The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

The thread is about SAE complaint fog lights

 

This is an SAE lighting compliance thread, aka on-road street use. The post Baja chose to share was promoting SAE fogs as headlights, which fail to meet SAE compliance standards for that purpose and would be highly unsafe. But instead of calling that out, Baja chose to promote the great cut offs, leading people to believe this was an acceptable practice. While Baja later added a disclaimer to their post, the knowledgable lighting community expects Baja to do better, they don’t have a great SAE track record.

-Promotes Squadron Sports as "street friendly" fogs - and blinds everyone one the road causing significant hazard to all other motorists.
-Creates an SAE lamp, lamp completely fails compliance - still blinds everyone on the road with non-compliant light spill/glare.
-Revises SAE lamp, uses inserts to drastically cut down on output - still fails gradient, meaning the cut offs are not sharp enough to be properly aimed.
-Creates Gen 2 SAE lamp, fails SAE compliance on yellow because the lights are too green, causing a distracting hazard to oncoming drivers.
-Promotes using fogs as headlights in social media - creating a horribly unsafe vehicle lighting recommendation for the driver and occupants of the vehicle that is reposted and shared in multiple venues.
-Promotes using off-road lights as headlights for Motorcycles on social media - creating dangerously blinding glare to oncoming drivers.

Yes, they should be called out for promoting such an unsafe lighting practice. People today are far better informed and expect better from reputable lighting manufactures. The goal of these threads is to educate and advance automotive SAE lighting for street use, which includes calling out when mistakes are made.

 

I was looking at building a light bar out of SSC1s or SSC2 Pros in the SAE fog light pattern for my front bumper. I have room for 10x SSC1s or 6x SSC2s but don’t exactly understand which would result in more light. If lux are additive when you add more lights, the SSC2s should be brighter and come in $360 cheaper. Only planning on using it when there aren’t any vehicles in front of me but visibility is poor. I understand there is also a chance I could blow out my vision with all the extra light since theoretically 6x SSC2s would be 2.8x the lux of the SS3 Max’s I already have mounted.

 

... Don't do that. Fogs are meant to be used in poor conditions, at low speeds. More light =/= better in those conditions. If you feel you need more reach, perhaps adding a set of SSC2s with the selective yellow driving beam optic and wiring them independently of the main fog, using a latching relay, so that when you click the fogs off, you have to manually switch the drovong beams back on each time.

A better course of action is to try to maximize the performance of your lowbeams. What headlamps do your 4runners have?

 

Using more than a pair of fog lamp will disturb view balance. Not recommended.
Even with properly designed actual fog lamps.

SSC2 Pro will be certainly cause huge scatter in particle in bad weather. To prevent particle scatter aim, it must be point so far down, you won't even see beam at that point, or if not aim so far down, then upper scatter is out of control.

A pair of Elite Fog is nearly upper limit of functional fog performance brightness limit. Anything more than that will cause view impression imbalance.
A pair of SS3 Max is already above regulation limit upper scatter in most of the case due to aiming range issue. And intensity is approaching to some of low weaker low beam level but without defined enough cutoff, so it's a risk.

Here is amount of scatter of SSC2
Beam is aimed so H line does not exceed SAE defined upper limit of 585Cd Many think orange line is cutoff, but photometrically speaking, green line is cutoff equivalent target line.




This is one pair of Pro at glare below limit aim. At this low aim, still shows scatter in particle. If you use 2nd and 3rd pair, multiply that upper scatter and imagine how it can affect driver view.



This is be view of vast majority of user's wrongly aimed fog view ( SSC2 Pro or SS3 Pro) who believe they are aiming fog beam based on somewhat visual based aiming( which is still way too high)
At this commonly misused aim, particle scatter is extremely bad.

Unfortunately, on the wall, this aim still can "look" like fog is aimed pretty low






For reference, how aim can look like on the wall at 18' or 25'. ( This is SS3 Pro visualization, but required aiming amount is about same for SSC2 Pro)
Basically, lamp mount height 0.4m scenario, Pro can't be aimed at wall 25' away, because brighter zone must be below ground level already to prevent glare.





And here is as reference, how F3 class fog look like in same particle scatter situation. ( DD elite is bit more powerful than this!)



If you need to see better in bad weather, really should not use any more than 1 pair of properly designed actual fog lamp. Stick to physics really helps after all is my opinion.

 

Thanks for the response. One has the Morimotos and one has the OEM LED. I have another set of OEM LEDs for the 2017 sitting in the garage that won’t get installed until I can make them “look better” according to my wife. There’s been a few times where even with the SS3 Max’s, it’s been hard to see. We were traveling at low speeds so figured more light would be helpful

Thanks for the info!

 

Maybe you want aux high beams. I have SSc3 pros 4k mounted at headlight level and wired with my high beams.

 

I am planning on auxiliary high beams but not for this kind of driving. High beams tend to reflect back at whoever is driving. Looking for something to use in heavy heavy rain/snow or dense fog. Like make it to the top of Snoqualmie pass as it gets closed to traffic and now you have to make it off the mountain.

 

I have SSc3 pro fogs for that. I drove the mountain passes just across the border from you.

 

For the 1x pods like 1 emitter, or 1x2 emitters, I'd give serious consideration to the Morimoto 2banger HXB. The performance is better than the SSC1 and SSC2 with a tighter pattern and less light spill than the SSC2 Pros, the pattern is narrower but some of that can be compensated by aiming the lights a few degrees outward. Unfortunately Diode Dynamics does not offer a 1x2 HXB Max based fog. Note that running more than 2 fogs at a time is not SAE compliant.

Stevens is worse, but I frequent both. The SS3 Max in selective yellow is my absolute go-to for that purpose for their width, output intensity, cut off and heat generation, but in the 1x1 or 1x2 configuration, I'd go with the Morimoto HXB in selective yellow for higher output and sharper cut offs and higher heat than the DD 1x1 or 1x2 SAE pods.

 

Thanks! There’s been 7 times in the last 3 years we’ve been up top when they close it and we are crawling along without touching the accelerator. First time with aftermarket fogs we had Baja Designs SAEs and those got immediately trashed when we got home. Second time was DD SS3 Pros and the last few times it has been Maxs. They did fine, and I was glad to have them, but was hoping more light would help. If what @Toy_Runner said is true, then I’ll probably bag it and just deal with the couple times a year it happens

 

This is comparison side by side between 2Banger HXB vs SSC2 Pro 2B is very potent for its size. It is OK to aim lamp as far as 20 degree outward if desired( it still overlap to cover beam center without intensity gap)

 

Very interesting stuff coming from Rigid as part of the TrailHunter package on the 2024.

 

Interesting. Their other dual color fogs use dedicated lamp sections to support each color, those appear to share the same optic. I’d be very curious to have a look at those.

 

Welp, I did it. DD max and don't think I could be happier. These things are absolutely crazy. Pulled the grill and got everything aimed before using on-road, and then went on a TD. No one flashed even with my bright-ass MLED 2.0 (aimed down a bit). I won't be driving in clear weather with the fogs on, just wanted to make sure it wasn't going to blind oncoming traffic.

Thanks @crashnburn80 for all these lighting reviews.

 

Superbright LEDs has now launched TIR pods as well, calling it the SL3. Available in fog, driving, spot and flood, both white and yellow.



Being they spec the white fogs at 6500k, and the yellow optics look yellow and not amber-ish with no mention of using optimized emitter color for yellow, I'd bet the yellow fogs do not fall in the compliance chromaticity window and will be too green to be compliant.

The SL3 fog spec spread pattern lists 6 x 36 degrees, which is pretty small compared to the SS3 Sport at 8 x 81 degrees.

SL3s: https://www.superbrightleds.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=SL3

 

Interesting. Looks like the fog pattern lens is very similar to the Lasfit "driving" optic. I wonder if it will have the same screwed up intensity gradient.

 

The "driving" optic is shown in the photo. This is the same knockoff "TIR SAE pod" that's floating around from a variety of sellers, including Lasfit.

 

Well, crash (or soneone else) can save $53 to test these. They'll be more intense at the left/right edges than the center of the beam.

 

These look great.
Can't wait to get my DD fogs and spots installed.