The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

Going with the modified H9 Volsa's produces the exact same beam pattern as stock, just significantly brighter. The pattern maintains the factory cut offs to not blind people with glare, but the 2100 lumen light source in the small surface area reflector makes it glow like the sun which isn't kind to other motorists. This is highly effective when used for the designed purpose of poor weather visibility but not something that should be run as an 'aux driving light'. Running fogs when not needed also reduces your distance vision, and the high intensity foreground light constricts your pupils making it harder to see distance at night, not something that should be done with that significant increase in output.

You do have to trim the internal tab on the H9, and on the 2nd gen fogs you have to trim the external tab as well, I'm not certain if you do on the 3rd gen fogs. You don't have to for the 3rd gen low beam headlights for example.

The OEM TRD 'wide angle' fogs project light 75 degrees to the side. Rigids LED fogs project light 45 degrees to the side, and other replacement LED housings look similar, meaning their pattern is more forward facing and less wide angle. The Rigids are 1750 raw lumens, or just shy of 1000 lumens actual, meaning just under 2000 lumens actual for the pair. The H9s are 4200 lumens actual, far more lighting power. However, they also have a wider spread lighting a much larger area so the difference in intensity isn't as extreme as it would seem, just more coverage. Personally I really like the ultra wide throw of the TRD 'wide-angle' fogs. Price wise the H9s are a fraction of the price. Of course Mr Stern might not sell them to you as too many people do not know how to use their fog lights correctly and run them as aux driving lights, which is more detrimental than helpful. If you wanted to run them all the time, the Rigids would be a better option. If you were going to use them for very targeted use cases as needed, the H9s are a higher performing option that provide a greater coverage.

Edit: I do not believe my statement below to be accurate about a glare capped H9, I think they have incorrectly pictured an H11 bulb on their site under an H9 listing.

You can buy off the shelf yellow glare capped H9s, they are slightly lower in output at 1975 vs 2100 lumens due to the coating. By comparison stock is about 1250 lumens.
http://www.rallylights.com/hl88409-h9-12v-65w-optilux-extreme-xy-yellow-bulbs-pair.html

 

Thanks for that info! I may give those optilux bulbs a shot, just for how cheap they are and to see if I actually like the amber fogs (before I drop $$ on Rigids)..but ultimately I think I will go with Rigids or some type of pod so I can run them mainly as auxiliary lighting.

 

How certain is the December launch for those amber pods? Also, is there any difference between the white and amber pods besides the lens?

 

At the beginning of October they were said to be available in "a month or two". Earlier this week I was told December.

The amber lens is the only change. Different designs were tried, but ultimately the amber lens with the high output "white" LEDs was the best solution. The amber isn't the same as the snap on pod colors, it was been designed to let more light through for higher output. If you had the white SAE pods, you could swap an amber lens with your white one, though opening the pod would void the warranty.

 

Dang, looks like I will be waiting for the amber release. Thanks for the info!

 

Those optilux ones, are they ‘safe’ to run in stock housing? I put them in just now and holy crap. I can feel some serious heating coming from them only after a minute of run time. I don’t wanna melt the housing lol.

 

I run Volsa H9s in my fogs, all H9s are 65w. You'll notice quiet a bit of heat coming from the factory 55w ones too. But yes they are safe, I measured output at 209 degrees compared to stock at 185 degrees (though different days with different ambient temps).

 

Perfect. Just use to my LEDs not being hot at all...then I put these guys in and it’s like a heat wave,ha!

 

Excellent for de-icing.

 

I didn't know about the KC G4 direct replacement fog lights until I read about them here. I picked up a set as an Amazon Warehouse deal for about $75 off of the normal going rate. Liking them so far. Thanks for taking the time to do measurements and review all of these lights.

 

Nice! Glad you like them! I really like the color temperature and pattern of those lights, plus their almost stock look.

 

I absolutely love the amount of data in this thread, both raw and interpreted.

Two questions for you here

1. What is the relation between lux and distance of measure? The reason I ask is to perform a comparison of OEM versus the LED options. I know you say that you cannot easily test the OEM fogs because you'd need to revert your OEM setup to stock before testing. However, looking through your data and your ultimate foglight thread you list the OEM fogs has having a lux reading of 237 @ 12" and the OEM Pro fogs a lux reading of 203.9 @ 18 ft. Does lux reduce with distance? It would seem like it should, but I'm not terribly knowledgeable here. If not, it would appear the OEM fogs are better than some of the aftermarket options, including the OEM Pro setup (which would kinda stink for those like myself that shelled out likely too much because they like the aesthetics of them).

2. I didn't see any tests of the Rigid SR-M series. Is this something you have any plans to test? The reason I ask is that there have been members on here who have upgraded their Pro lamps to the SR-M series and said they have seen an increase in performance. I would be curious what, if any increase this would be (since the SR-M units don't have SAE certification).

Lastly, a simple comment. I'm excited to read that Vosla bulbs are such high quality. I had ordered a set of HIR bulbs for my C5 and was under the impression they would be OSRAM units and I got Vosla units shipped instead. I'm not looking forward to the amount of trimming I'll need to do, but I have high hopes for the lighting upgrade. I had run dedicated retrofitted HID projectors, but due to slop in the pop-up mechanism the cutoff bounced and flickered which no doubt irritated other drivers.

203.9
237

 

Great questions and excellent attention to detail.

1) Lux is just the intensity at a single point in the beam. This measurement alone can be very misleading as it is not directly related to raw output. For example, Rigid and KC have 2x the area coverage of the other lights, yet maintain the highest lux readings. This actually means the light source is far brighter than 2x. If you had 2 identical light sources, one spread the pattern to cover 2x the area and the other not, the lux readings for the larger area pattern should be 1/2, because the light is being spread 2x "thinner" over more area. As distance increases, so does area coverage. Your truck lights way more area parked 25' from a wall than it does 2'. Meaning the lux drops with distance, but the drop is not the same across patterns. Something like a spot beam that focuses all the light to a single point looses less intensity with distance as all the light is focused to a single point, so as distance increases the pattern grows little. A fog is the exact opposite where the pattern is very wide, so as distance increases the coverage area increases significantly, which drops lux. This is also related to why LEDs need their own housing. Since the drop in replacement LEDs do not focus the light as a hotspot due to the incorrect geometry, there is no focused hot spot in the beam to carry the distance projection to maintain that lux at distance.

In some of the earlier threads I used a 12" measurement for relative comparison between sources in that thread, not really intending it to be cross referenced between threads. As such I did not include all the significant digits in the measurement, and instead just intended for the measurement to be for relative comparison. Might be hard to see, but the 12" measurement is actually 237,000 lux, down in the bottom of the meter there is an x100 scale factor. The OEM Pro fogs were 203.9 lux at 18'.

My ultimate fogs put out over 2x the light of the highest powered LEDs, however they also illuminate a significantly larger area. The Rigids have a side projection angle of 45 degrees, while the TRD Wide Angle fogs is 75 degrees. So while the light source is 2x the output, lux reading is only something like 15-20% higher than the Rigid pods, because the area coverage is much greater.

2) Correct, the SR-M series are not an SAE pattern. They are offered in various patterns of diffused/floor/driving etc, all of which are off road or high beam patterns, but none of the patterns have cut off for street use, or even fog use. As such I have no plans on testing them at this time.

HIRs are worth the trimming. They are an outstanding quality high tech bulb. For low beams Volsa even launch the first "high efficiency" HIR which while pricey would be amazing in performance potential.
http://www.rallylights.com/vosla-hir2-30-9012-bulb-12v-55w-each.html

 

Thank you for the reply. That definitely makes sense to me. I remember having a pair of Hella 500s many vehicles ago that were pencil beam patterns and I disliked them for what I had ultimately wanted. I had wanted a driving beam pattern and didn't realize how focused a pencil beam truly was.

Fair enough on the comparison, but what you say definitely clarify what the readings actually mean.

I've got a pair of the HIR2 bulbs, but not the +30%. I need to rebuild my pop up motors to take a lot of slop out of the assembly as I had someone get out of their car in traffic to yell at me even with the stock flashlight bulbs Chevy call headlights, but I'm excited to see the improvement of the HIR. As I mentioned I had a super nice set of retrofitted HIDs that looked nice and modern and had killer output, but they didn't work in the application as I had hoped.

 

That is awesome they will change them out under warranty, more preferable than the blue light IMO. I don't think amber fogs look bad, I think as long as color temp rises with vertical light placement it is ok, as you want longer wavelength lower temp lights lower for poor weather conditions. If you have whitish blue flogs and factory colored halogen headlights, that is what bothers me as the color temps are reversed from the designed use.

Regarding the 85/80w All Seasons, I think all those are all now made in Osram's China production facilities. Still an Osram product, but I wouldn't hold it to the same expectation of the German made ones.

 

Driving home early this morning in very thick dense Fog, I’ve learned to appreciate Amber lights. Of course the light bar was rendered useless but the cheap set of LED fogs still outperform any 4100k or higher lamp out there. After my third encounter with a group of Deer (they love to come out in fog), I happened to notice the Deer moved away from the light rather than towards it. I’ve recently purchased Rigid SAE D series lights but unfortunately I was unaware that the Ambers were to be released later & bought the Amber covers along with them at the same time. I think for a ditch light application they’ll do just fine. Your thoughts?

 

In some ways they could be good as ditch lights as the wide spread but sharp cut offs will reduce hood/body glare which reduces distance vision at night. It would somewhat depend on your application though, forward facing they will not do much, the wide short beam will have low projection distance will not add much to your headlights. For forward facing you'd really want spot. If you wanted to point them to the ditch for actual ditch light use, they will have a wide pattern for it, but the cut offs may prevent the full area coverage you are looking for depending on how close to the truck that you are looking for pattern coverage.

 

Thanks for the input. Yeah, they'll largely be used on roads carved out of Snow, Ice Roads & judging terrain over frozen lakes while ice fishin' so sounds like just what I needed. The Quality of the Rigid lights are worth it for me. Still interested in upgrading the cheap fogs to KC's very soon so it will be an interesting comparison.

 

For those interested in LEDs and high quality lights for your home:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...lighting-using-leds-hirs-and-halogens.574930/

 

They did make the AllSeasons in Germany, I don't know that they still do. I'm sure there is plenty of German stock still around if they don't. When browsing Osram-China's products looking for another source of the 85/80w Hypers, I recall seeing they made AllSeasons in China, but no Hypers. I may have to give your coating removal a shot and compare them to the standard 85/80w Hypers.

You can get 130/100w bulbs, but life is very short, and the heavier high wattage filaments reduce focus of the beam. The great thing about the 85/80w bulb is that it is a high efficiency high wattage bulb, so not only did they make smaller coils to increase focus and distance projection, they also increased the power. All the good things for optics without the bad.