led fog light replacements

Bull bars, sliders, wheel carriers etc!

Re: led fog light replacements

Postby tarantola_it on Wed Oct 22, 2014 5:37 pm

hi
can you post some photos of your work?
Can you explain the mounting step?
have you modify some original parts?
Best Regards

Good job
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby coughy on Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:05 pm

Read this First ;) ;)Then still cant find what you are after
Use this Second ;) ;)Then still no Joy Go Here
Look in this thread 8-) 8-)
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby tarantola_it on Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:11 pm

hi, thk for reply, amazing product....
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby coughy on Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:12 pm

on a nother note ive got fog lights fitted to my bar as they when in there from factory
does anyone know if i can change them to spot lights like theses ebay ones i found and be leagal or do i have to have fog lights because the car came out with them??
as thes would solve my problem of lighting up close as my main driving hids ar just awsome. need to fill in the closer lighting near the car
was looking in to a light bar but i dont really like the look of where they can mount
these would be the best for me
but qld law??
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby triton_guru on Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:20 pm

Yh exactly like them, I might be doing a bumper chop so wont be having fog lights for much longer :shock: But the approach angle shall be amazing :D
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby NowForThe5th on Wed Jan 14, 2015 10:05 pm

coughy wrote: if i can change them to spot lights like theses ebay ones i found and be leagal


Yes, they would be legal, provided that you only have one other set of auxiliary lights in the front of the vehicle and that they are wired so they can only come on hith the high beams and have a separate switch to turn them off.


coughy wrote:as thes would solve my problem of lighting up close as my main driving hids ar just awsome. need to fill in the closer lighting near the car


Possibly the worst thing you could do. Watch this video, in fact take it up to full screen size. It's a bit boring but quite a good example of the improvement that comes from quality lights and bulbs, even if they could be aimed a bit better. Then just before the 7:00 minute mark he turns on his fogs as well. Note how when he does this suddenly you can't see as far in the distance.



Lights like the ones linked are great for lighting up your campsite - completely useless on the front of your car since they have zero beam pattern and don't comply to any kind of standard. And the brighter they are the worse the effect they have.
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby joshv123 on Sun Feb 15, 2015 4:22 pm

Can you put up a picture of how you mounted them cause the brackets where the old fog lights screw in is very different
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby Dalton on Sun Feb 15, 2015 6:58 pm

I bought a pair of these bad boys http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/231340348318 ... EBIDX%3AIT
These ones are fully ADR compliant and have the standards stamped into the glass on the front of them.
To keep my DRL legal I've wired them up to be on with the ignition, but made it so they switch off when i turn my headlights on. Just looking at these in person I could tell they are very good quality :) took me about 2 hours to put them in and they look much better than the blanks that were there before :)Click to view larger picture
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby ag9111 on Sun Feb 15, 2015 7:04 pm

Been looking at those. How did you mount them, as the original foggies use pins in the plastic moulding
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby Dalton on Sun Feb 15, 2015 7:59 pm

I made two L brackets per light to bolt to the back of the light, and also onto the side of the existing plastic moulding :) Just note that my bullbar didn't come with fogs installed, so I had the blank plates there, and cut those with a hole saw to fit these into as well :)
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby Headley on Mon Feb 16, 2015 2:39 pm

NowForThe5th wrote:One thing to remember is that very few, if any, of these lights meet any kind of standard, whether that be for DRLs or fog lights. They are usually too bright to use as DRLs and the beam pattern is almost totally uncontrolled, making them useless as fog lights. In either case the glare makes them a hazard to other drivers unless used solely in conjunction with high beam.

Of course, as driving lights they don't have to meet any standard but the usual situation is that they provide excessive foreground lighting, making your high beams or driving lights less effective because you're blinded by the foreground. The driveway photos earlier in this thread actually clearly demonstrate this - the distance vision is way better without the extra lights.


One other thing to think about is how often do you need fog lights? I have only used fog lights once before in my car... and that was in the UK :)

On a triton they are way too high up to be effective on any fog you manage to find (limited to the south west of tassie?).

The position on the bumper though is good for the 'driving lights' as those photos showed.

Then again, i do wonder why the hell any car in Aus is sold fog lights by anyone who believes they are anything other than a wank item.

I do however like the idea of replacing fog lights with the LEDs to be used on some forest tracks or hilly areas where the lights give 180 degree lighting left to right in front of you
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby tcrow on Wed Feb 18, 2015 1:45 pm

Regularly need my fog lights in the 85 km drive to work down the Calder freeway. Get heavy fog in summer and winter.
Plus they light the sides of the road up more and show you all those skippy's waiting to jump out.
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby GLRkenny on Fri Feb 20, 2015 7:44 pm

I find the foglights in my ARB bar awesome in conjunction with my jig beams, get the best of both worlds with distance and close lighting
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby NowForThe5th on Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:16 pm

Headley wrote:On a triton they are way too high up to be effective on any fog you manage to find


There is this long standing fallacy that fog lights need to be low to get "under" the fog. Fog actually goes all the way to the ground so no matter how low you lights are they will never get under it. A recent study actually indicated that the best performance from fog lights was actually directly overhead. Bit hard to do on a car, but just another mythbuster. ;) Just like yellow fog lights - no better than white in reality. What is important in effective fog lights is a fairly low intensity and a broad flat beam.

Fog is surprisingly common in Australia. We see quite heavy fogs here, at times, and I've had plenty of experiences driving down to the coast when fog was so thick that speeds are restricted down to barely crawling.
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby Danos on Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:11 pm

Thanks for the info on the LED spotties.

Because my car doesnt fit in the new garage I am going to have to take off the front spotlights (and the alloy rack, its a very tight squeeze).

I am thinking I will install the Jaycar spotties (120mm diameter, around 4.5inch) into the fog light positions that are currently blanked.

Then possibly install a 22inch light bar on the bottom grill (under rego plate) so that nothing protrudes from the front of the bumper.

The spotties (in fog light position) and light bar would all be wired to switch on with high beam (same wiring currently in use for my existing spotties).

Any thoughts or concerns with this?
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby NowForThe5th on Mon Sep 19, 2016 8:21 am

Danos wrote:Any thoughts or concerns with this?


In terms of the wiring? No, no problem.

In terms of performance? Waste of time. What you'll get out of that setup is much more light in the 0-200m range, which is already covered by your headlights. Intensities in the immediate foreground, 0-50m will be significantly higher which will blind you to seeing well into the distance anyway. Depending on aim you'll get some more width but again this will be closer in so not a lot of use unless you're driving at under about 60km/h, beyond which anything you do see will be what hits you because you're overdriving the capacity of the lights.

Also, have a read of my earlier post in this thread on fog light positioning. The inverse is true for driving lights - the higher the better. Positioning low means a significant reduction in range.

Good lighting means balance so that you can see equally well in the distance as closer in. Given the nature of light and how it dissipates with distance (Wiki inverse square law) it becomes clear that it is necessary to put more effort into longer range lighting in order to maintain more balanced and consistent lux (luminous flux or a measure of the amount of light actually hitting an object) readings over the range.

LED lighting is developing at an amazing rate and there are LED lights out there that can provide quite amazing performance. Unfortunately, these are unlikely to be found in 'standard' 22" Ebay light bar.
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby Danos on Mon Sep 19, 2016 11:12 pm

Hmmm yes I see your point. I had wondered how diffuse the light is from bars and you can see they do create a lot of light noise close in. Good review here

https://www.4x4australia.com.au/gear/el ... comparison

The neatest option is a light bar on the bottom grill but it seems they dont really stack up to round driving lights. I'd have to check whether round lights are an option here also.

The other option is to install small spot lights in the fog light position purely for high beam driving. I dont have any lights currently so would have to buy the brackets and then it might be a little harder to mount and adjust direction though.

It might be easier to disconnect/reconnect a nudgebar with lights attached for trips away.
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Re: led fog light replacements - IPF LED foglight bulbs

Postby davros on Sat May 27, 2017 3:59 pm

G'day,

I live around 350m above sea level at the base of a mountain and randomly find myself driving in think fog and cloud, so I wanted a performance increase from the factory H11 fogs when driving in fog and snow at night. One thing I didn't want was a significant increase in glare back from the fog lights, and they had to maintain an actual fog light pattern with the correct cut off, so that excluded HID inserts and other bright bulbs that just blast light out everywhere at excessively high lumens.

I ended up sourcing some IPF yellow LED fog bulbs (IPF 104FLB). They draw 12 watts each and are rated at 2000 lumens, which is probably about as much as you want out a of a fog light if you aim to use them for their intended purpose. They are also a colour that approximates selective yellow so the glare that does come back off the fog is (apparently) less offensive to the human eye than white light (this was the main advantage I could find from researching the fog bulb colour to justify the use of yellow for fog lights). As H11 bulbs are rated at 55W and approximately 1350 lumens this gave a significant increase in light output, at significantly less wattage.

More info on the IPF Led bulbs can be found here (warning: Japanese English....!):
http://www.ipf-light.com/catalog/1xxFlb.php

There isn't much to the actual installation - similar to a standard H11 bulb, remove the fog light housing:
Click to view larger picture

Remove H11 bulb and insert the IPF 104FLB in its place, there is a small black box in line that plugs into the standard H11 plug in the factory harness.
Click to view larger picture

Replace the fog light housing and plastic bezels
Click to view larger picture

As you can see the light is cast downward and off to the sides so that you can make out the sides of the road when driving slowly through really thick fog with the headlights off.Click to view larger picture

The above pic was taken in moderately foggy conditions (no real need to turn off the headlights for the glare back would have been OK), I have used them a few times in fog now (the first time I left an H11 in on 1 side to compare) and they do perform better than standard H11's, lighting up the edge of the road nicely, especially in the thick stuff, though the improvement is not as marked as in my other car which came with H8's (35Watts, < 800 lumens).

I'll try and get a photo next time it's really foggy up here and will post it up.

Cheers,

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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby snakesoup on Sat May 27, 2017 4:56 pm

nice work mate thanks for sharing
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby ag9111 on Sat May 27, 2017 6:30 pm

https://www.stedi.com.au/arb-led-fog-li ... t-kit.html

LED and DRL replacement for the crappy ARB fog lights.

Nice looking unit
I have not fitted them up yet
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby davros on Sun May 28, 2017 6:32 pm

snakesoup wrote:nice work mate thanks for sharing


No worries mate, an easy upgrade worth doing if you drive in foggy weather
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby Crash486 on Sun Jun 10, 2018 8:22 am

Thought I'd add this article about good / bad , when / when not to use fogs.
One thing I learned was that fogs are defined by beam pattern not by colour.
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tec ... lamps.html

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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby RHKTriton on Sun Jun 10, 2018 10:50 am

Good article Crash.

My old Vito van had fog lights integrated in the main headlight assembly and would produce a nice wide 'slice' of light, which produced much reduced back scatter in foggy conditions, compared to the normal beams.

There are heaps of cars getting around our area now where people have fitted LED globes. The result is intense blue/white light coming at you a very little illumination of the actual road.

I tried a couple of different LEDs over a few days and apart from the obvious focusing issues, reflective surfaces such as road markings and signs lit up no worries, however the black wombat just totally blended into the road surface.

Might be just me, but I find the halogens produce a much better light spectrum. The light bar is great for fill, but it would be nice to redirect that intensity immediately in front to a longer distance.

The other purpose of the spoiler mounted fog lights is a attempt to get light below the thicker fog and hopefully let oncoming vehicles see you from further away.
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby NowForThe5th on Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:44 pm

Agree. Daniel Stern is one of the acknowledged bright lights in the automotive lighting field. ;)

And RHK, you've nailed, with experience, what I've been saying all these years. With the exception of this bit:
RHKTriton wrote:The other purpose of the spoiler mounted fog lights is a attempt to get light below the thicker fog and hopefully let oncoming vehicles see you from further away.


The reality is that fog doesn't lessen in density at ground level but mounting fog lights lower is an attempt to reduce reflection of the light from the droplets of fog. Curiously, scientific studies have shown that the best results in fog are produced from a light mounted high and shining directly down on to the road surface. Not very practical to have a street light pole attached to the front of most vehicles, though, and your local Council will likely object strongly to using one of theirs.

In terms of colour, white is actually just as effective as selective yellow but there is a limit. Above about 4500K starts to shift away from a yellow white and once into the more bluish whites the reflection gets worse. Who noticed that the French, after 50 odd years, finally gave up on yellow headlights and joined the rest of the world, using white?

For a more scientific explanation, this article is quite good.

Although actually tested for driving lights this video highlights why LED, and its susceptibility to reflection from anything in the air, isn't such a good choice for foglights.
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Re: led fog light replacements

Postby RHKTriton on Sun Jun 10, 2018 9:51 pm

Like to have an Uzi to take out those blasted fog lights encountered on the way home from a job tonight. :lol:
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