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If you want to skip my little intro bit, scroll down to skip the first bunch of paragraphs. I'm just bored, hence the story beforehand. lol. It does, however, show my thought process as to why I went with these bulbs. Also, pic heavy at the bottom of the post. Lots of fog/no-fog comparison, as well as a few comparison pics of halogen vs. LED.
Since I upgraded my low beams to Morimoto H11B 5500K HIDs (courtesy of theretrofitsource.com), I've been looking to change my fog light bulbs to something less.. halogen-y colored. I wasn't quite set on whether I wanted matching fogs or go with the super contrasting yellow fogs -- that is, until I saw a car on the road with the white headlight/yellow fog contrast. From there, I decided I wanted to go that route. Overlay was out of the question, since I like the clear lens look, and I'm not sure how well the overlay would stand up to constant abuse by the elements. I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to properly apply the overlay without taking the bumper off, and I didn't want to go through that much effort. Now that I had that option ruled out, the question now is halogen, LED, or HID?
I ruled out HID because I didn't want to run another relay harness, and I read that the 10th gen fogs don't play nice with HIDs. Plus, it kinda falls under the "HID in halogen reflector" category that I didn't want to do. I did want that "insta-on" look, too, so that ruled out halogens. Given that, LEDs won the battle, but there are so.. f'in.. many out there, with prices ranging from $15 to $200 and up. Halogen replacement bulbs are fairly new to the market (with regards to HID and the obvious halogens), and almost every vendor on Amazon and eBay claim "OMG 50 MILLION LUMENS!" So, I did a lot of research, like I tend to do. Found the following video, where they tested a bunch of LED bulbs, critiqued them on actual output and beam pattern. The best two were expensive as crap ($150 and $200), and if I was gonna spend that kinda money, I was gonna retro HIDs into the fogs. The Morimoto 2Stroke bulbs, while they had decent output (+96% brighter than halogen), they had a crap output, much to my surprise, due to the quality which I typically associate to the Morimoto name.
Fast forward to me choosing proper yellow LED bulbs. I really didn't want to spend more than $50 on a pair of LED bulbs, so I had to rely on the invariably unreliable reviews on Amazon. I found the
on Amazon for the low as hell price of $22.99. I was definitely intrigued by them, as you can clock them as you see fit by way of loosening a set screw and rotating the assembly. They're also available in any single filament bulb size you might need for the same price. I was still skeptical, as the price point was very low, and cheaper bulbs tend to be crap, color tends to suck, etc. Looked through customer submitted photos in the reviews, and saw light output from them, particularly one from a 10th gen. From there, I was sold.
Now onto the Review!
First off, as I mentioned above, these bad boys rang in at a whopping $22.99. I opted for express shipping because I felt like it (overnight was a whole $9, and I wanted them sooner rather than later). Still, $32 for a pair of LED bulbs that looked promising wasn't bad.
Packaging was a small ziploc-style bag, but the bulb section was covered with foam to protect them. These bulbs have no heat sinks or fan, so that may be a problem down the line, but since it's not terribly hot out, it's a non-issue right now. I'll update this thread of how they hold up when the temps reach triple digits. Nevertheless, what drew me to these is they're chip-on-board (COB) LEDs, so the light dissipation would be fairly similar to that of a halogen (i.e. no little lens like that of CREE LED H8s out there causing light to diffract in various angles).
I did a quick "bench test" to see how bright and yellow these suckers were. Unfortunately, I was quite adamant about getting these installed that I failed to take pics. My test rig consists of 8x D-cell batteries in a battery holder and 2 double ended alligator clips. My basis for comparison was a Philips H11 bulb, which came out of my low beam when I replaced it with HID. Initial reaction, holy crap, the Calais H8 LED bulbs beat the ever living snot out of the OEM supplied H11 with quite similar beam pattern, with the exception that there was a slight shadow top and bottom since the COB LEDs fire 180 out from each other. Since these are fogs and meant to light up the side of the road (so you can see the lines on the road), the side-firing orientation in which they came seemed like the best orientation. My logic was that the slight top and bottom shadow would limit upward glare.
Installation was a breeze, with the exception that getting to the fog lights in the 10thgen is a pain in the ***, especially the passenger side due to intercooler piping. With my H11 HIDs, I had to swap out the rubber gasket at the base of the bulb with the ones on the Philips H11 because the Morimoto-supplied ones required far more force than I had wanted to put on the back of the bulb to get them to fit. These LED bulbs went in just fine, and thank science, too, since I had to contort my hand in odd positions to get the old bulbs out and these ones in.
The color of these bulbs are great, giving off that nice "JDM yellow" I was aiming for. Light output in the factory fogs gave a much wider beam pattern, and just like I had hoped, the beam pattern didn't go too high. In fact, they didn't seem to interfere with the HID beam pattern, just added foreground lighting and color. Anyways, I'll let the pics do the talking from here.
Great color contrast, good foreground lighting.
Side by side of LED vs Halogens, similar angle, but not quite the same:
Look at the far side of the road. The LED beam pattern lights up the side of the road quite a bit more, and you can see that the crossing point of the two beam patterns is much closer to the car.
Fogs off vs on against a garage door:
A bit of glare above the HID beam. At least it's not blinding glare like PnP HIDs in halogen reflectors. From far away, I'd imagine it'd make the viewer think, "oh look, yellow lights." The little rectangles above the main beam pattern are from the low beams, "squirrel finders" is what I've seen them called on the interwebs. They're there to gently light up signs in the distance.
Fogs off vs on from further away and a few different angles:
and for kicks and giggles:
I've had these installed for less than 12 hours, and maybe an hour worth of being illuminated. So far, so good, and for $32 ($23 if you're more patient than I am), I'd say they're worth a shot. Someone PM me in a couple months for an update. Because I like the look of them, I treat them like driving lights, so they're on all the time. lol. I'm pretty sure my lighting habits will be enough to test their longevity. I have no complaints about them at all. A few things that I'm gonna keep an eye on is how well that little setscrew holds up to constant vibration and thermal differences, as well as checking for heat issues, since there's no external heat dissipation structures/features.
Figured I'd do a 3.5 month update since temps here in Vegas have breached 100F (37C), and seem to be hanging out in the mid-80's/Low-90's (about 30-33C), with night temps in the mid-70s (22-25C).
So far, so good. No signs of overheating (though, I haven't touched the bulbs since I put 'em in), no loss in color or brightness. Here in about 1-2 months, I'll update when temps start staying above 100F (37C). And for those curious, my fogs always come on with my headlights because I love the pure white/yellow contrast look when I drive. I had my friend help me pick up my parent's car from the airport (I trust her driving Miyuki) and I'd be lying if I wasn't staring at my car's front end (with lights on) in my dad's rear view mirror from time to time. lol
So far, zero issues. At all. Light intensity and color is as it was when I first installed them. No issues with melting wires or anything.
To give you an idea of temps here, the day I installed my intake, my ambient temp meter read 117F (47C). Ambient temps at 5am are already breaching the 90s (32C) with triple digits hitting by 10am
Finally ran into a problem. Passenger side bulb went out. Was kinda bummed because the color was amazing and brightness was perfect. Opened the Amazon listing for the bulbs to find out the color temp and lo and behold, their listing says there's a 2 year warranty on them, and that all you had to do was contact Calais directly through Amazon. I send them a message asking how to process a warranty claim since my passenger side went out, and literally 3 minutes later, I get a reply saying, "We're sorry for the inconvenience. Send us the order number, your address, and phone number, and we'll send a new set out right away."
I might buy a set of "better quality" ones if I can find some anyways, but man, that's some customer service right there.
01-27-2018
