:welcome:
I bought a 2009 Camry for my 16 year old son.
Spiffy! Yet safe, relatively efficient, reliable.
The first time I drove it at night, the low beams were just not right. They work, but they cast shadows on the road. They were aftermarket assemblies so, thinking they were defective, I replaced them. The replacements did the same thing. I tried a different brand. Same thing.
All of those were defective because they were aftermarket units. None of them, and I mean this and it's fact, none of them are any good. Hopefully you were able to get your money back on the aftermarket units you got.
Got original equipment ones from Toyota. Same thing. They cast a dark shadow on the road and then about 75 feet behind that shadow is a lighter shadow. I have had a mechanic and the owner of a collision shop look at it. Both are very experienced and both say they have never seen anything like it. High beams are perfect.
You definitely need to get the lamps aimed properly; you don't describe that the aim was set with a device like Hella's Optical Beamsetter. If they're aiming the lamps on the wall, they need to not just drive it up against the nearest wall and get to cranking on the screws. There's a procedure detailed
here that goes into the details. It takes the right location, a little bit of setup time, and some patience.
There's another thing that might be at play since you're not the original owner-- someone may have stuck an HID kit where the H11 bulbs should have gone. This will surely cause major focus issues. If it's got an HID kit installed, remove it and destroy it before taking the metals in for recycling.
These lamps offer excellent glare control-- even if the new Toyota lamps came with a set of bulbs, remove the H11 and upgrade to the H9 such as the from
Philips. There's a simple modification to the base of the H9 to allow the power connector to plug in.
Get *four*; usually when replacing bulbs keeping an older bulb from the original set as a spare is a good idea until you can then replace both lamps at once, but there's too high a performance differential between them to drive as safely. Get four, so that when one burns out you can then replace the pair all at once. Then order another pair at a time from then on.
The high beams use the 9005. The
HIR1 (or 9011) is a fine upgrade to the high beams. There's a simple base mod needed, described
here (no relation to this site).
And by all means, once the lamps are aimed, bulbs upgraded properly, and spares provided, do not let your son try to second-guess us and YOU by trying to 'upgrade' everything.