The ultimate foglight upgrade H11 (not LED or HID)

I know some are, when price shopping the lowest priced ones are for sure. Following the same path as Hella. Osram has a factory in China too unfortunately, but they also still make products in Germany. Volsa is strictly German. Most reputable places sell the German products, but when you get to Amazon and eBay the Chinese ones are easy to encounter as most are focused on price.

 

Cross post from the SAE led fog thread, but I thought this was interesting and worth sharing. I measured the fog beam angle tonight, using a tape and measuring forward distance vs width distance of the pattern and doing the math to come up with the angle. The OEM H11 'wide angle' fogs project at 75 degrees to the side, which is much wider than the Rigid's LED 45 degree spec. Other LED fogs seem to replicate a similar width pattern to Rigid. Meaning the OEM fogs cover significantly more area, and provide far more peripheral vision than an LED replacement. Which then makes sense as to why a very weak powered fog like Morimotos that put out less light than stock don't seem that much worse than stock in light intensity, because while putting out less than half the light, they are also lighting only a fraction of the area compared to the stock fogs.

Trying to capture the angle of side lighting in relation to the truck. Fogs only, no headlights. Might have been better to attempt facing the same direction as the light source.

 

@crashnburn80

Wonder what you would recommend if I really want yellow fogs. Would you say its better to rap the lens or go got eh yellow H9 in your first post?

 

If the color temp of wrap is similar to the yellow coloring of the bulb, the output should be similar, if also an H9. I’d prefer the bulb for a few reasons:
1) It is an off the shelf high output glare capped H9, which is hard to come by.
2) Durability. Having the coating on the bulb will be more durable to wear than having a thin plastic wrap on the lower front of a truck where it is going to be exposed all the debris and elements from driving.
3) Simplicity. Not having to remove the fogs and deal with wrapping a curved lens trying to avoid bubbles/wrinkles.

 

I just bought some cheap yellow fog lights since my last ones were basically mini aquariums

 

@crashnburn80

I’d like to confirm my understanding that in a 3rd gen (2018 TRD Offroad), I can use the Volsa H9 for both the fogs and low beams with appropriate trimming on the lamp connector and collar.

 

That is correct. 3rd gen TRD trucks can use modified H9s in the low beams and fogs (non-TRD trucks take H10s or H16s in the fogs) to run them in the headlight you may or maynot need to trim the outer collar depending on the brand of the bulb, Volsa fits without trimming. The projector can use any H9 as the projector light shield controls glare but the fogs should run glare capped bulbs they are a reflector with no glare cap. For H9 low beam, any German made bulb would be good (Osram, Sylvania, Volsa, Philips). There are Chinese bulbs from Philips and less commonly Osram on ebay, so double check where it is made.


However, the latest bulbs by GE actually outperform the H9s. This is a re-post of mine from another thread. This was a test I did with the new GE Megalight +130 vs Volsa H9s in a 3rd gen headlight. I have not yet tried these in a foglight, but being H11 they are plug and play.

H11 GE Megalight +130 left vs H9 Volsa right


Lux pattern readings:
Hotspot: GE 984 vs vs Volsa 784
Mid-beam GE Mid-400s vs Volsa mid-high 300s
Low-beam GE ~180s vs Volsa ~high 190s

Color: GE 3500k vs Volsa 3200k

Volsa H9 left vs GE H11 right


You can see the Volsa consumes ~67w and the GE ~56w.

Bumping voltage by 0.4v to 13.6 to simulate gains using a standalone harness results in the GE hot spot intensity pushed to 1142 lux, which is about a 16% gain in output.

I see no reason to run an H9 when a stock wattage high performance plug and play halogen produces significantly more distance projection intensity, and mid range intensity. While the H9s do better in short range the difference is minor and outweighed by the gains in projection compared to a performance halogen.

Of course the drawback of this kind of performance is the GE bulbs are going to have reduced bulb life.
H11 GE Megalight +130: https://www.powerbulbs.com/us/product/ge-megalight-ultra-h11-twin

 

Thanks. I have connections at GE...I may give them a try for both fogs and lows.

 

@crashnburn80 so after reading all this the better bulb for fogs and lows for visibility would now be H11 GE Megalight +130 due to no alteration needed and actually out performing an H9?

What do you recommend for the high beam?

 

Apologies for the delayed response. I haven’t tested them in the fogs yet. They work by having more light intensity in a smaller region to creat better focused light, fogs are very distributed so I’m not certain they would out perform an H9 in the fog, something I still need to look at. I was considering swapping to 2500k H9s instead for a more amber color.

With a 3rd gen there really isn’t a better high beam bulb than than the H9. There are no performance H9s, and an H9 already produces the output equivalent of a 90w H11. If looking for more high beam power, you might consider mods that keep your low beams on with your high beams, or aux driving lights tapped to your high beams that are mounted in front of the hood (to avoid hood glare that causes night vision loss).

 

I just replaced my low beams and fogs with the GE Megalight +130s. Haven’t yet had a chance to try them out.

 

I may have missed it, if someone else experienced a failure of their CHINESE Hella relay, but mine failed about a week ago.

My foglights simply stopped working one morning, after working properly the night before. Troubleshooting and consulting with @crashnburn80 confirmed the most likely culprit was the relay, so I ordered a replacement through Amazon. It arrived today, quickly solving the problem.

The replacement I ordered is a

$13 Bosch 332019150 Relay

Bosch 332019150 Relay, made in Portugal, rather than Germany. (I couldn't find German-made versions.) Ignore Amazon's picture, which is inaccurate. Pics of what I received are atchd. The units received are exact replacements for the Chinese Hellas, though the mounting tab is 180' reversed.



Thanks, again, to @crashnburn80 for his informative threads and invaluable advice!

 

Great info, I’ll be adding this to the original post when I have time. I’ve ordered the replacement Bosch relay you recommend to preemptively swap mine.

I’ve been doing these mods for a long time, and harnesses I received 10+ years ago had German made Hella relays. When I got the harness for my 2nd gen and it had ‘Made in China’ Hella relays I was pretty put off as I always strive for the very best quality. I asked Rallylights about it and they said Hella moved production and they had not seen any of the Chinese relays fail. Nothing makes me feel warm and fuzzy like a ‘Made in China’ labeled product controlling an important component of my truck. It is something I have never really been happy with.

Thanks Norton for doing the leg work looking into this and sharing your findings with the rest of us. I’ll be happy to replace that relay with a high quality European made Bosch unit.

 

Updated the original post with the relay upgrade from @Norton and information on the side projection angles of the H11 fogs, plus other minor miscellaneous updates.

 

Finally got around to comparing the new stellar GE Megalight +130s to the Volsa H9 in the fogs.

A few post up I showed how the GE +130s were able to outperform an H9 in a 3rd gen headlight. They do this by shrinking the size of the light source, which creates a much more focused intense light source, so while the H9s put out more raw light the high performance H11s focus the light better resulting in superior output. This is the industry best practice performed by all major quality lighting manufactures, you can see Philips article on it here. I had theorized the performance gains would possibly not be the case for the fogs, since fogs are a far more distributed pattern so the performance benefits to concentrating the light source may not apply the same way.

Volsa H9 left vs GE +130 H11 right


It is a bit difficult to really tell in the photo, but the GE bulbs have a smaller filament with smaller coils more tightly wound together. This is how you make a higher performance bulb.

A side note, while I have your attention on the filament, note that the GE bulb was able to produce 25% higher output in a headlight than the higher power H9. This is all through precision engineering of shrinking the light source by that fractional amount. So if a lower power light source that is that fractional amount smaller, can produce 25% greater output through increased focus, the effect of putting a giant blocky bi-directional LED in there is very predictable.

H11 GE +130


Volsa glare capped H9s


Recall the Volsa's are 2x over stock. Both the bulbs in this test are running on the standalone harness. So the GEs measure approximately 1.7x over stock on the standalone harness. While a vast improvement over stock, somewhat like I theorized the smaller more intense light source doesn't transfer the same benefits to the distributed fog pattern as a higher power glare capped H9. Also note the GEs 3500k color vs the H9 3200k color.

Just to give another photo of the broad reach of the OEM wide angle fogs, look how close the truck is to the door (which I had to do to get a separation of the fog beam) and despite being ontop of the door look how wide to the side the OEM fogs can project that beam.

 

I swapped in the GEs for both my low beams and fogs. I’m very happy with the improvement (although I still need to adjust the fogs).

 

I think this is my first lighting upgrade. Where did you get the bulbs?

 

I ordered them here: https://www.powerbulbs.com/us/product/ge-megalight-ultra-h11-twin

 

Swapped my relay to the Bosch unit this evening. Just comparing them side by side, the Bosch was much beefier.

 

Overdue and barely qualified feedback on the Volsa H9 bulbs (trimmed for H11 housing compatibility). 2013 Tacoma Sport with an oem fog light harness. I used a utility knife and gently used repeated splices to trim that piece out. I trimmed the first 1/3 completely out and the rest was ramped going further into the housing. The bulb fit no problem based on that into the harness.

All my fog light experience has been OEM with the exception of the just-removed Apex (transitioned to Cali Raised) 3x2 LED light pod sold as a fog light.

Compared to OEM, the Volsas are brighter, but more importantly have a much more defined cutoff.

Compared to the Apex branded lights, the Volsas are much more functional as well. The Apex simply supplied a 'look at me' light with regards to the amount and distribution where the Volsas we're more effective at how much and where the light was placed.