The ultimate foglight upgrade H11 (not LED or HID)

Oh boy! I can't wait to see this one!

Then again, it'll probably just end up with me parting with even more of my hard earned money.

 

Placed my order today for the HL282H11 wiring harness from rally lights.

 

Do you have a pic of where #2 is? I'll admit, I haven't even looked. It's cold outside

 

This and the headlight upgrade threads are very interesting. I plan on reading them both all the way through, but until then do you have a link to the definitive best bulbs and other required equipment for both upgrades?

 

#2 is where your stock headlight plugs in on the driver side.

Headlight thread is solid. If you are looking for best bulbs for the fogs, I'm working on version 2.0. GE Megalight +130s are the best stock wattage bulb with no harness needed, but for v2.0 I am looking to go more yellow/amber and increase the output. But it is going to require a bit more custom work.

 

Hello all, new to tacomaworld not to tacomas. Purchased all bulbs for ultimate headlight, foglight, and reverse light upgrades. Waiting to purchase headlight and foglight harnesses because I wanted to buy both from headlight services, as their build quality looks very impressive. I sent Mike at Headlight Services an email and this was my email and his response:

(I was wondering if you could make a fog light harness for my Tacoma,

as it was mentioned on Tacoma World that you may make it in 14 AWG,

but not list it on your site and that Mike is the person to contact. I was wondering if the Fog Light Harness can be made in 12 AWG. The Fog Lights have H11 connectors.)


"Thank you for your email.

I do not have a harness for the fog lamps. I need to get a Tacoma in the garage to measure and fit up a harness. I do have all the H11 components.

So I am sorry and must say no on the fog light harness until I can get a vehicle to measure. I might be able to put together a kit and you would have to build it yourself? Be forewarned, the H11 connectors are a little fussy.

Mike"


Figured I would post this in the hope that someone could send him the required measurements or possibly stop by his shop if in the area? As i mentioned before his build quality looks superior to that of the Rallylights harness, with the china made hella relays and sending the h11 connectors. Headlight Services has all components to make the harness including building with the Bosch/Tyco relays. Can wait a bit to see if that is possibility, otherwise I will go with the Headlight services Headlight harness and Rallylights Foglight harness route as mentioned in this thread.

Thanks

 

Welcome to TW!

I'd suggest holding off on the foglight harness for just a little longer, as I am working on something better, v2.0. While my fog upgrade is massively brighter, the OEM pattern does not do a good job of glare control, so the upgrade causes more glare than ideal for oncoming traffic street use even though the pattern is the same as stock. I'm hoping my new design will significantly reduce glare while further increasing output over the v1.0 version and allow tuning of the color temperature. And no harness needed, unless you want even greater output. Parts are due this week if snowmageddon doesn't slow things down.

FYI - Problem with the H11 connectors is they max out at 14 AWG. Getting 12 AWG in there is a PITA. I can see if Mike is willing to take on the additional harness work. I have all the measurements and specs, as I prototyped the concept, and the harness will also benefit the 3rd gen crowd.

 

Thanks crashnburn80 for responding, I will be waiting for sure to see the outcome. Your work and research is greatly appreciated. I have emailed Mike (Headlight Services) your response to give him a heads up on contacting him with the measurements and specs. I think he will be happy with the increased work load, and a lot of people will be happy to see a fog light harness from Headlight Services!

 

I emailed him last night, we’ll see what he says. He does make outstanding quality products and it would be great to see a fog harness and 3rd Gen headlight harness made by Headlight Services.

 

Despite the snowpocalypse, my new assemblies arrived early! And these things are really nice.



Now if I could just get my power back at my house so I could test them...

Edit: Power is restored! Will have updates tonight.

 

Mom, he's teasing me!

 

Where to start. One of the issues with the original version of this mod is that the OEM fogs do not do a good job of glare control, which is greatly amplified by the higher power bulbs. If you look at the 2nd gen headlight assembly you have a glare guard over the top of the bulb, so that all light output is reflected off the reflector in a controlled pattern. If you look at the Tacoma fog light, it does not have this glare guard. Instead it relies on the glare cap on the bulb itself. This is better than nothing but does a poor job at preventing forward escaping light that hasn’t come off the reflector from coming out of the assembly. Any light that is not reflected off the back of the reflector is not controlled and hence causes glare. So the OEM design does cause some SAE acceptable level of glare. Which is why the headlights have the boxed glare guards in the assembly, to ensure all output is reflected output to have better pattern control and less glare.

To make things further complicated, to get higher output and more options, moving to the H9 platform is required. These can produce higher output and lower power draw with less heat. But, the H9 is a high beam bulb without a glare cap. Meaning it is going to cause excessive glare.

So what is really needed is an OEM grade fog, that is well made to stand higher bulb temps, with a wide angle pattern more intended for off road use, that has a full glare guard in the assembly and is designed to use H11s so we can swap H9s, and is the same diameter and bolt pattern on the assembly as a Tacoma so it can bolt right in without modification. Not such a small list of requirements.

But.

OEM Tacoma vs OEM.... Subaru




Based on all my research the Subaru units should fit and be a direct bolt in, but to my knowledge no one has ever tried or even considered this. They have metal bodies, with a glass lens an internal glare guard like a headlight and seem to be the same size and bolt pattern. The housing is a bit thicker making the reflector slightly smaller, which isn’t ideal.

Going to test and compare performance now.

 

So the Subaru fogs do decent at reducing glare. Running glare capped Volsa H9s in a OEM 2nd Gen Tacoma fog vs the Subaru fogs, the Subaru fogs reduce glare as measured with a lux meter above the cut off by 50%. An excellent reduction. While running a high output H9 in the Subaru housing the glare was actually measured less than running a stock H11 bulb in the Toyota housing.

Glare can be difficult to photograph. Tacoma fogs left, Subaru fogs right.





No matter the angle the Tacoma fogs really hurt the eyes to look at, whereas the Subaru fogs are not offensive in the slightest.

However, these fogs have very different patterns. The Tacoma fogs are far wider angle. And the Subaru fogs provide an innovative hot spot aimed at the ditch.



Ditch hot spot measured mid-500s in lux while the rest of the beam was in the 200-300 range. Whereas the Tacoma units had a larger area of coverage, but were in the 200-275 lux range.

Not sure what I think yet.

 

I'm going over the mountains later this week in what seems to be the snow event of the decade. I think I am going to install these tomorrow with a set of 2300k H9 bulbs (measured at 2500k) and test them out to see what I think. For the time being I'll trim the bulbs and mount them on my HD foglight harness. Will post pics when done.

 

One more set of comparison data points. I thought it would be interesting to compare the brightest yellow/amber SAE fog I have on file, which still has not yet been publicly released, to these Subaru fogs running performance Xencn 2300k H9 bulbs, which I posted earlier at post #378 here.

The Rigid SAE ambers are by far the brightest yellow/amber fog out there (or soon to be out there). So how do these compare?



The Subaru/Xencn combo are lower in color temperature, higher in CRI and higher in lux output. And that lux is not measured in the Subaru specialized ditch light hotspot, which is nearly 2x brighter than the rest of the beam. All these measurement were taken at 13.8v, which is the voltage at the OEM connector. Adding the standalone harness will increase that voltage to further increase output. I'm also currently waiting on the higher output 70w H9 version of this Xencn 2300k bulb, which combined with the higher voltage supplied by the harness should push output noticeably higher.

Only downside so far is the Xencn H9s will not lock into the Subaru housing without trimming the metal tabs on the collar, which is a mild annoyance. Some other H9s will lock in without modification.

 

Do you have a link or part number to the Subaru fogs? @crashnburn80

Btw thank you for all your research on these lighting upgrades.

 

Subaru part numbers:
84501AL02B and 84501AL03B

I would wait till I actually try mounting these so I can confirm figment before ordering. I’ve just been sharing the results as I go. I bought mine as a pair at a discount off eBay.

 

After picking my way home last night in a foggy blizzark, I suddenly wished I had a bright yellow fog bulb to help me see where I was going. Very interested in how the Subaru set up works out once mounted.

Whats the overall forward projection like on these? I'm hoping to have better light on flat grey days when the snow banks and snow covered roads blend together...

 

Using identical bulbs in the TRD and the Subaru fogs, the Subaru units put out slightly higher lux numbers as the pattern is more focused forward and not the extreme wide angle of the TRD fogs. Not quite as high as I was hoping, I think the glare cap in the assembly knocks out a bit of output in a trade off for more control which was something I was aware of as a possibility. However, that is with using identical bulbs, with the glare cap and greater pattern control we can use higher performing bulbs than we could in the TRD units.

I just checked my package tracking, and the 70w 2300k H9 is supposed to be here tomorrow. Makes me rethink mounting them tonight as I’d really like to bench test them tomorrow to have a quantifiable comparison.

 

Based off the part number of these are just simply the 2015+ Subaru legacy stock fog light?