The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

@crashnburn80 i installed my ss3 max fogs tonight and wanted to know if this looks right , this is at 25ft

 

Doesn’t look far off. What is your beam drop? Should be 4”.

 

It’s right at 4”

 

Then you’re solid.

 

Great thanks

 

Good, maybe even a tick low in my opinion.

 

I agree with you. I would want the beam to project out a little further. Judging off the garage door panel I am assuming the beam height is around 18" at 25' which would put the beam cutting off around 100'-110' on the ground. Personally I prefer the beam to project further so I have more usable beam at further distances on the road and ditches. But I understand the reason for the 4" drop rule so you do not bother other traffic, it's a fine balance to find. The 3rd gen Tacoma and 4runner fog light positions are pretty high off the ground which makes aiming more difficult, not to mention once it's lifted it's even more challenging to find that right balance.

 

Fogs aren't meant for distance that's why the drop is 4" instead of 2" like with headlights.

 

This thread reminds me that I need to aim my headlights properly! They were super low. Then we pulled up to the white shop door, marked where the beam was, backed up some distance, and brought them back up to where they were when close to the door. I just measured this morning and that "some distance" was 40ft! So now they are way too high! I'm going to re-aim them properly after work. Luckily, I can just pull it into the shop with it's nice level floor.

 

Got to test the DD SS3 pros (selective yellow) in the rain this morning along with the Hella Performance 2.0 H9s low beam bulbs. I must say, if you are running bullshit LEDs like I was (Headlight Revolution) yes admit it. You are doing yourself a disservice. This set up is hands down a major upgrade from what (I) thought was originally better. Thanks again to @memario1214 for the SS3s and @crashnburn80 for the wealth of information. Happy Friday!

 

Hey guys, just a heads up. Price will likely be increasing on many LED products in the future. Unknown when, but this is a screen shot from an email I received from Lightwerkz a few days ago. Get stuff sooner than later if you have plans for lighting. I know 6% isn’t a lot, but supply shortages are creating a lot of delays in many electronic industries as you have seen everywhere else that may affect availability. Plus many shipping issues don’t help things either. Just a friendly heads up!

I don’t know how this affects @Diode Dynamics as they are built in the US, but I know electrical component supplies are hard to come by right now.

 

Note that all those brands listed are actually the same company. The Driven Lighting Group (TRS and all its companies/brands).

 

Well. Here's digging up the past. Found this on a Google image search. Long of the short looking to do almost exactly this. Cali raised bracket and pods with the Amber cover. My googling was to see if they even fit.

So. 2-3 years later - curious how you like this setup. I'd like to be able to relatively hot swap to Amber or white. Also - the covers are about 10 bucks and would protect the pods from general wear and tear so might last longer and easier to replace.

Downside is - I have a set of the opaque black ones. Well. Had. They don't last in a car wash driver side yeeted into Oblivion so have a replacement set en route now and lesson learned - will remote for car washes

 

If you check out the Rigid D-series SAE yellow vs DD Max yellow at the beginning of the thread, the white Rigids are 395 lux vs 195 with the yellow covers. The DD yellow Max is 560 lux, while covering a much larger/wider area. And the Max has a vehicle specific kit, not requiring pod adapters. Or the DD selective yellow Pros come in at 458 lux, again with a larger pattern area. So you can have a vastly higher performing product than even the white Rigids without needing to worry about lens swaps/covers and not having to deal with awkward adapter plates.

 

Not SAE fog, but there had been discussion in this thread about the knock-off Lasfit LED assemblies. I tested the Driving version of their lights in the SAE J581 thread in post #370 here for those that were curious how that product performs. The results were not surprising.

 

How would this "driving" optic do as a fog? I think you said it was too intense? How's the width?

 

It would be awful, non-compliant and too narrow.

Example:
SS3 Sport fog width is actually too wide to even capture in the garage:


vs LF beam on a single door

 

Subaru Ascent OEM LED Fog Lights



These Subaru Koito units use 2 down-firing LEDs into a dedicated reflector for each LED. A unique feature on this design is the very side-angled reflector on the right-side of the unit pictured. This is the passenger side unit, so that side-sloped reflector is aimed at the ditch.

But, I've felt like I've seen these before... and as a matter of fact I have. They are the same Koito LED fog units used by Lexus. Covered here: Toyota LED reflector fogs. I wish I documented that post a little better, but these are undoubtably the same optics and LEDs in a different bracket mounting configuration.

The pattern is about 1 door panel tall, it does have some light scatter above the cut off. Not terrible levels by any means, but could be better.


That side angled reflector is very similar to what Toyota does in their high power halogen H11 12-15 Tacoma fogs and 16-19 H11 TRD Tacoma fogs. Directing an ultra wide pattern to the ditch provides extremely impressive pattern width.

The pattern not only spans both bays, it wraps around the walls on both sides coming in wider than even the SS3 Pros in pattern width, remarkably impressive (Never mind all the truck parts and headlight boxes in the other bay)


OEM Subaru Ascent vs OEM Lexus


Small variance in color temp, but output intensity couldn't be more spot on identical.

One of the interesting identifiers of an LED is its spectrum slope, even LEDs of similar color temps will have different spectrum slopes, it is similar to an LED fingerprint if you will. Certainly possible to have similar slopes, but there are almost always shifts in frequency or amplitude where the spectrum does not align.

Raw (non-normalized) Subaru vs Lexus


It doesn't get any more exact than that, those spectrums are identical, output intensity is identical and design looks identical. I think it is safe to say these are the same Koito units used by both Subaru and Lexus in a slightly different form factor. Note: I think that award blip at just above 380nm is the blue illuminated display on the garage stereo, which was not present in the Lexus test. I'll need to remember to cover that next time, I'm impressed the equipment was sensitive enough to pick that up.

I've got these units pulling .63A stable, or about 8.7w. This is a little less that I have the Toyota/Lexus units at, which is 1.4w higher. These units are such low power with their reflector design that ambient temp shouldn't play a factor in stable operating output (as far as indoor temp ranges apply). I don't have an explanation for the 1.4w difference. At first I thought the Subaru units might be a higher power/updated model, but the measured output readings confirm it is identical.


Comparing the Koito units to the SS3s


SS3 sports are about 1.92x the output intensity of the OEM Subaru Ascent/Lexus LEDs and the Pros come in over 2.53x higher in output intensity. It is worth noting tough that the Pros are rated at a 90 degree beam spread, and the Sports are spec'd at 81 degrees. The OEM Koito reflector units have even a wider spread than the Pros, and also because of the asymmetrical reflector design, they will illuminate a greater degree region to the ditch than the center, so when mounted you'll end up with a much wider pattern than that degree spread spec may imply.

Thanks @TacoFergie for sending these Subaru units my way for review.