The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

I tried out their 18" driving bar installing on a friends truck, you can see my post in post #2177 in the headlight thread here. Awesome product. One of these days I plan on putting together another thread dedicated to aux lighting, like my other threads.

 

Good read! Huge amount of information. Definitely helped me make my choice on the kc hilites g4 plug and play kit!

 

Nicely done Paul! One question... Did you take your gonio data after the lamps reached thermal equilibrium or did you apply any sort of airflow? I ask because your peak beam intensities are a little different than my measurements on the ones I have tested. BTW, I haven't actually tested the DD fog lamps yet. Wanna trade me a set for some Rigid product?

 

Thank you! Yes, everything was tested following SAE stabilization standards. No airflow, just 25C ambient. I would definitely expect some level of variation between specific samples, but I hope the numbers are pretty close to what you're seeing.

I've got a good collection of Rigid products - big fan of the engineering and designs, and I've run various Rigid lights on my personal vehicles in the past - but I bet we could figure something out! Feel free to shoot me a PM, thanks!

Paul

 

Here's a couple of photos for anyone considering diode dynamic's SS3 Pro fogs. The top photo is headlights only, the bottom is headlights + fog lights. I locked the exposure before taking the photos which is why the second picture looks so much brighter. In my excitement I forgot to take a photo with the stock fogs but whatever.

 

Oh man

 

6000k emitters + yellow lens = green output. Highly unlikely to fall in the legal selective yellow chromaticity window requirement. Higher color temps require darker amber lenses to correct the output to selective yellow. You’ll notice Diode Dynamics SS3s have the lightest yellow lenses as they use 4000k emitters. Bajas are slightly darker as they use 4500-5000k emitters. Rigid’s are darker still as they use even higher color temp emitters. While the SS3s can swap selective yellow to clear for 4000k, you shouldn’t swap the 6000k white with a selective yellow lens, as the output will be too green.

 

Did the customer swap the lenses?

Why would a error in stocking have messed it up? Dont you as a dealer get a sealed box from DD, and then ship that to a customer?

 

My set of DD SS3 sports are set to arrive Thursday

 

Yes, we did have an error in a single production batch, which we've been able to isolate - we are working to notify any affected customers now so we can get things swapped out. We have implemented a number of new controls in our production process already in order to avoid any further error like this, as well as additional FMEA steps in production setup in order to prevent errors like this in the future entirely. I'm sorry for the trouble, but please feel free to reach out to us directly if you do not hear from us or your dealer soon!

 

With the new FMEA changes, will it still be possible for end users to swap clear lenses onto the selective yellow SS3s to get 4000k white?

 

There still cheaper and better performing than the competition it would make more sense to buy two pairs, one yellow and one white.

 

One thing I am noticing now more clearly, after reading up, is how fog lighting really does not help distance vision at night and can actually hurt it.

For the last two photos posted with and without fog lights, notice how the other side of the street is actually better defined without fog lights than with. Imagine if current vehicle speed was 25mph, which configuration would be safer. Particularly the curb and gutter edges and height. The presence of significantly more light in the foreground actually detracts from definition at distance.

All of which makes me wonder why, with auto on headlights so common these days, and the often disliked auto high beam option in late model Tacomas, we don’t have any sort of auto mode for lows vs fogs. At very low speed you don’t need to worry nearly as much about what’s far in front of you and the fog lighting gives better illumination to the sides. At higher speed you want fogs off and low beams (or high if not on a populated roadway). Seems like something ripe for automation to me.

 

Yep, intense foreground lighting from the fogs that overpower the headlights is very bad for distance vision.

But it won’t stop us from buying the brightest fog because I dont know? Maybe street cred. and it looks pretty cool.