One of the first modifications I did when I purchased my BRZ was to do a full LED retrofit for all of the existing non-LED bulbs both inside and out. That is, all of them except the fog lights. All of the other bulbs I replaced are bulbs designed to be seen by others. This means beam pattern isn’t quite as important, and swapping to an LED won’t do any harm so long as it is bright enough. Fog lights, on the other hand, require an accurate beam pattern to properly distribute light. I wanted my fog lights to actually work, and I also didn’t want to blind other drivers. For that reason, a typical LED bulb-swap wasn’t an option.
Enter the Diode Dynamics Luxeon LED Replacement Fog Lamp Assemblies.
These are complete replacement housings for the factory fog lamps, and that offers several benefits over a simple LED bulb swap:
- The housings are specifically tailored to the LEDs, allowing for proper light distribution with a nice, sharp cutoff.
- They are heavier and much more solidly built than the OEM units, and have a thicker, stronger plastic lens, which will be more resistant to the barrage of debris that it is subjected to being so low at the front of the car.
- They have adequate cooling (with cooling fins), which allows the use of three super-bright Luxeon LEDs without risk of overheating.
- The lenses look way cooler than the stock multi-reflector, mirrored housings.
Installation takes less than 5 minutes per side. Turn the wheel fully to give you room. Remove the few screw poppers holding the fender liner in place at the front of the wheel well, and peel it back enough to reach inside. Disconnect the harness from the stock fog lamp. Remove the two screws holding the housing in place and it comes right out. Installation is the reverse. It’s one of the simplest mods I’ve ever done to the car (actually simpler than some of the other LED bulb replacements I’ve done.)
I apologize in advance for the terrible comparison photos. I installed these Christmas Day, and was holding up other family plans, so these were quick photos taken in less-than-ideal lighting. One side is in the sun, while the other side is shaded, but it still is an okay comparison.
One thing to note is that if you do purchase these specific units from Diode Dynamics, you will also need these H11 to H16 adapters.
One of my concerns about these housings was fitment. As they are “universal” fog lamps (not BRZ-specific) I was worried that they might not be quite the right size or something. My concerns were unwarranted. I think if anything it’s just that Subaru probably uses the same fog lamp assemblies across multiple models (why re-invent the wheel, right?) Anyway, the point is they fit perfectly, and look great. In pictures, you almost get the impression that they are smaller than the stock assemblies, but that is just because the illuminated portion of the assembly is smaller as it uses different optics. The overall unit is the same size with the lens filling out the entire opening.
Once they were installed, I parked the car in front of a wall to adjust the cutoff using a little screw on the back of the fog lamp housings and voila! Insta-LED fog lights, with a nice, crisp cutoff! As you can tell from this photo, they are plenty bright, and also actually whiter than my HIDs. Strangely enough, when looking at the car, the fogs and headlamps look to be about the same color temperature. However, from inside the car, the light output is different enough to be quite noticeable. It’s amusing because when my low beams and fogs are on, the road is now lit up in a nice white color. When I flick on my high beams (which turns off the fog lamps), it’s almost as if I switched to an old pair of yellow fog lamps. I used to think my HIDs were “white” but now they aren’t anymore! Maybe I’ll swap out the HID bulbs in the future to properly match everything.
