SYLVANIA Brightens the Future of a 2010 Toyota 4Runner Project Backcountry Revival

Behind me, you might be seeing a really well worn out Toyota 4Runner. It's got about 211,000 miles on it and it's starting to show some age. It's been beat pretty well. As you can tell, the worn winch is kind of looking a little hammered on top. The box is a little wore out. The ARB bumper has been put to some really good use. There's a whole bunch of cool things going on in there. From a water system that comes out the back right quarter, I can only assume was used for showers. And at one point, this was a 2010 SEMA build and it was top notch. It had four-wheeler magazine written on the side of it. It was kind of a combination of them and Toyota put it together and it was absolutely built for overlanding before overlanding was really a thing. This thing was handed over to the Motor Trend editorial staff and it was used for a whole bunch of great shows. Some maybe y'all have watched, including Dirt Every Day, and it has been absolutely hammered into the ground. And what better to do that with than a Toyota? But now it's come time to bring this thing back to life a little so the Motor Trend editorial team can continue off-roading in it. We're going to get ready and pull this thing in the shop, but before we do that, we're going to run it through the confidence course. Well, that was a lot of fun. But as we can tell, there's a lot of rattling going on. It needs a car wash severely, but even more than that, it needs a little bit of body work. So first thing we're going to do is send this thing off, get it freshened up with a little bit of body work, some fresh paint, so at least it's looking the part when it shows up to do its work. But before we do that, while we have it here in the shop, we're going to start installing some Sylvania interior lights because this is mainly used as camera crew or editorial staff. We want to make sure when they drop their SD card in the car and they're driving down the road, they can see the floor and they can find it. And right now, half of them don't work. And we've got a couple of different colors in there, which is, you know, not the best. After we're done with that, and it's back from paint because we don't want to get any overspray on something like this light bar, we're going to add a little bit of light to the exterior because the editorial team has been complaining about not being able to see where they're going. And that's kind of important with what they're doing. So we got a few light pods. We have a nice light bar here. We actually have another one as well. We'll see what fits on the bumper best or decide where we're going to put it. But we have a few different options. There's an ultra series and a rugged series, and we're going to kind of pick and choose what fits where and why, you know, if we need something a little more rugged on the bumper for hitting trees and going through water, probably going to run that route. Or if we really need some extra light, we're going to run the ultras. And then we have a tire inflator here. Although we do have an onboard air compressor, this is something where you can start it, let it run. It's going to go to the PSI you put it at, and then you're just done. But I'm really excited about putting these LED lights on the interior. I know personally, I use them in all the hot rods I use for a couple of reasons. They don't melt the lens I just put in. They're a lot cooler running, and the colors coming off them are a lot better. Personally, myself, I love their 1157 version of the red taillight. It really helps me when I'm building, say, like an old 30s car, and it's got a single light or dual lights in the back, and you can't quite see them because they're so dim. It really brightens it up so people know when I'm hitting on the brakes so I don't get hit in the back. But for now, we're going to hop in the interior, and we're going to start brightening up the day inside that cabin. Bam! All right, now that we have these lenses off up here, we did just take the battery off and the doors were open. So these bulbs might be a little hot. Make sure, you know, do a little test or give them 5-10 minutes to cool down. Light bulbs, especially incandescents, are red hot metal. The heat is what gives you the light in an incandescent, and we want to make sure we don't lose our fingerprints on this one, unless you're trying to. Now these bulbs really like to stay in their home. I just can't quite get enough grip. I think we might go try a little different way of doing that, and that's going to be a great tech tip. Because what we're going to do is we're going to wrap this tape around that bulb and leave ourselves a little bit of tail, and that way we can pull it straight out. And we got it out. Let's see how we wrapped the tape around the top of that, and it gave us something to pull on. It's very small up in there for my fingers. All of our interior light bulbs we're using are Sylvania Zebo LED miniature bulbs. So now we got these out. These are 168s. They're real easy to install. You just line up the tabs. Fits in the hole perfect. I'm going to start cleaning up these lenses because it's important. Really, these are going to be more of a modern white light than an incandescent yellow, which I prefer because I can see things better. And as I get older, it starts to help more and more. But as you're doing this, you should always clean your lenses because what good is a new bulb if it's shining through a whole bunch of dust? All right, now what we're going to do is we're going to take this door light out. There's one on all four doors, and what you got to do is you just got to get your little tool in here. There we go. And we got that sucker popped out. Now you can unplug this, which we probably will just to check for corrosion in the system itself. We're going to try to get down in here and clean, and we're going to try to get this bulb out of there. You can see right here, you can reach down in there. All we're doing is popping it out. It's out now. We've opened up another box of brand new Sylvania 168s, which is kind of nice that the map lights and the door lights are all the same bulb. Makes it pretty easy. And we want to make sure you don't see any burn marks or any discoloration in any of the, you know, electrical system here as far as the circuit goes. And everything here looks nice and clean. I don't see anything down in between there as far as corrosion goes. So now we can pop our new bulb in here, get it lined up, and it fits perfect. Oh, that is a nice fit. So now we're going to try to get this vanity light out and see if we can replace the bulbs in it because they're a very yellow incandescent look. At least I can see that somebody else has been in here. Now you're about to see the difference in quality between the lights. This right here is an aftermarket LED light that you see a lot. It's kind of a no-name brand. There's electricity running in here, so you run the chance of shorting anything out. What I really like about the Sylvania is everything's encapsulated in the bulb itself. All right, so now we're going to do these two hatch lights, which I could call like a rear dome personally, but we just need to pop these out, replace these bulbs. Shouldn't be too difficult. Now we did notice when we first opened up this tailgate here that we had two different color lights and one looked like an LED, which is what we have. The beauty of running the Sylvania is that we're putting in here is that all of their interior lights have the same color temperature to them. So if you were to replace one in the next six years or 20 years down the line, it's going to have the same look to it. You don't have to change them all to get the colors the same. Well, I'm really impressed with how those interior lights turned out. It's a lot brighter in there. It's a lot easier when I'm getting out to see what's on the ground. It really spruced up the interior. But as you can tell, we got a lot of work to do on the exterior lights to come. But for today, we're done and we're sending this thing to paint. So we'll see you guys next time when we tackle these exterior lights.