Our cabin lighting is also in need of an upgrade beyond the simple dim incandescent lights provided by Toyota. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the stock lighting on the Tacoma but it’s fairly dim. Since we are dealing with lighting already Form Lighting’s partner company Diode Dynamics also manufacturers LED’s for cabin lights. For nearly 20 years Diode Dynamics designs and tests a vast array of LED lighting products many of which are manufactured in St. Louis Missouri. Unimpressed by many of the cheaply made lighting products overseas they start with higher quality materials and build it themselves. Today Diode Dynamics make some of the best vehicle lighting solutions available; with a wide variety of both vehicle specific and universal applications.
Our cabin lighting was so low we had to crank the ISO up on our camera just to get a clear pictureWhile the lighting was functional with the factory bulbs it wasn’t very good. At night there were lots of areas in the cabin that had no illumination.Like the interior the rear license plate lights worked but they were out of place after we had upgraded our taillights and interior lights.
Map light install
Normally you’d access the bulb for the map lights by popping off the little plastic cover on the control panel. Not so for the Tacoma. Instead you’ve got to take the whole panel off. Prying the panel off at first feels like you’re using more force than you should. The retaining clips look tough enough for a few removals. We’ve removed the map light on the right and the retaining socket is still on the left. These LED’s should last the lifetime of the vehicle but Toyota’s are known for their longevity too.To compare and contrast here’s one of the Diode Dynamics HP3 bulbs compared to the stock halogen bulb.
Even though these vanity lights will rarely be used, it would be out of place to change everything else and not change out the lights here too. It’s the SMF1 6000k bulb from Diode Dynamics.
