The ultimate foglight upgrade H11 (not LED or HID)

For Sale: The original Rallylights ultimate foglight harness prototype, with upgraded Hella relay. Due to prototype nature, the passenger side wire is long compared to production harness. $55 shipped USPS.

 

Hello darkness, my old friend. Night is starting to return to Alaska.

I’ve done some more digging on the Subaru fogs. They are from the Legacy models with cornering assist. As part of the Subaru eyesight system one side will automatically turn on when you turn the steering wheel to make a turn, so they are supposed to be cornering/ditch lights.

Here’s a shot of just the fogs. The pattern is very forward focused and really fills in under the stock headlights while really not being wider. I’m thinking they would work a lot better if I can aim them out horizontally. I’m looking for help seeing the edges of the road in winter under low contrast conditions (overcast and snowy midday for example) not maximum width

Fogs only


3rd gen headlights only


Both



I have a work trip next week that has me getting home at 2am Sunday morning so I’ll hopefully have some on road impressions then.

Side note: I really like the yellow h9 bulbs vs white halogens.

 

These Subaru fogs are certainly interesting. They definitely fill in under the 3rd gen headlights extremely well, and the “spotlight” in the beam pattern is extremely noticeable. If a turn is just right that hot spot shines down the road you’re turning on or around the corner extremely well. I think with a wider aim (and I think they have a horizontal adjustment on the housing) they’ll do exactly what I want, which is to add edge to the road definition in winter as well as adding width to the beam pattern. I think they’ll complement the headlights well, and the yellow color makes the extra foreground light less distracting.

Headlights only (stock h11 bulbs) then with fogs on both sets.










One more with the Hella 700ff’s with 100w bulbs, the green from the grass in my front yard is affecting the color cast. Here comes the sun!

 

Our very own @crashnburn80 did some pretty extensive testing of the Subie fogs in his 2nd gen truck, but ultimately gave up on them due to the limited spread of the pattern - which is what he was really looking for. Sounds like you're looking for more distance - which they have. Glad you like them.

 

I bought the Subaru fogs from him. I believe there is a horizontal adjustment which I’m going to try after my summer season winds down.

 

There is no horizontal adjustment, just a vertical adjuster.

I noticed driving home last night that the spot portion of the fog seemed to be aimed at an upward angle, so back to the wall to check.



Left side has been aimed, right has not.



Fogs only.


If you look closely, you can see my center and target aim dots on the right side. Each door section is roughly 4.75” tall for reference, both sides started at roughly the same point of aim. I dropped the aim point to 1.5” below straight ahead (spec for fogs at my trucks height is 3” down at 25 feet, but I only had 12.5 feet to work with), which is nearly 3” lower than installed.

Not sure if I’ll get a night drive in this week to see the changes but for sure will next week.

 

I think it’s good to remember and reiterate that, while brick walls make it easy to evaluate a slice of a beam pattern, lights produce a 3 dimensional beam pattern that is designed to project out from the front of a vehicle upwards of several hundred feet. Case in point: these Subaru fogs or I think more accurately fog/cornering lights.

When these were aimed as installed, very high, they had an overly narrow pattern and the hot spot shown up in to the trees. Aimed down like they are supposed to be, and the pattern got 10-15% wider and the hot spot pointed well both on corners:



And to the edges of the road, with the hot spot usefully illuminating about where a moose would stand...


And only slightly above the low beam cutoff too, so they add light in a needed direction at speed.

On back roads, these are going to do a great job illuminating the edges of the road in the flat grey light of winter


And my now well-aimed moose lights (hella 700ffs with 100w hella bulbs) reach out in a crazy bright cone of near daylight shining down the center of the road, wide enough to show both lanes and shoulders clearly out to a guesstimate 1/4 mile.

The real test of true Alaska dark winter nights and lots of snow is hopefully still a month away, but I’m feeling pretty good about my lights!

 

While cleaning out the shed this weekend I found the stock TRD OR fog lights that I had never installed on my SR and decided to swap them this morning to see what the difference is. Night impressions for sure by tomorrow night, I have a work event in town that'll keep me late. To keep the comparison even, I reinstalled the Xencn yellow h9's in the TRD fogs. While not ideal in terms of glare, I wanted an apples to apples comparison with regards to light source.

 

so @Unchained 5150 is the 1.0 still the best solution currently for fogs?

 

Refresh my memory brother. I have KC G4 Fog Lights now.

 

The

$5 h11 harness H11 male and female wire harness

h11 harness from rally lights and bulbs listed on page 1 of this thread. Is there a better solution than that currently that you've found? I know that the 2.0 with the subaru fogs was ultimately a bust so im trying to get my ducks in a row on lighting upgrades now. If the KC G4's are better im good with those too, especially if white light is possible out of them.

 

Get the KC G4's brother and don't look back

 

I think I'm giving up on the Subaru fogs. In an attempt to aim them out more horizontally, I picked up a set of longer mount screws (#10 1" long vs the OE #10 5/8") and a couple nylon spacers (1/4" and 1/8" thick) to try to angle the housing. While it worked the beam pattern was still overly narrow and still aimed higher than it should be, while unfortunately also being at nearly the end of the adjustment screw. Additionally not having the fourth mounting tab supported on the bumper made an already flimsy mounting system less stable.

Unsurprisingly, the TRD OR fogs do a much better job of filling in the OE headlight beam pattern. Once again, I must stress that if you add light YOU HAVE TO AIM THEM CORRECTLY, even if they're OE replacements! My OR fogs were pointed in to the dirt as they arrived and installed for me. As a reminder, fog lights should be aimed that the cutoff is 2-3" lower then the center of the lens when measured against a wall at 25'. For my 2017, the fogs measure at 28" high on the truck, but the beam cutoff was down at 16" at only 12.5ft! Fortunately aiming can be done without tools as the adjustment knob is large, easy to turn by hand, and easy to reach from the engine bay.

 

I really like the color of the Phillips H9 low beam conversion and I like the pattern of my OEM fogs. I would like to avoid any blue/white tinted H11s in the fogs but would like a bit more light - Fogs used rarely, mainly for rain/a bit of fog/no snow. Not used for daily driving but occasional slow trail and/or forest road driving. I've seen the Nokya Clear stage 2 (3100K) bulbs mentioned but not reviewed. Any one try them and have any feedback? Any issue with heat from the 75w bulb in the fogs when driving slow?
Thanks!
Mark

 

No issues Using H9’s in my TRD OR fogs:



also using Phillips h9 in the low beams.

I have the Nokyas in my wife’s CRV that originally came with h16 bulbs and they’ve held up fine so far.

 

Some excellent info here! I've really enjoyed reading your threads and particularly like the detail you go into.

I have a slightly different application being an FJ Cruiser which is running a steel bar with H11 fog lights currently installed. I live in Australia though and it is very rare to actually need fog lights.

I am running a set of large diameter halogen driving lights which I am considering removing due to lack of use, frequently alignment issues, and airflow considerations.

What would you advise around converting the foglights to more of a driving beam through bulb selection? If I went this path, with a wiring upgrade what sort of gains do you think I would get over the standard fogs? I do understand that sitting quite low is not ideal for long-distance lighting, but thought that they may be all that I need for the limited night-time driving I currently do.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Mark

 

First of all, welcome to Tacoma World!

As to your questions, you cannot convert a driving beam to a fog beam by simply changing bulbs. The bulb is simply the illumination source - where the lights starts out. Where that light goes (in a halogen light) is determined by either the reflector and / or the lens.

This post might help you:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/automotive-lighting-101.534393/

 

Thanks for the response. I understand around the reflector of the fog light determining the spread of the light, but was more interested as to whether fitting an uncapped H9 such as is mentioned on the 1st post would help lift the beam slightly due to not having the correct cut-off? Obviously these would no longer be 'fog' lights and as such I would rewire them to be triggered from the high beam circuit.

If there is absolutely nothing to be gained here, then I will leave them as is. But thought it might be a way to get some use out of the lights.

Thanks once again!

 

You can certainly make them brighter by changing the bulb, but it will not change the pattern. The pattern is determined by light that has been reflected off the rear reflector and then projected forward into the desired pattern. Because of this, removing the glare cap off the front of the bulb really has little effect on the basic pattern because none of the forward light is going to the reflector, but what it does do is create a glare source as filaments should not be exposed to oncoming traffic. Used as an off road trail light or when others are not oncoming, I would consider that ok for your purpose. An H9 swap will nearly double the output, but it will be in the same pattern. If the lights take a 55w H11, going to a 65w H9 should not require a wiring upgrade, though you can check your fuse ratting to be sure.

If you really want to change the pattern, you should change the light. I wasn't aware the FJs came with fogs, at least not in the US. However, one of the challenges is for a good reflector driving light you need a large reflector. A fog size reflector is going to be inadequate to make a significant difference. If you look at the fog size driving lights that ARB includes with their bumpers, you see feedback that the lights are ineffective. They are completely overpowered by the larger headlight reflectors to the point it is hard to tell if they are on when the headlights are on. To get an effective driving style light of this size you will need to go to forward facing LED pod style architecture. While reflector based LEDs are higher performing than the forward facing LEDs, like KC's Pro6 reflector driving lights, the forward facing LED pod styles are more compact. For maximum performance I would look at Baja's Pro series lights. They have many kits to replace Toyota fog lights in the OEM location with non-fogs, though I doubt for an Australian FJ. But you could also fab something for the mount as well.

 

Yes, you are correct in that FJs here didn't come with fog lights from the factory. Many of the bull bar manufacturers here include fog lights however we rarely need to use them, hence wanting to do something to make them more useful. The only time I have had much use is during slow-speed off-road work but even then they really just fill in some of the dull sections.

I might look into alternative units that could be mounted, but am not really keen on fabricating mounts as this may be significantly harder to align.

Many thanks for the advice!