The LED SAE J583 Fog Pod & Fog Light Review

@Diode Dynamics I'm curious as to what CRI your LED's are before and after the yellow lens and the 6000k chips as well if you know or can share that information?

 

Sure, happy to provide tech specs. For these lamps, we are using LEDs with a minimum 70 CRI. I would expect this is inline with other options on the market. While CRI is obviously very important in some industries, the reality is that CRI is just not a major factor for mainstream automotive lighting. CRI is rarely even published for true automotive-qualified LEDs (AEC-Q101). And even if you can find order codes for specific bins and CRIs of chips on datasheets, it is not necessarily truly available from the supplier.

So frankly, while I understand the interest in high CRI for lighting as a general goal, we and other automotive manufacturers are limited by what is offered by the chip companies. And if you're talking automotive-grade LEDs, CRI is just not a concern for OEM automotive lighting designers at this time. If we see a push towards higher CRI chips, specifically in factory automotive headlamps etc, we can easily step it up. But right now, we don't feel it is worth the added cost - and again, CRI of over 70 is not even available for many chips we use.

Sorry for the rant!

 

CRI in the low 70s is pretty standard, and are what nearly all the white fogs in this thread have been measured at, it is also the norm for OEM automotive LEDs. With losses from filtration to achieve selective yellow, the yellow CRI will be lower. I've measured selective yellow output ranging from 44-50 CRI from the fogs in this thread. 50 CRI being the Baja lights, as they use the lowest color temp LEDs at 5000k so far. Lower color temp LEDs will have less color loss to achieve selective yellow, so I would speculate that the Diode Dynamics 4000k light source with selective yellow filtration will have lower losses leading to higher CRI, I'd guess CRI in the mid-50s.

 

@Diode Dynamics will you guys have any mounting brackets for 05-11?

 

@Diode Dynamics . I'm out of the light market as i got some KC G4's this summer for my truck. Your stuff looks very promising and I think I would have chosen them had they been available.
I will keep you in mind in a few yrs when I replace the Tacoma.

 

Yes, we expect to have that fitment available in late December. Thanks!

 

@Diode Dynamics are these SS3 pods IP67 rated like it says on your website? Or are they IP68 rated like your SS light bars?

 

Those SS3 pods are way cool! Definitely high up on my list. I’ll have to see what Baja ends up doing before I make any decisions

 

I think it's likely rated to IP67 due to the integrated Deutsch connector on the rear of the light. From a bit of research, Deutsch Industrial does not publish official IP ratings, so the entire light can only be rated as high as the minimum listed ratings by Deutsch. Only a select few connectors have higher verified IP ratings and these may be expensive to procure or certify.

I'm guessing to keep costs down DD went with standard connections. If your fog light is 3 feet under water for half an hour, you have bigger problems anyway. Personally I think it's a great idea to clean up wiring and minimize connections.

 

Just placed an order for KC Hilites G4 for our our 2019 tacoma; Black Friday sale 20% off only $266!

 

They definitely might just be IP-67. The Baja Designs LP6 and LP9's have an integrated 4 pin deutsch connector and are rated to IP-69K. Here's a picture of the back of an LP9 I installed for a friend. And I agree about the fact that if you have them submerged you have bigger problems. I do like pressure washing with hot water though and that's where IP-69K is nice to have.

 

Checkout this video from shared from KC showing the difference between short wavelength high color temperature lights and long wavelength low color temperature lights in some fog.

 

We simply haven't tested to anything beyond IP67, which we can accomplish in-house.

Sorry to keep dumping lots of technical info but .... Normally we test our products only to SAE J575, the automotive durability standard. Factory automotive lamps do not have any IP rating. Personally, I'm not a big fan of IP ratings because it only tells you that the product can pass one test when it is brand new. OEM Design Validation Plans (DVP) based on SAE J575 are designed to cycle products through vibration, thermal cycles, and submersion/moisture, which we do here as well at a bit lower level, to better simulate real-world use.

Anyway, the connector on our product is not a limiting factor that we know of. We actually designed that part and had it made specifically for these lamps, it is not off-the-shelf. It has a thick O-ring on it and the actual terminals are overmolded. So we do not expect any problems with it. We simply need to complete the testing necessary before we assign the higher ratings. We do not give our products any ratings unless the testing is actually completed.

That said, if for whatever reason we don't pass IP68 or IP69 or IP69K or whatever letter you want to see, we've already passed the SAE J575 testing and our additional in-house DVP, which I believe to be far more applicable and important for a lamp in automotive applications.

Paul

 

Thanks for the detailed responses! Can't wait for my order to arrive.

 

Paul/Diode Dynamics,

I appreciate, much like other vendors/manufacturers that communicate openly here on this (or other) forums...and furthermore appreciate the details/data dumping, because, especially on threads as amazing and thorough as @crashnburn80 has done on his lighting threads only furthers our drive for "all the information" necessary to fulfill our need to justify or rationalize our investment/purchase and qualify the expected results/output.

I am also very interested in your offerings and as always, am eager for Crash to conduct his testing and feed the consumers with objective and descriptive results and write ups.

 

Well I appreciate that guys! Thanks for the encouragement. I guess I'll keep standing on my soapbox here with whatever tech info I might be able to contribute towards. You have a seriously strong advocate in @crashnburn80 though too, the guy knows more than most people designing this kind of stuff.

Speaking of which, he brought to our attention that the fitment varies slightly between 2nd Gen and 3rd Gen, even though the base fog is pretty much the same thing. We have modified our listing to reflect this, and we will be testing a 2nd Gen within the next few days in order to ensure correct fitment (or provide whatever may be needed for it for installation). We will contact anyone who purchased the kit with further information if we find any major issues that would prevent successful installation. We've been selling direct fog lamp replacements for years and have the same fitment for 2012-2019, and our brackets are molded to be an exact match for that fog lamp, but since there is apparently a difference in mounting, we will check it out to make sure it's good before we ship the kits early next week. Thanks for your patience.

 

Sweet im excited for early shipment next week, I think the pro versions will be damn good.

 

greetings all. Been stalking this thread for info on the bd sae fogs....Over here from 4runner land. Love the reviews thanks crash.

Im pulling the trigger on the DD sae yellow fogs 20% black Friday too good to pass up. $144.

keep on keeping on

 

If you have modeled it after a successful cross-gen existing fog mount I think you should then be ok, but best to test. The distance between the insertion tabs in the mount are slightly different from the 2nd Gen to the 3rd, as are the screw locations for one of the mounts which isn't used on the 3rd Gen. So it may seemingly install fine, but the pattern may not be level on a 2nd Gen. Thanks for checking!

Welcome! We get many from other forums coming over for the lighting info.

 

I've pinged them but haven't heard back yet, I'll post an update when I do.