The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

I agree, I ordered Amber as well.

 

I got the impression a GB wasn't going to happen, so I ordered a pair of amber yesterday.

 

Why? Did you break something?

 

I'm waiting for the preordered Morimoto amber fogs to arrive. I like the stealth look on them, but the G4 performance is enticing.

 

Baja Designs Instagram page suggest Jan. 2019 for release of DOT compliant fogs.

Edit: I was just about to pull the trigger on Squadron Sports. Depending on the output and look of these new lights, I may just have to wait. I’d hate to spend $250 on some lights and only be able to use them in extreme conditions or when nobody else is around.

 

Wise call. Lights are a tool, it is a waste to not be able to not use your tools when needed because you chose the wrong one.

You know who will be one of the first ones to have them, test them, and share it with everyone else.

 

Glad I didn’t wait and just ordered the KCs. Don’t like the look of those one bit

 

Those are the squadron sports, not the new lights.

 

I know this is a loaded question - but for SAE DOT compliance BD fogs: I can assume its not as easy as a diffusing lens, but the reflector needs to be modified to produce the correct cut off?

I am curious to see if the new BD SAE DOT fogs can out perform the factory ones.

 

The LEDs are forward facing, so the reflectors will not provide cut off. They need to adapt a projector lens into the assembly, either internally like Rigid, or externally into the outer lens like the others. Reflector cut offs only work when the light source is facing back into a reflector like KC G4s.

Outperform is very open ended. No fog currently matches the extremely wide throw of the TRD fogs, but they could be brighter than the OEM fogs with a more forward focused beam. Depends on what you are looking for.

 

Sorry - I should have been more specific, I was referring to outperforming the wide throw and brighter.

 

As long as they are yellow and have a crisp cutoff, I think I want them. I don’t have any fogs right now because of my bumper. And bajadesigns = fancy boy lights

 

My G4’s got delivered tonight. Going to install them this weekend. I see the screw for vertical adjustment on the back of the housing. Can these be horizontally adjusted as well?

 

Negative. On the bright side, there should be no need to.

 

I see what you did there.

 

Please report back. Interested to see how they compare to stock. Mine will be here next week

 

You are right that information is incorrect, the table should say 'raw lumens'. One of the things I find frustrating with LEDs is few advertise actual lumens which makes comparisons very difficult. Halogen products are all specified in actual lumens, as are residential LED products.

Factory 'fog lights' can vary in quality and function significantly. In many vehicles these are merely decretive toys placed on a vehicle to appease the buyer, most people use them incorrectly anyway, so in some ways toy lights are better for those that run them all the time when they shouldn't. The TRD fogs are a very unique ultra wide angle fog that are designed for maximum side projection for situational awareness ideal for trail use. With my truck a little over 1' from the wall it can project light to the side roughly 10'. Quality is all over the place depending on the vehicle, but the TRD fogs are well designed for a specific purpose and achieve that purpose very well.

There are yellow fog options for the OEM fogs. Osram Fog Breaker 2600k, Nokya Hyper Yellow 2500k and Optilux Extreme Xenon yellow bulbs 2500k. These are more deep selective yellow than true amber. All these are Asian made bulbs. Of the 3, I would be most inclined to try the Osram bulbs as they also claim to be a high efficiency bulb whereas the others do not. However, this is not the Osram you always see me promote, Fog Breakers are made by Osram's Chinese division. It is made by a quality brand but will still be a 'Made in China' product, results may vary.

While colored filters over the bulb reduce output, in the case of yellow it is filtering out the blue light to shift the pattern to more yellow. Halogens produce very little blue light, so the output loss from using a yellow filter is very minimal. Unlike using a blue filter to remove the yellow light which is the bulk of the halogen spectrum.

If looking for a replacement housing, KC G4s will be the best by far for beam spread. But they will not come close to the spread of the specialized wide angle TRD fogs. If you like the spread, you may try changing the bulbs to the Fog Breakers and if not satisfied change to the G4s, just because comparatively the Fog Breakers are not expensive. Easiest place to find them is ebay since they are an international product.

Funny you should ask about the aux lighting as this is something I have been evaluating on my own truck. And like you I am not a fan of light bars, especially after seeing their performance in person. The most important thing in aux lighting for street use is to keep the light source in front of the hood. Ditch lights and roof bars all do far more harm than good by causing massive glare off the hood which harms your night vision by causing your eyes to constrict causing distance vision loss. And then when you turn the aux lights off your vision is far worse off than before you turned them on, and it can take 15 minutes for your night vision to recover. By placing lights in-front of the hood, you receive no glare from the output. Of course without an aftermarket bumper mounting lighting ahead of the hood is a challenge. Assuming we are not talking about light bars and don't have an aftermarket plate bumper, one option is a bull bar, personally not a fan. The other option is going with some sort of mesh grill and mounting lights behind the grill. You then need to consider pattern, personally I'd like a driving beam pattern. Pencil beams are too focused, and some wide-angle beam is too defused for what I am looking at. I want max distance projection with a bit of a wider spread than stock. The KC lights seem to perform exceptionally well, leading me to evaluating their Pro-Sport 6 LED lights vs their Daylighter Halogen lights. All the specs place the halogen Daylighter lights as superior performers at roughly half the cost, and I even confirmed it with KC. The Daylighters were devised from aircraft landing lights. Lux at 10m for a driving pattern, Daylighter spread (which is a little wider than driving, but most similar) is 1962 lux, Pro-sport LED 1310 lux. The lights that are half the cost produce almost 50% greater intensity while also covering a greater illuminated area. The halogen Daylighters will be bulkier and consume more power but produce vastly superior output numbers. Chose what characteristics are most inline with your needs.

In my opinion, brighter seems very likely, outperforming the wide-throw TRD not so much. LEDs are directional, trying to get the directional light to go nearly 90 degrees to the side without completely sacrificing forward facing performance would be a significant challenge. Pure speculation, but I see this as a retooling setup of modifying an existing housing rather than building a completely new one. Based on the existing housing design, it is unlikely the could remotely match the TRD fog side projection.

 

If science is saying the stock TRD fogs are wider I guess I cant argue that. But in real world seat time theres a corner I turn the fogs on at a 4 way downhill hairpin just to see where the edge of the dirt road is. There's a big drop right at the edge of the road. With the amber fogs I feel I can see around that corner way better. If it's not the width of the beam maybe it's just the amount of light up to that edge now or the color difference?

Either way 2 weeks in and I've seen 3 New England snow storms, 2 rain storms, and fog. They've performed awesome in everything.



Side note. I did hit a really heavy snow squall. Warm wet huge flakes. 30 minutes into the drive the snow did start to block the light. That didn't happen in any of the other storms. Just something to note though.

 

@anthony250f this is the thread I was talking about

 

Good catch you guys, thank you. I'll see if I can have an updated data sheet made to ensure that specifically state raw lumens.