Factory Style Headlights with Clear Corner Lights; Chrome Housing; Smoked Lens (12-15 Tacoma)

Video Review & Installation

Merideth: If you're in search of an affordable way to update the look of the front end of your 2012 to 2015 Tacoma, these factory-style headlights with the clear corner lights and the chrome housing, as well as the smoked lens will be a great way to do it. Now, this will be great for the Tacoma owners looking for a housing upgrade for their truck if their current headlights have seen better days, they're starting to fog up, or they're just downright broken.Now, these will also be cut out for you if you're a fan of the smoked or stealthier appearance when it comes to your lighting and you wanna match with any other smoked accessories that you may already have. These will feature, of course, that smoked appearance but will have a chrome inner housing so you get that dark chrome look, which will make for a very unique appearance. Now, these will also integrate clear corner lights, which really adds a clean and uniform look to the headlight, setting it apart from the rest that integrate more amber details into the design.These will have an OE-style plastic housing on the back when it comes to the construction and a smoked polycarbonate lens on the front, which will withstand the elements very well and hold up really good to any kick up from the street or if you're taking your truck off road. These headlights will also be intricately sealed to prevent any water or dust getting inside and potentially harming the bulbs or fogging up the lens.Now, on top here, this is also gonna have a nice seal. This is going to seal it to the hood, again, for a factory-like fit. I also would like to call out that this set is going to be for just the housing, but it is going to accept the factory bulbs for an OE fit. Now, these will be super affordable at roughly $225. Now, comparing to others in the category, the price is going to be low because this set will only just come with the housing for a simple refresh, which is perfect if you don't need the bulbs or you wanna customize the bulbs setup for your application.Not to mention, the dark chrome appearance with no amber integrated into the housing adds an elevated effect to the styling, which really makes them stand out, making the upgrade well worth the price. Our install will be a lighter two-out-of-three wrenches on the difficulty meter, taking you about an hour to get the job done with some basic hand tools. At this point, we can head over to the shop and check out a detailed breakdown of the process and what it looks like step by step. So, that's gonna wrap it up for me. Let's go ahead and get into it.Male Speaker: Tools required for this install include an impact gun, an electric ratchet, a hand ratchet, a clip removal tool, a flathead screwdriver, a panel removal tool, a shallow and deep 10-millimeter socket, and some microfiber towels. What's up, guys? Today, we're installing a set of headlights on our Tacoma. First, we're gonna watch a quick video on how to uninstall our factory headlights, and then I'll meet you right back here for the install.Female Speaker: All right, so the first step in our install, we're gonna remove several pop clips on each side of the grille to remove the grille itself. With a pop clip removal tool or a trim panel removal tool, go ahead and remove the pop clip. Remove the pop clip on the other side as well. At this point, you can remove two 10-millimeter bolts holding on the top of your grille. At this point, we can remove our grille, pull up on the plastic brackets on top, and then grab your grille and pull straight forward to release all the clips. All right. So, at this point, we're gonna remove the trim piece beneath the headlight.In order to do this, we're gonna grab a trim panel removal tool. And if you're worried about scratching your paint, you can throw a bit of painter's tape on the end here. To release the tab, go on the top here. You're gonna look for a green pop clip. And if you press on the back of the pop clip, it will release the tab. To release the back of this trim piece, put your pop clip in the end and twist forward because the clip goes in this direction,At this point, you can remove the two 10-millimeter bolts holding on the top of your headlight. All right, so there is one more bolt that we do have to remove, which is a bit hard to get to. It's right about here on the bottom of your headlight, and the way we're going to access this is remove two bolts underneath the wheel well liner and one screw in the side of it.With a 10-millimeter socket, remove the two bolts underneath your bumper. This point, we're also gonna remove a pop clip with a stubby flathead screwdriver, twist it to remove. With that clip removed, peel back your wheel well liner, and now you should be able to access the bolt by going in through here to the back of the headlight.All right. Now with the wheel well liner back, you can see this bolt. You might have a little trouble seeing it on camera here, but you can feel the one that you have to remove. We're gonna grab a 10-millimeter socket and a ratchet, and we're gonna go ahead and get it out. With all the bolts removed, we're now gonna release this tab here. You can do this by hand, or if you like, you can do it with a flathead screwdriver, and you're just gonna pry forward.Release the two tabs at the top as well. Again, you can just lift up. Or, if you have a flathead, just pry it off. Now that the headlight is released and loose on your truck, we're gonna disconnect each of the connectors at this point. Go ahead and pull each of them off, there should be three, one main and then two marker lights. And there's one a little bit farther forward up here. Now that everything is released and your headlight's disconnected, it's a matter of wiggling the headlight and maneuvering it in just the right way for it to come out.Male Speaker: Now, before we install our new headlights on the truck, we're gonna have to swap over all of our bulbs from our factory headlights. Now, our side marker and turn signal bulbs, we'll just twist to the left to pop those out, put 'em in, twist 'em to the right to lock 'em into place. And for our headlight bulb, we're gonna have to undo a clip to remove that. So we can start with our bulbs that we just need to twist, and then we can pop our boots off of both sides.We're gonna push down to release our clips. And then we can transfer our headlight bulb and then push down to lock that into place. And then we'll just reinstall our boot. And now we can do the same thing for our other headlight and get this installed on the truck. So now we're ready to get our new headlight installed onto the truck. So, first, we're gonna connect our harnesses. We're gonna connect our headlight and our side marker first because our turn signal's a little shorter, and we need some room to maneuver it into place.Now, it's important to note before we get the headlight in, there's a hole right down here that we're gonna have our bolt coming through this way. It's gonna be pretty much impossible to see once the headlight is in place, but we'll access that by coming through the fender liner, doing it by feel, getting our bolt hand tight, and then we'll grab 1/4-inch drive ratchet with a 10-millimeter shallow socket to tighten that down.And now we can slide our headlight in. So now we can go back and plug in our turn signal harness, and then we can install our two 10-millimeter bolts at the top of our headlight. And then we'll grab our 10-millimeter socket and tighten these down. Next, we can install our lower trim. So we're gonna slide it into this little notch here and then pop our clip into place. So now we can go through our fender liner and install that bolt that we called out earlier.And then once we have that threaded in by hand, we can grab our 10-millimeter socket to tighten that down. Next, we can reinstall that 10-millimeter bolt that holds our fender liner in, and then we'll grab our 10-millimeter socket to tighten that down. Next, we can come to the bottom corner of our bumper and reinstall our two 10 millimeter bolts. And then we'll grab our 10-millimeter socket to tighten these down.Now, at this point, once we've finished this side, we can repeat that same process on the other side. So now all we have left to do is to reinstall our grille and install our hardware up top. So now we can reinstall our two push clips and our two bolts. And then we can grab our 10-millimeter socket to tighten down our two bolts.So that'll wrap up this review and install of the factory-style headlights with chrome housing and smoked lens for your 2012 to 2015 Tacoma. Thank you for watching. And for all things Tacoma, keep it right here at extremeterrain.com.