The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

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/

 

Hmm...
The All Seasons are the same bulbs that I took 0000 steel wool to, to clean off the clear yellow tent. Then cotton balls and a lot of rubbing alcohol to clean off any oil that might have been on the bulbs!
My truck is a 2015 and the bulbs have been in the truck since June of 2015 with no burnt out bulbs.(now I have jinxed myself)
I still have more and engraved on the metal it has Germany, also have 100/90w bulbs from Germany. Man I wish I could find the bulbs I had in my 78 280Z, they were 130/100w bulbs. I could light up overpass signs for miles on the freeway.

 

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.

 

@crashnburn80 my rigid sae fogs put out very tall beam pattern. They light up overhead signs on freeway. The pattern I get from them is also pretty narrow. Is that normal? And if not, could you guide me to correcting it somehow?

 

Do you have a picture of them installed?

 

Are you using these H9s in the OEM housing?
If yes do you have a Vendor for these?

 

Looks right, installed just like mine. Weird you have a tall beam and not a wide beam.

 

Looks similar enough to yours. Notice how headlight has more spread than fogs, which makes no sense.

These are both pics of just one headlight and one fog light, with and without cover.

 

Based upon that picture I would say the rigids are doing what they are supposed to. Your headlights however appear to have some light that angles up on each side. My bet is that what's causing the signs to light up. Stock headlights? Mine have that because they are crappy depo aftermarket lights that i had.

 

No, I am sure the fogs do the lighting up. I have checked with fogs on and off. The beam looks very tight up close, but if I back away from wall, it is actually very tall. They act like high beams.

The headlights are stock, with decent cutoff. They are aimed a little too low actually, so the fogs actually illuminate farther out.

 

Do you have the fogs aimed too high?

 

Understood. Maybe aimed too high

 

They are aimed as low as possible. To aim lower, I would have to grind down the surrounds.

 

Maybe @crashnburn80 can add something.

I have the Rigid mounts and I can't adjust them at all, i think they are pointed too low (on my truck). Going to get a set of Rago mounts, hopefully they allow at least some adjusting.

 

Adjusting is a royal pain in the butt. Have to take off the surrounds and loosen the bolts on the sides to swivel up and down, if I remember correctly.

 

The beam pattern looks correct on the fogs, so it is the aiming that must be off. Does the truck have stock suspension, or a leveling kit? It is surprising that aiming as low as possible would be higher than your headlights at distance, unless your headlights were way too low. The mounts look to be installed tight against the bumper, and even in the photos the fogs appear to be pointed down. You could also try to elongate the mount hole on the back upward to push the rear of the fog up, in addition to or instead of grind the front plate down. Could you provide a night shot at ~20-25'?

The Rigid LED fog pods have a side projection angle of 45 degrees, which seemed consistent with all the LED fogs. The OEM TRD 'wide angle' fogs have a side projection angle of 75 degrees, providing a much wider pattern. I prefer the OEM wide angle projection compared to the LEDs.

The Volsa's H9s I run are a specially modified H9 with a glare cap to run in open reflectors like fogs. They are over 2x more output than the highest LED fog, but the beam pattern also covers a much larger area so lux intensity is only moderately higher. Check out the update in the lower half of the original post here:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-ultimate-foglight-upgrade-h11-not-led-or-hid.435419/

They are purchased through Daniel Stern, as he has them custom made. However, most people do not know how to use their fogs correctly and use them as driving lights, which is actually harmful so he is unwilling to sell them to just anyone.

GE's new H11 Megalight +130 measured higher than the Volsa H9s in a projector headlight housing, I haven't yet tried them in a fog housing to see the results. Ultra high efficiency headlights work by improving the beams concentration for greater output, being a fog the beam isn't concentrated it is widely distributed, so I am uncertain if the results would be similar.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/headlight-upgrade-2017-trd.575174/page-2#post-19035062

 

"specially modified H9 with a glare cap to run in open reflectors like fogs"

Thank you for for the Information.

Now my brain is trying to put it together.