jginnane

See: http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/612737

The above cardomain page shows the round Bosch "Compact 100" amber fog lights and halogen driving lights installed with a lowered license plate.

Lights were purchased from Daniel Stern -- http://www.danielsternlighting.com -- and at his recommendation, Hella heavy-duty wiring harnesses w/ 20 amp fuses were used. The wiring is independent of the parking lights and headlights on the TSX. Toggles are on the dash next to the VSA toggle.

Unlike the Acura OEM fog lights, these actually produce good road effects (90-degree wide pattern). The selective-yellow filtration cuts through fog. In a rearview mirror, the apparent brightness of the fogs and the low-beam HIDs is approximately equal.

When the driving lights are on, they are substantially brighter in appearance than the HIDs and each single lamp produces about the same output as your high-beam halogen set. These must be aimed and used carefully not to blind other drivers.

When all the lights are on -- high, low, fogs and drivers -- the effect is somewhat like a 747 landing at Newark airport. You can "roast chestnuts in the glow"... but there's no practical need to have both fogs and drivers on at the same time. Note that the H2 bulb is the same in both pairs of lights, but the effects are shaped by the reflector(s) and lamp lenses.

Please direct technical questions to Daniel Stern at the above URL. (Bosch does not sell to the retail aftermarket, so you need to go thru someone like Dan if you want these.) Total price, installed, comes in a bit less for both lamp sets than the quoted installed price for the clip-on Acura OEM fogs alone ($500-700).

With these and a brand-new Beltronics RX-55 radar detector, we finally feel safe going thru the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.

sleepygreggy

These make your car look like your going to a rally. I feel they're out of place, especially 4 fog lights on the TSX. OEM fogs can be gotten for ~300 and i dont know how it costs 400 to wire an included harness.

jginnane

Sleepy, there's a big difference between fogs (90 degree pattern)and drivers (10-18-degree pattern). White fogs are less effective because the blue component tends to scatter the light in front of you (making it actually harder to see).

Cost of the two Bosch lamp sets + relays was very close to the cheapest OEM price I found (for a single fog set). (Not counting "Mr. PIAA" on Ebay. :-)

Again -- Acura dealers are quoting ridiculous prices to _install_ the clip-on OEMs, and you might as well buy a string of Xmas lights for all the good they do you. But I left a price pad there because some tuner shops might charge you for 2 hours or so, if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

While I'm at it, I should mention that you can't put fog or driving lights where Acura puts them... because there's no metal to attach to! The "clip-ons" you buy from Acura are held by the plastic bumper. The steel bumper is only in the middle. That's part of why the OEMs are so ineffective -- if they were big enough to really work, they'd be too heavy to be supported by the urethane. So, cheap lights and an appearance factor... versus putting good light in front of the car.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Hmm...what you mention is most interesting. I never knew about the OEM fogs only being held in place by the covers.

jginnane

CG,

Someone sent me a picture taken during a CAI install -- I don't have it any more -- that shows the steel bumper extending only the width of the center grill. That's the only place you can direct-mount a set of lights (by drilling mounting holes in the steel).

If you want to get super-fancy, you can take off the plastic bumper and weld supports in place under the headlights. The welded brackets will have to extend from the bumper (or the radiator surround). Either might cause complications if you need to take the bumper off in the future.

Check the installation instructions at http://www. hondacuraworld.com for the OEM fog set. They look nice... it's just that they're not going to do much for you in the real world.

moda_way

I installed the OEMs and they aren't just held in place by the covers. There are many screws that bolt the things down. You couldn't hammer them off easily.

biker

Who needs fogs anyway?

Even the best fogs will make very little diff in real life vs. just plain old low beams. You're much more likely to get rear ended in a heavy fog situation vs. not seeing due to lack of fogs.

Most people have the OEM ones for looks.

jginnane

>>> I installed the OEMs and they aren't just held in place by the covers. There are many screws that bolt the things down. You couldn't hammer them off easily.

True. They're screwed + clipped to the plastic urethane bumper extra-well. You wouldn't use a hammer but a screwdriver. :-)

That's probably why they're so lightweight -- because if they weighed more, the bumper would sag and make for an extremely fugly appearance. But the OEMs do look nice, as long as you don't want them to see with (as opposed to being seen with).

sixspeed

I agree that the OEM fog lights may be just for looks but I have to disagree about usefulness of fog lamps in general.

I used to have aftermarket fogs on my Golf (until they got stolen ) and they were great. I remember driving in such dense fog that my own low beams were bouncing off and almost blinding me. The fog lights were sweeping low to the ground and illuminating the way.
Obviously, they can't be used at higher speeds but good quality fog lights can really help in bad conditions.

jginnane

>>> Who needs fogs anyway?

>>> Even the best fogs will make very little diff in real life vs. just plain old low beams. You're much more likely to get rear ended in a heavy fog situation vs. not seeing due to lack of fogs.

When we started out with the idea of improving the lighting on this car, we thought we wanted *just* fogs. Picture the Garden State Parkway -- a high-speed coastal highway -- that runs unfenced through a wildlife [deer] preserve. In various seasons we've counted over a hundred deer alongside the roadway in one ten-mile stretch, and the fog blows right in over the marshes from the ocean when the dew point is reached.

But fogs aren't going to prevent you from hitting a deer in the roadway at 75+mph, because you're moving 110 feet per second and that's the distance limitation of any foglight design. Deer _might_ be moving across the roadway ahead of you -- at 30 mph maximum, or 44 feet/second -- and you need a couple seconds to analyze and react.

This is where the drivers help. Your HID lowbeams are good to about 500-600 feet -- but half that distance will be covered while you analyze the obstacle is in the roadway and figure out what to do about it. You can't improve your average reaction time (without a lot of practice), but if you can better illuminate more of the distant roadway, it's possible to "acquire the target" sooner and start the analytic/avoidance cognitive process.

>>> Most people have the OEM ones for looks.

Yes! And the HIDs are really excellent on this car. If you spend a lot of time in a big city, fogs and drivers are not the solution you need.

These lights' main usefulness is late at night -- when the minivans go home to bed. The less lighting on a roadway and the more twisting and turning the road is, the more you need them.

But the fogs -- the amber yellow, wide-pattern lamps -- are very specific to one set of conditions only, and they won't really help you in dry running weather (or dodging deer).

goose25

I must agree with Sleepygreegy on this one, those lights are adding absolutely nothing to the visual appeal of your TSX. It looks like you're getting ready for the Paris-Dakar rally.

Bass Mechanic

like the others i am following the old rule, " if you cant say anything nice dont say anything at all."
and since i can't, i won't

jginnane

I must agree with Sleepygreegy on this one, those lights are adding absolutely nothing to the visual appeal of your TSX. [...][/QUOTE]

Do you understand the purpose of auxiliary lights?

accsuperstar

now you need the oem fogs to complete your look

jginnane

ROTFL!

The "look" I should go for is to move to Pennsylvania, so I can lose the front license plate. But it's not worth that. :-)

Since you can't put any serious weight in those front corner pockets, the best option is something like a LIDAR jammer. But the concealed version of that fits in your grille (and a radar jammer is illegal). So, it's something else electronics, or else vent/cooling ports for the brakes (which was what you were apparently supposed to think from the stock design.)

For looks, we've been looking for 3-spoke white rims. Would give the car sort of a "hot wheels" look. Kinda hard to find them. (But that thread has to be over in a "bling" forum -- here we're talking about technical improvements.

goose25

I'm not trying to be a jerk and I'm sure that those lights work well for you, but they are just not very appealing to the eyes. I'm looking for foglights to install on my TSX also, but I think that I'll go with either the OEM lights or a pair that my friend is trying to acquire from a European distributor. Once i get those installed, maybe we can go to the Paris-Dakar rally together and show those Frenchmen what the TSXs are capable of .

jginnane

FWIW, I first ordered Cibie Cesars. Too big for the TSX --they would've stuck out the front like buck teeth (cf a WWII "Jap" propaganda cartoon). But they're great lights... so they're going on my Yukon.

Cibie Airport "35s" will fit in the TSX, good rectangular lamps, slightly better focus on the road and slightly more lumens vs. Bosch. BUT you can't get them in North America. Either Australia or the UK (or fr/ zee French) and forget about replacements if you ever crack a lens.

You have a maximum vertical mounting size of about 4" so that limits many choices. You have to attach to the bumper or weld a support strut, so that limits location.

Otherwise, there isn't much difference between ~$260 for hondacuraworld OEMs or the MR_PIAA $60 Ebay crap. If an aftermarket company made a front end that included a better (wider) bumper -- and wasn't just plastic -- it would bear serious consideration, subject to the weight and aerodynamics tradeoffs.

sixspeed

jginnane, are you saying that PIAA is crap ?
What about CATZ ?

jginnane

Ebay's "MR_PIAA" does not sell any PIAA retail sets, despite his name. But I have heard from a number of people whose opinions I respect that PIAA's entire product line is overpriced, and the plastic sets are cheaply made. To me, it's like "Bose sound" -- it works, if you're not terribly particular, and have extra money to spend on average stuff instead of spending time researching things. I spent a great deal of time looking at PIAA sets. They're easy to find, all over, so if you break or lose a lamp you can get replacements quickly. (That's not the case with Cibies, unfortunately.) Conversely, you're going to find official technical information about the Bosch and Cibie lines, but you're not going to find it about PIAA.

"CATZ" I have also heard is Asian "junk" and although the stuff works out of the box, bulb lives are measured in dozens of hours (not 000s or 0000s). Just like the 8000K "blue" bulbs some people put in their HIDs. I do not have direct experience with CATZ but have seen some nifty-looking floor displays they put out. :-p

They're probably good for the show-car + "racequeen" circuits -- but the better position to be in is selling rather than trying to use them.

turbobumblbee

can someone please show me a PICTURE of OEM 2004 TL foglights please??? ive heard of them before but i have NEVER seen them in a picture before.. thanks!