The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

So I’ve been saving up for the Baja SAE fogs and been skimming over the forums for info. Are they not street legal and that’s why they are backordered or are they just frowned upon due to the brightness? I don’t want to blind anyone, but still need them for the country roads I drive on.

 

They are not street legal because the beam pattern is not SAE J58 (fog) compliant, they lack the proper cut off. It isn't due to being too bright, note the SAE 360s are higher raw output the SAE D-series are higher pattern intensity. Baja is currently addressing the issue which is why I highly suspect they are listed as back ordered. It sounds like they will have the fix available to customers soon.

 

Got my 360s mounted up about a week ago but had a wheel bearing go out the same week so was too busy with that to post pics.

They fit great in my CBI Moab 2.0 - much better than the stock fogs. Output is nuts and I couldn’t be happier with them. I was alittle nervous I’d be wasting light with how deep set they are in my bumper but it actually worked out great. I aimed them out to the sides so they overlap about a lane’s width in front of me and have a TON of side lighting.

 

Tacoma World,

We are sorry for keeping everyone out of the loop after my initial acknowledgment that we may have an issue with our SAE Squadron. While we have not been able to replicate the 15x legal limit claim, 3rd party testing has confirmed our SAE Squadron does not comply above the horizontal axis. To be specific, our SAE Squadron is off by 119cd which is equivalent to 1.19 candles of illumination at 10 meters.

Our engineering team has been working around the clock developing a clean solution ensuring the lights currently installed on vehicles can be updated by enthusiasts. Towards the end of this week Intertek (global leader in compliance testing) will be performing another round of compliance testing. This round will be the production version of the prototype we had tested during SEMA. As of now, our plan will be to ship the component needed for compliance to existing customers within 4 weeks along with fulfilling current back orders. Once we have verification the production version complies identically to the prototype previously tested by Intertek a more formal announcement and action plan will be revealed.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out directly.

Trent Kirby

Chief Executive Officer

Baja Designs

760-560-2252 x108

trent@bajadesigns.com

 

Thank you for making it right. Look forward to the fix.

 

@Baja Designs , curious how a light that is so blatantly not legal made it past your internal testing? Also curious how your engineers did not test your lights out, when you intentionally "broke the SAE mold"? You made lights completely different then other companies, but those companies make legal lights .

 

I'm glad to see Baja Designs stepping up to make things right. I also appreciate the sending of actual production units to the lab for compliance testing rather than relying on the compliance tests of prototypes, even if that means a longer turn around on the fix. I look forward to seeing Baja's redesign. While this has been a challenging product launch, more communication in an active forum community is always better.

 

Our Engineering Manager hired the Optical & Software Systems Integration Engineer from our optical program to validate our J583 optic. After @crashnburn80 mentioned our lights did not comply we immediately shipped an SAE Squadron to Intertek for evaluation. This is when we discovered variances within our optical software program. Prior to @crashnburn80 compliance post, we field tested the prototypes in-house knowing we had more spill light than any other SAE compliant product, but where we made a mistake was not sending the actual prototypes to a third party facility ensuring real world results matched what our optical program was telling us. I can assure moving forward, future SAE and DOT compliant products from Baja Designs will be tested by a third party facility beforehand.

Trent Kirby

Chief Executive Officer

Baja Designs

760-560-2252 x108

trent@bajadesigns.com

 

Do you know yet what will be done for those of us who already have the SAE’s on our trucks?

 

As of now, we have a two options enthusiasts can choose from. A formal announcement will be sent to all of our distributors, dealers and retail customers before production parts arrive.

1. Enthusiasts who are comfortable removing the lens will receive the additional component directly from Baja Designs to install.

2. Enthusiasts who are not comfortable removing the lens will receive a call tag from Baja Designs so we can add the component in-house followed by expedited shipping back to the customer.

Trent Kirby

Chief Executive Officer

Baja Designs

760-560-2252 x108

trent@bajadesigns.com

 

Cant wait to see what the updated beam pattern looks like. Any lead time on the update kits for existing customers?

 

@crashnburn80 any word on the 3rd gen Tacoma mounting kits for the rigid 360's? November has almost come and gone.

 

I doubt t they would intentionally try to deceive people either.
I just dont understand how nobody on their design team or workers ever turned one of these lights on. So in the entire design process nobody ever turned one on, or got excited and hooked a pair up to their truck to check out?
I do not have a trained knowledge of lights, or all the fancy machines Crashnburn80 has, but I can easily see from 1 pic how badly these blind people. I just can't understand how a team of designers couldn't see that either.

 

That's an assumption that deserves correction. The majority of employees at Baja Designs are enthusiasts and many evaluated our SAE Squadron well before the launch out of pure excitement, including myself. I installed the initial prototypes on my lifted Colorado, bed full of gear and a Yakima platform carrier loaded with mountain bikes in addition to a dual Joe Hauler with two dual sports logging hundreds of night miles. Not once was I flashed by oncoming traffic during the evaluation stage. We knew our SAE Squadron featured more horizontal spill light than our competitors. From the optical evaluation and seat time we genuinely thought the amount of spill light we had was still within compliance.

Trent Kirby

Chief Executive Officer

Baja Designs

760-560-2252 x108

trent@bajadesigns.com

 

I will take you at your word.

 

This is the same reasoning people give when they have HIDs/LEDs in reflector housings. Lets leave that reasoning to those who torque by ugga duggas.

 

It's great that a large company that wants to lead the lighting industry relies on that method for testing.

 

Thank you. I am looking forward to the fix. I knew you guys were going to do us right.