protect the headlight lens and thus keep them from fogging/yellowing.

 

Does this gen offer auto hb? That's annoying.

 

I have them on my 17 RAV4 but I never use them. I don't ever have an issue flipping them down and up quickly. Helps to keep me attentive while driving at night.

 

The C-HR also has auto high beams. It was a necessity when I had the stock halogens. But even with the stock halogens, as you've discovered, it was more annoying than helpful. Times when the high beams should turn off, it doesn't. And some times, the AHB gets confused.

 

@SuperchargedMR2, that is a great write up and way more eloquent than I ever could have made it. I am always one to buy a new housing built from the ground up with the purpose of whatever light source I'm after. I have always just used a newer gen/or upgraded trim model's lights, but I ALWAYS replace the entire housing if the light source changes. 100% agree with you, if the housing, lens, aiming system weren't designed for it, you WILL throw light places you don't intend, and that could verywell be into the eyes of oncoming drivers.

 

Something else I wanted to add with this thread derail is even if I installed an HID/LED kit with totally wrong optics into the C-HR's halogen projectors, it would be an improvement over using the stock halogens. Because the illumination and light dispersion is so piss poor, NHTSA even rates the headlight performance as poor. If you've driven in a stock C-HR you would know what I'm talking about.

 

I thought that the headlights were pretty good on my car; considerably better than any of my previous cars. The one issue I saw was that they seemed to be aimed just a bit too low. I raised them both by about 2" at roughly 15ft - 20ft. Now they illuminate further into the distance and I've yet to have anyone complain that my headlights are too bright.

 

I do agree that the Corollas lights seem a bit low and may bring them up a bit over the weekend. I'll see if I can find an older HID Planet aiming guide as I cant remember what the numbers were.