ARB Bumper: Fog Light Replacement Options?

I hate to put a damper on something you put a bunch of work into. But I should point out several things about your LED conversion.

1) The ARB lights are not fog lights, they are driving lights. They call them fog/driving which is very misleading and confusing as those are opposite patterns. Fogs have a low wide pattern aimed at the ground with sharp cut offs for poor weather visibility. Driving lights are effectively a high beam pattern aimed up in the air to project distance. ARB presumably calls them fog/driving because they are driving lights in the fog position. If you look at any of their literature on the lights they are referenced as a distance driving light to help you see objects out ahead of you sooner, which is not what fogs do. The reason I believe why so many people are often not happy with the performance of these lights is they are easily over powered by your headlights. Small reflectors do not project as well as large ones, like your headlights, causing your headlights to wash out most of what those lights are offering.

2) The LED you used claims 1600 raw lumens, which is likely overstated and very generous as that is a very old dated design with no cooling. If they actually were 1600 means they would be about 800 lumens actual, as actual is typically near half of raw for an LED, although in an LED without cooling it may be worse. A basic non-performance H3 halogen bulb is 1450 lumens, meaning you swapped out a 1450 lumen bulb for an 800 lumen bulb, which is a pretty significant loss in performance.

3) The LED you selected is a poor dated design. In an LED replacement you want the chipset to be as small as possible to try and mimic a halogen for the light to remotely work correctly, which is why everyone uses the opposing blade style design, it is currently the best way to make the LEDs as small as possible. No quality brands make the multi-leds around a shaft anymore, because they don't project correctly at all. The light sources are very far off center causing all the lighting geometry to be wrong. You end up with massive glare and complete loss of distance projection. That style also has no external cooling, so the LEDs cannot be driven very hard and as the LED heats up it has no way to cool. Hot LEDs dim, so the LED will lose some output after it warms up, taking that 800 lumens down even lower.

You effectively created a much lower output light with a lot of glare and scatter and no pattern performance and no distance projection. I've sure you turned them on and were initially impressed, especially if looking at the lights while on, but what you are seeing is massive glare and scatter.

I realize you put a fair amount of work into this, but I'd hate to see other members make the same mistakes. Your best bet for the ARB lights is an H3 halogen bulb upgrade, or better would be to swap out the ARB light for a real fog light, such as the KC G4 others have posted earlier.

 

Thank you.

 

Work fine for me. More output than before the bulb swap and as all LED are made overseas with little QA, do not expect the highest quality for $15. Nonetheless, they work for my application.

Thanks for your input and everyone is free to do what they feel best. No pressure from me

 

I got this same bracket and attached the KC Amber fogs, however my lights protrude forward through the housing - your lights look nice a flush with the ARB surround in the photo. Did you have to modify in any way?

 

I did not use that bracket. I used the diy posted on the first page of this thread.

 

Does anyone know if these brackets will allow the stock fog light to fit?

https://www.paranoidfabrications.co...oma/products/arb-fog-light-mounting-bracket-1

 

It looks like ARB finally caught up with a LED replacement:
https://arbusa.com/led-fog-light/

 

Nice! and not too much more expensive than the halogen lights they had before.

 

Pricing looks to be around $110 at most retailers right now. ARB shows they came out August, 2019. Has anyone tried them?

 

I have not tried them, but the specs do not look impressive. Candela or Cd is the measure of output intensity. The ARB units are listed as 3,562 Cd. Compare that to the KC G4s 15,000 Cd. The KCs do cost more though.

 

Here's the Slee foglight surround for LED pods:
https://sleeoffroad.com/product/sok0049/

 

The ARB LED replacements have been on the Australian website for many months. Haven't heard of any firsthand experience, though. As @crashnburn80 notes, they don't look all that impressive.

One wishes they showed polar illumination intensity charts. That gets away from the semantics of "fog" v "driving" and shows what is the reality of the beam pattern.

 

Stedi is an Aussie company I was looking at. They make a direct replacement for the arb fogs.

 

I believe Kurt Williams of Cruiser Outfitters runs those or something similar on his 200-series. The powder coat was peeling when I saw them last fall, although not in this earlier photo.

 

The OEM ARB halogen lights are driving, they have mixed term use in the literature that is very confusing. I believe the new LED models are actually fog, but as mentioned the specs do not look impressive.

 

I have a set of Stedi lights. I like them so far. I put them on around Jan. I haven't gotten around to hooking up the daytime running light halos yet, but the main lights work great for my needs. In the pic you can see the color vs my factory headlights w/ factory bulbs. They probably cost me a little more than going the ARB route, but not too much more. The exchange rate on the Aus dollar vs ours helps. Shipping took a little while, but mine got delayed due to extended Christmas holiday in Aus. I'm happy with them .. no regrets. Good light and super easy install.

 

How about it @crashnburn80 , have you looked at the numbers for the Stedi option yet?

 

The ARB lights? I made my comments above. I have not personally evaluated them, but as I mentioned the specs do not look impressive.

 

I saw your comments concerning the ARB ones above, I was referring to the direct replacements offered by Stedi, as can be found here:

https://www.stedi.com.au/arb-deluxe-bullbar-led-fog-light-with-drl-upgrade-kit.html

 

Ah, sorry, I was not familiar with those. It is difficult to say how they will compare when they don't give any output intensity specs. Lumens is the total amount of light, but it doesn't tell you about light intensity. And while more total light would seem better, it really depends on how efficiently the light is projected that will tell you if you have more usable light. Lumens are posted in raw (meaning theoretical, actual is less) or actual. They list theirs as 'tested' which seems like it would be actual. Those appear to use a down firing LED reflector design, reflectors are more performant than the forward projector design, so that is a plus. The down firing design is similar to Toyota's OEM LED reflector fog.

To compare to a couple similar lights
Stedi: 5700k, 10.8w, 764 lumens (tested?)
KC G4: 5000k, 10w, 866 lumens (raw) , 296 lux @18'
OEM Toyota reflector fogs: 6100k, 10.1w, 196 lux @18'

The Stedi's have the most power by a small margin, but without a lux or candela spec it is difficult to draw a clear conclusion. You can see how the OEM Toyota reflector fogs have nearly the same power as the G4s, but the performance is quite different. Large reflectors are more performant, the Sedi looks to have a larger reflector than the OEM Toyota unit, but the KC G4 reflector area is larger still, but it is split by aiming the LEDs from the center to the top and bottom, vs aiming them in the same direction into a single reflector.

For actual fog or poor whether use, 5700k isn't ideal. High color temps with short wavelengths bounce off moisture in the air, back at you. So you see the fog really well, but have trouble seeing beyond it. Lower color temps will perform better in poor weather. 5000k-6000k isn't going to make a breaking difference, ideally for poor weather you'd have selective yellow instead.