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Been working on my lighting which was great. I have retrofitted H4 housings with Morimoto 7.0 MH1 projectors and have just been dealing with fogging issues even with breather vents. So in the meantime I needed good headlights as I drive on non lighted rural highways a good bit of the time and picked up some new JW speaker 5x7s which are decent but got nothing on my HID projectors. Since the JW swap my fogs have become apparently not bright enough to help the headlights. I had stock housings 85-90 TA style and I upgraded to blazer housings (chrome reflector and glass) and thew in a high powered LED bulb. It’s brighter than stock but I need more and I don’t want to HIDs bc I did and they are very blinding to oncoming drivers and completely screw up my beam pattern. So I went looking for options and decided to keep everything SAE/DOT approved.
found these 3” Led pods on superbrightleds With a fog pattern and SAE rated. Price was $49 each plus shipping and I’ve seen others on amazon for about the same price but I’ve used superbrightleds in the past for led cubes on my Ram and they work great and they don’t lie about the lumens or amps/watts. Plan was to fab new steel brackets to bolt up using the stock location, bolts and through halls. Adjusting won’t be the same as stock but it’s easy with a Allen wrench and you can adjust them pretty easy. So those were the rules and possibly in the works is a block plate to cover the rest of the opening.
The lights arrived today and I got to work. This is my prototype and I’m playing with the height for Getting enough adjustment but not messing up the beam pattern in the bumper opening. This is where I ended up and it fits good, sturdy using 1/8” steel and it’s fully TIG welded when done. Only thing I gotta figure out is blocking plate cover the opening, not sure how I want to do that.
either way I wanted to share the prototype and it’s fitnment as well as the beam pattern. I have a LUx meter and I tested the upgraded factory fogs with LED bulbs as well as the new SAE fogs. The SAE fogs are rated at 13w and 1700 lumens and 1.02amps. My testing showed It was pretty darn close. None of the amazon Chinese stuff ever is close and usually outputs way less than rated.
Stock housing type with Led bulb lux at 17ft New SAE fog pattern New SAE fog lux 2x brighter than the upgraded stock housinf Pulling 1.13amps and 14.7watts pretty close to their rated specs Mounted Showing the bracket This is the stock style housing with LED bulb. The picture makes it look brighter than it really is.
These are shots mounted in the car between the stock type fog (driver side) and the new SAE fog I the pass side. The stock fog is not as bright in the pic so I got lux ratings to prove it. The lights are about 3-4ft from the door so the lux is very high but the SAE fogs are still 2x brighter and have that long pencil beam pattern. SAE fog 5933 lux Stock type fog 2257lux
Finished them up tonight and installed. Took it out to aim it and it helps for sure. They add width which the JWs seriously lack.
Driver side, picked up wider steel and both are fully welded and painted JWs on top and fogs on the bottom Just fogs, wall is prob 30-35ft away JW and fogs Photo shows more glare than there really is.
You can buy new reproductions fog lights off ebay for like 50 bucks, but you cannot find them for 91-92. I plan to do something like this, except with a small round projector style one.
You can buy new reproductions fog lights off ebay for like 50 bucks, but you cannot find them for 91-92. I plan to do something like this, except with a small round projector style one.
Yea maybe! lol. I'm still going to fab up some block off plates so you can't see around the fog lights in the opening but its just not high on my to-do list.
I did real 2.5" MH1 projectors a while back and I was able to get them to fit in my TA bumper. They worked but had limited adjustment and the projector lens pushed out into the fog light opening a good bit and basically rested on the bottom of opening on the bumper. Once thing I have learned with projectors with defined cutoffs is they do NOT look great at least for myself driving staring at the beam pattern. It always bugs me bc I can still clearly see 2 defined cutoffs in the beam which distracts me. Since I've done multiple setups on different vehicles they all turn out the same away and I now just won't do them. You need something that has a wide narrow defined beam pattern but blends in with the low beam so they are indistinguishable during use... trust me your eyes/mind will thank me.
i just like to cruise sometimes and don't need pop ups around town, they also look meaner as well... I have a formula this i plan to remove the 2 black insert grills and find a firebird/GTA that had fog lights, all the harness and relays should be there, just got to order the switch for it from Hawks. I think i even got me a firebird all lined up to get them from also, in good shape from what i seen.
I think the 87-90's would work, i do... just have to see, if so 50 bucks off ebay for 2 new ones, ya can't beat that because the factory just used a single bolt through the back that attached them to the mounting plate, these have them also.
I used these from Aliexpress. They look just like the stock foglights. They're pretty bright and I don't use my popups anymore around the city at night.
I used these from Aliexpress. They look just like the stock foglights. They're pretty bright and I don't use my popups anymore around the city at night.
They look like flood style LED pods which are blinding and not DOT approved. Not that... that has stopped me before lol. I however do not like to blind incoming traffic as that's a big pet peeve of mine.
Decided to revisit this project and see if I can’t improve on what I have. I decided to look and see if I could find another cheap light to fit in the space better but offer decent non blinding beam output and respectable Lux readings. I did some searched and while I found some expensive options and no real mounting ability I decided on a cheaper Amazon China LED mini headlight for a bike or motorcycle.
This little guys is roughly 2.5”x4” and less deep than the 3” cube I have. My current SAE fogs are 3.25” wide and 3.125” tall and 3.25” deep. The opening in the TA bumper is 2.5”x5.5” so while the new lights are a tad short in length they fit the height better and will look better in the hole I think. Best part about these new lights is they are a low beam and high beam so I can get some added distance if u need it if I wire it into the high beam or on another switch.
now to the specifics in comparison to the original photos at the top of these thread beam isn’t as tight which I expected but not horrible like some of the LED headlights I’ve tested. Beam is slightly less wide than the SAE but it puts out more lux at the same distance on low and on high it’s like double the SAE. Not that the JW speakers need help on the highs bc they don’t (that’s there best feature) but the lows are underwhelming when your used to HIDs and decent projectors. Good news on the new lights is they look to have mounting holes on the sides so I could easily bend some ABS and mount it to the light to fill the gap around the light in the OEM fog opening. I couldn’t figure out a clean way to do it with the SAE fogs and just let it be until now.
I will be working on the retrofit and swapping these out and will snap some output pics eventually.
Took a long trip at night over a month ago and the V2 fogs were ok… I’m still not getting the distance that I want with the JW speaker headlights without having the highs on all the time. The fogs weren’t giving me a noticeable distance improvement but I was def getting some additional light scatter which I could see in signs above cutoff.
looked and looked for something to fit the bumper opening and found something! Silvania 6 and 2 LED pod with DRL. It’s a 5.5” x 2.5” LED pod which is the same opening as the bumper so finally I will fill the whole space like stock and it looks like a reflector housing which resembles stock. However that’s where the similarities end and it’s a beast little pod. 30w with a 10 degree spot pattern and uses real Osram chips and the DRL is SAE rated. Mounting was pretty straight forward and swapped them onto my brackets I’ve been using this whole time. Wiring is similar but tied into the side markers for power with the running lights on for the DRLs. When the pods main beam is activated the DRLs turn off and back on when the main beam is off or if the running lights aren’t on the main beam turns on and off by itself. The pod is a tight fit and has very little if any adjustability but it’s not necessary as a 10* beam has no cutout and will give me lots of light down far away.
the pods are very nice and quality is wayyyy up there even as nice as my rigids in my truck. Only thing I did was flip the bracket and the front lense perimeter plate so the silvania logo is right way up. Otherwise the pod is actually upside down but that doesn’t affect the beam pattern and it puts the DRL down lower which is better.
no road shots as I haven’t taken the car out at night yet but LUX and testing looks positive.
4x more lux than the previous V2 led pods which only mustered 500 lux at the same distance. Nice 10* spot pattern Left us V2 pods 30w low and high beam, middle are the Silvania I’m using in V3 and on the right are cheapo Amazon specials I got to test and see how they would fit. Performance was dismal on the Amazon but the beam was wider and more flat than the Silvania.
07-24-2020, 12:12 AM
