WARNING: ACTIVITIES IN THIS SECTION INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO: METAL WORK, INCLUDING CUTTING AND RIVETING, DEALING WITH HIGH-CURRENT ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS, COMPONENT INSTALLATION. PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS WITHOUT PROPER SKILLS AND/OR SUPERVISION. CONSULT AND/OR HIRE A PROFESSIONAL WHERE NEEDED, AND ALWAYS USE APPROPRIATE SAFETY MEASURES.


II. Installation.
Ah, was this a fun part... Let’s get started.
Like I mentioned, I purchased a beat-to-hell-and-back used OEM Gen4.5 bumper cover, as my old gen4 aftermarket cover had cracked like crackers upon in a low-speed accident. So, sand, prep, prime, paint & clear were my best gnome friends here:

Now that you have your bumper all ready after your shoddy rattle-can spray job, go have a beer. No, really - if you're gotten this far, you deserve one.
Next, you'll need some bumper side clips. The ones you had on your Gen4 are too tall, as headlights were shorter there. Here's what Gen4.5 set-up looks like:

^That little black piece of plastic that would be under your corner light, to which the bumper clips onto is what I'm talking about. Here's the comparison of Gen4 (top) vs Gen4.5 (bottom) clip:

Ok, that one was pretty easy. Now you need to remove your bumper reinforcement, held in place by 4 bolts, and replace headlight support brackets. Maybe this will help?

And here's the comparison of the brackets themselves. If you can see, the "old" top one is longer to support the shorter headlight:

Those brackets are riveted in. Drill out the old one, and you can either river in the new ones, or tap the hole and put a screw in if you don't want to deal with rivets.

Still here? This is where the fun begins: cutting your radiator support bracket to fit the bigger Gen4.5 headlights. Basically, there's no template. You just try to fit it and cut off pieces that won't let you. This isn't rocket science.
Somehow, I cannot locate a picture of a cut radiator support. Sorry about that. But here's my best effort at dramatization (red line is roughly where the cut should be):

Please cut yours as needed, and use proper precautions when dealing with metal. You will sacrifice some mounting slots, but should be fine nonetheless. And no, I do not believe you will weaken your radiator support in any significant way by doing this.

Once you're done with the metalwork, mount your new headlights and make sure things line up, for the most part. In my case they did not, so I had to put some washers under mounting brackets and relocate the brackets slightly on the headlight itself. YMMV. You most definitely deserve another beer at this point in time. Give yourself a pat on the back while you're at it.

When you go to mount your "new", freshly painted Gen4.5 bumper cover (along with the Gen4.5 shock absorbing foam thingy), you will be in for another surprise: upper bumper support doesn't play nice with your "new" bumper. You need to remove the old one, and put in the one from Gen4.5. You can either just get the small piece that goes from middle radiator bracket to the bumper and weld/river it in, or get the whole middle radiator support bracket. Your call.

 

PLEASE READ THE WARNING MESSAGE IN THE ABOVE POST.

III. Electrical wizardry.
Now, this one always stirs up a lot of heated discussion with most claiming that you need a truck-load of relays to make it work: YOU DO NOT. You need one, at most, and even that is optional in my opinion.
Before I cracked this one, I had been running around like [CENSORED] with a multi-meter trying to figure out how 'yota engineers designed this one. No success. It just made no sense.

Desperation is what I believe they call that feeling. I figured I need to consult an electrical engineer, or an electronics specialist of sort. So I got both: my dad is an electrical engineer, and my brother is an electronics expert.
In no time flat the problem solved itself. :clap:

I was now in possession of Toyota Electrical Factory Service Manual. Page 98 was of particular interest ('Headlight w/ Daytime Running Light") because my car has DRL. If yours doesn't, things will be even simpler, but I'll describe what I had to do for mine.
Google "scribd 1999 toyota camry" and through pure magic you will get a hold of the said wiring manual.

So, two problems:
- Toyota uses the negative cable to turn headlights on/off. They do this a lot in other components, too.
- Gen4 uses dual-filament light bulb, and for some reason Toyota decided to put DRL on the low-beams, whereas every modern car with separate headlights has them on the high-beam.

This makes little sense to me, but it is what it is. I had to re-route the on/off switch to positive wire, as this was required for my HID installation. I now also had to change the DRL from low to high beam to make it "normal" and to not kill my HID's, which I imagine wouldn't work very well with the 8-10 volts they'd be getting from DRL resistor.

So, here are the changes that need to happen to the wiring:

Honestly, it would be quit difficult to explain in words here, so please make sure you understand what is going on before you make the changes. It's really not that difficult once you realize what is what and where on the diagram, and how it corresponds to the actual wiring.

I was able to make all the wiring changes in one place: Relay & Fuse box that is between the battery and the headlight. I had to cut and splice some wires in the back of the box, and run one wire from the HL DRL wire. You only need to make the changes on the driver side headlight, as the passenger side one simply piggy-backs on those wires. Here's what the mess looked like before and after.

Finally, I didn't want to cut into the original wiring and further, so I got some male 9003 connectors to plug into the original one, and then female 9005 and 9006 connectors to go to the gen4.5 separate headlight plugs. Because I also now had HID projectors, my wiring got a tad more complex still, but let me not bore you with the details:

Finally, Gen4.5 corner lights require no modifications at all. Put everything back together and it might just work!

 

Once all is done, there will be some "issues outstanding".

First, 97-99 bumper is "rounder" like Gen3 is, whereas 00-01 bumper is more "square-ish" like ES300 is. The result is that your inner fender (the plastic cover inside the wheel well) is now too small, and there is a small gap there. (Picture below was digitally enhanced to highlight the inner fender)

Second, with the arrangement above, your DRL is always on until High-Beams are turned on. This can be considered annoying, as it stays on when your low-beams are on. Even though it is not blinding to on-coming traffic (nowhere near the glare you get with those HID lightbulbs in non-HID headlights), I will change it by introducing a relay that will disable DRL when low-beams come on - 3-way relay.


Other than that, here's what 97-99 headlights look like in 00-01 bumper shell. You be the judge. (Granted, this was before the final fitment)

 

Looks great slavie! And good job on the DIY thread. I'll sticky this later.

 

is it possible to run the 4.5 front bumper and the 4 headlights? I like the single output of the 4 headlights as opposed to the dual output of the 4.5.

 

Yes, but you'll have a 3/4" gap under your headlights. I've got a picture that was meant to go into the "other" section, I just haven't gotten to it, yet.

EDIT: Updated my last post with some pic. Check it out.

 

Ah, front end conversion, H4 to high/low, HID retrofit all at the same time. Been there done that (with a 99 Corolla, but still...) Oh what fun it is! :lol:

 

Yeah thanks for not answering my question......

 

Noticed that I didn't quote you? That's words for OP, not you. :facepalm: :disappoin

is it possible to run the 4.5 front bumper and the 4 headlights? I like the single output of the 4 headlights as opposed to the dual output of the 4.5.

You will have gaps between bumper and headlights, not to mention a few other fitment problems.

To each their own.

 

What about the tail lights?

 

as per the corners its doable but the corners are bigger. the middle lights are another matter as you would have to replace the whole trunk lid to do it

 

Hmm. looks damn cool but not sure if worth my time as Australian built cars are de contented like you would not believe. hell when the rest of the world had 3 and 4 button remotes we in AU/NZ still had single button remotes.

 

....https://i.imgsafe.org/8cb3ac119a.jpg

 

I guess I was in the spirit of #FUphotobucket and updated the pictures in this fun thread as well. Enjoy!

 

Anybody have the pictures, they aren’t appearing for me

 

 

In no particular order. Can't/won't go through the trouble again - post got broken several times over the years b/c of Photobucket fiasko, then TN site upgrade issues. Hope this helps!