Member
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Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: Galveston, TX
Posts: 45
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Member
Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: Galveston, TX
Posts: 45
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Diode Dynamics SS3 fog light review
I recently installed my Diode Dynamics SS3 SAE fog light kit. I went with the yellow version. I won’t go into installing them. I swapped mine at the same time I installed my SSO Slimline bumper, so I had to pull everything off anyway.
I do have them pointed at the lowest angle possible. The set screws are on both sides so it won’t be easy to reset them I don’t think, just because I’d have to get to the inboard set screw somehow.
The fitment was great, and with the included harness adapters was plug and play. No problems with clips being set on the reverse polarity side or anything like that. Super easy wiring.
The fogs are selective yellow, not amber, and I gotta say… they are YELLOW. I’ve had them on for close to a month and I’m getting used to it, but I’m still considering looking into options of swapping them to white. I’m not sure if I can order new lenses from DD or not, I haven’t looked into it yet.
I mostly wanted to talk about beam pattern though. We have had some very foggy conditions lately, so it gave me a great opportunity to go out at night and actually be able to see the beams in the air rather than just reflected against a wall. I took all these photos with a new iphone with the night shot mode mostly on, so don’t look at these as a relative brightness review.
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So standard against-the-wall shot to see the separation of the headlights and fog light beam pattern. The fog beams are very wide. That is what is taking the longest to get used to. Directly in front of the vehicle, the fogs and headlights blend pretty well, but if I have a car in the front quarter of me (ie me in their blind spot) only the fogs are illuminating the other car, and the color is distracting. The first time I drove with them on at night I thought there was a lime green car next to me. Turns out it was baby blue. Anyway, the high cut off of the fogs seems pretty good, I do wish I could lower them just a tad more.
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Light beam from the front quarter. I am right on the outside edge of the fog beam.
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This is on the outside edge of the headlight beam, showing how much wider the fog beam is.
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Reverse shot from above. This is from directly above the passenger side headlight. The blue trash can in the distance is just inside the outside edge of the headlight beam. You can also tell how much more reflection I’m getting from the head lights than the fog lights. I’m not sure if that is a factor of the position or the color though.
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Side shot showing the separation of the headlights and the fogs. This seems to mostly show that my headlights seem to be aimed too high from the factory, which would explain why the non-LED lights on Toyotas seem to suck so bad.
I finally remembered to turn off the night shot mode for these last two, thus it’s blurry, but you can still see the beams and relative brightness. The camera is still shooting on auto settings, so it’s not correct, but better for brightness comparisons.
Headlights only
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Headlights and fogs
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Overall, I’m happy with the beam pattern, the additional width and lighting up the near view is nice. I’m still on the fence about the selective yellow. I also really like the price in comparison to the Baja Designs I was originally looking at, or the Rigids I was looking at after I saw how horrible the BD SAE fogs lights were.
And yes, I’m one of those horrible people that drive around with my fog lights on all the time. Mostly because I can’t see ish with just the headlights on. Maybe I’ll see if I can adjust the headlights down some to see if that will help.
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