2017+ fog lights reviews/worth it?
 

I have a 2017 base model Toyota 86, and I’m looking to improve the lighting.

For those of you who have the LED fog lights, do you find them helpful at night on dark roads? Do they throw light off to the side very well? How about forward?

Mainly looking for better illumination for a back road driving.

Thanks!


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They light up the front of the car for a few meters, the low beam shoot further.

They aren't spot lights, they do work OK in fog though.

The HID lights in the 17+ cars are awesomeballs, I reckon the lighting, and the highbeam in particular is excellent as is.

If you need more??? Spot lights???? https://www.lazerlamps.com/news/lazer-rally-setup

I have the factory LED fog lights and they're bright as shit. They fill in the gap underneath the headlights. I don't need highbeams on backroads unless there are hills because of the sharp cutoff line.

Too bright in fact for rural areas with traffic. I turn them off in the country if I see oncoming traffic.

Within the first month I got flashed a lot, and had one case of road rage following somebody who pulled over and got behind me.

TLDR; yes they're worth it, just be kind and shut them off in the country and spare people's retinas.

Thank you both for the feedback and recommendations. Much appreciated.

Anyone else have any comments?


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I don't agree. Totally useless to me, they make a very wide light field, but too short.
Plus, they look ugly on the front.

Design/looks is subjective thing, but please, don't fault for fog lights to have by design beam of light that is low, close distance but wide. It's so to not reflect from fog or snow storm particles, and depending on country ligh beam shape of fogs also is regulated, just as light shape of main lights. AFAIK even yellow tone of some foglights was to reduce reflection from fog. It's silly to fault fog lights for being .. well, fog lights. They are not DLR, they are not close or far main lights, nor rally light cluster, not even there just to liven up looks, but for specific function to work in specific situations in specific way.

I have a set already tinted yellow with the trim pieces if you want. no pigtails but those should be easy enough to source.

also yes, fog lamps are not "auxillary lights" used for main sight, they are designed to spread alot of low level lighting wide and down low. vs your headlamps which are high and focal.

Aren’t they like $400 for the pair?

What is lacking?

HIDs should be enough. LEDs without projectors just make a lot of bright scatter, which will blind oncoming traffic if the intensity is more than a DRL. Switching a fog on and off with traffic isn’t easy like it is for high beams, but if that is the plan then get a project fog. Honestly, LEDs are no match for HID high beams for distance illumination. For low beams, HIDs will have better distance, but not as good for saturation up close, but still should be really good.

Yes, about that price for the kit.


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The OEM headlights are LED not HID. In my experience HID has a better output than LED, though that obviously depends on optics as well.


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i took out my oem fogs and put in Baja designs squadron sport fogs. unbelievably bright. like i kinda feel bad for oncoming traffic bright, theyre like new highbeams. nothing to do with their angle, theyre just that effective. installed with rally innovations bracket. i gave away the oe fog to a forum member for free. never thought intense yellow fogs would be one of my fav mods, yet here i am. i literally gave the oe fogs away for free after i saw what the baja designs fogs could do. i think theyre about 200 plus 60 for the bracket.
baja designs makes aux lighting for offroad motorcycles etc,

Thanks. I wasn’t aware all 86’s switched to LED. the OP should switch to HIDs then.

I have a base 2017 as well and added the factory fog lights when I bought the car. Here is the thread I had going about the installation with some pictures:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ghlight=Lights

I think they look pretty nice on the front of the car and they put out good light to the edges of the road. When it is raining hard I find them most useful. Honestly, though, the regular LED headlights are so bright I don’t use them that much. On dark roads I tend to use high beams to see up ahead to better avoid deer. These fog lights don’t do that. As designed they shine down. I do tend to use them when there is a lot of traffic and I don’t feel like constantly flipping the high beams off and on or I don’t want to blind the person in front of me.

It is not possible to use fog lights and high beams together, as they will turn off when the high beams are on. I’ve heard it’s possible to rewire that on your own, but that’s above my pay grade.

Myriad

Thank you, Myriad. That’s exactly the kind of helpful information I was looking for.


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HIDs being better than LEDs in terms of light output? Not sure about that one. That definitely used to be true but I don't know about anymore. LEDs have come a long way.

I have the new Morimoto LED headlights and they are brighter than the base model FRS headlights equipped with 35w Morimoto 5000k HIDs.

you're confusing 2 aspects of lighting.

there is the light source. there is also the optic assembly the light source utilizes.

hid offers more lumens than any current led sources can easily provide within the same assembly size. tossing an hid light source into any random housing designed for a halogen bulb is going to have very mixed results.

the led offering you're talking about was designed from the ground-up to be an led light source. the optical assembly is drastically different.

so while a custom-designed, complete led module could perform better than a random hid bulb in a housing it was never realistically intended to be placed into, that does not mean that all hid assemblies are worse than led assemblies.

if you start looking into dedicated hid projectors such as the murano, fx-r, or s2k for starters, you'll find that while the led assemblies are getting closer, they're just not there yet.

Not according to Morimoto or TRS:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...&postcount=172

They have more scatter, so they may appear to be brighter, especially up close, but this is like throwing a set of HIDs into a projector headlight and another into a reflector headlight then claiming the reflector headlight is brighter because looking at it is often blinding. If you want focused illumination then HID will have better penetration for seeing down road, but LEDs may offer better visibility up close because of the scatter.

I want better visibility to see what is down road to plan what to avoid versus seeing better of what is too late to avoid.