Fog Lights Question

I ordered some new fog lights, aftermarket ones to replace mine, since they are all hazed over. Should I seal these with silicone prior to installing, I know the aftermarket headlights are notorious for leaking, haven't seen anything on the fog lights. I did order new headlight housings from Camelback Toyota cause I did not want to deal with that issue. The fog lights look just like the OEM ones to me. I guess putting some clear silicone sealant on them wouldn't hurt, but thought I would see what others have experienced with these. Got mine off of ebay, says V/injet on the side of the box.

 

Good call on the buying factory headlights. The cheap aftermarket lights don't put out the same light output as factory. If they lenses haze, you can get plastic wax and clean them up. They have wax and stuff just for lenses you can use.

 

Thanks, I tried to clean my old lenses, they improved but not as good as I wanted. My truck is getting old and I'm trying to spruce it up a bit cause I'm going to keep it another 4 years or longer, depending on how well she holds together, so far it's been a good one. I would like to wait until they come out with some improvements to the current models, like direct injection, better mpg with same hp, they made some improvements to the 4runner, not sure why they haven't brought those over to the Tacoma yet.

 

If ur gunna use silicone.... Try GE silicone II

Its been used for this purpose, as well as for retrofit sealing for yrs without issue

 

Thanks, I checked them in the kitchen sink, one of the fog lights did leak the other did not, I put the silicone on the seams of both, will recheck it later once it dries and see if it's water tight. If that works it saved me quite a bit of money on the fog lights. Like over 100.

 

Nice.... Just remember the breather on the older fogs may not be water proof.... I think the newer ones are gotetex tho.
I may be wrong... I've submerged the truck with my 06 fogs and made em look like fish bowls, and then did the same with '10 fogs and they stayed dry.... The breathers looked nothing alike between the 2 pairs from the 06 and 10.

If u ever use aftermarket bulbs, KEEP ur old fog bulbs, or at least the orange O-Rings. Put the O-rings in a plastic baggy and label the bag.
Most aftermarket bulbs, especially the nokya and other higher watt, or yellow, or other specialty fog bulbs come with their own O-ring but it doesn't play nice with the housings.
Over the last 16yrs or so of messing with aftermarket bulbs in different vehicles, I have ran into this issue and read about it very often in forums of all kinds of vehicles.
The common issue with using some bulbs is that the bulb doesn't want to "seat" well, won't "lock" in place, or condensation gets in the housing.
The cure is 99% of the time to take off the O-ring from the original bulbs and remove the O-ring from the new bulbs. Swap them out so ur reusing the old O-ring on the new bulbs. I don't know WHY, but the swap almost always works.

If ur in a place where u tossed ur old bulbs and now have some aftermarket ones that don't feel right, let me know... I think I have some spare stock o rings I can send you for the cost of shipping.... Should be dirt cheap if u find urself needing them, send me a private message.

 

Yeah, it was the breathers that was causing the leak, they were actually pretty water tight, surprisingly. I put some of the silicone sealant that I got from Home Depot, some GE Silicone stuff all round the seam of the lens and let it dry over night. Installed them today and they look great. For $38 I got new fog lights. I just got to wait on the OEM headlights to come in and install those. I got those for about $150/piece from Camelback, not bad compared to what the stealership wanted. They wanted about $500 to replace them. I think they were going to replace the entire piece, bulbs and all, I ordered just the housing and I can imagine they charge for at least 2 hours of labor too.