The Foglightening - THE FINAL CHAPTER

"RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars" (rallydarkstrike) 08/29/2018 at 17:35 • Filed to: Foglights

4

9

Back in July, I decided I wanted to get in on modding my car with the first major ‘mod’ I’ve ever done with it. I used to have fog lights on my 2002 Subaru Impreza 2.5TS wagon and found them really useful in the oft-present fog and poor winter driving conditions we get here in Nova Scotia, so !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

The parts arrived and I took it upon myself to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which was... !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

I finally had a chance to get the engine bay/bumper side of the harness installed the other day, which wasn’t too hard, but was a bit of a pain in the backside in regards to a few things. I picked a relatively cool morning (in the midst of a heatwave we’d been having here...), grabbed my tools and went to work.

My best socket/screwdriver set, the replacement fog light bumper insert, the box with the fog assemblies and the remaining wiring harness and the automotive victim in question...

The stereotypical ‘before’ shot...(no, the hood isn’t bent, it was just unlatched but not raised! :) )

I needed to remove the front bumper to route the wiring. Not a hard task on MC Accents, but Hyundai REALLY wanted to make sure it stayed on there! 2 screws, 2 bolts, and 13 clips later...

The offending clips/bolts and my trusty small ratchet with 8mm socket. The 2 bolts weren’t in this pic!

After a lot of fiddling and careful pulling and prying, off the bumper popped!

Resting safely on some nice soft grass...surprisingly heavier than you think for being made of plastic and foam!

I carefully routed the wiring harness along the drivers side fender and down past the air intake and driver’s headlight to where the fog lights would rest. I ziptied everything carefully to holes and other cables to keep the harness as neat as I could (it was quite long in the kit).

The ‘extension cable’ that runs from the switch in the car to the relay in the engine bay was carefully run around the strut tower and ziptied to some cables next to the strut tower and one of the mounts for the fender. You can see where it plugs into the engine bay side of the harness just at the bottom corner of the fusebox there and is covered with the little rubber sheath to prevent it from grounding out on anything.

From the connection near the fusebox, the too-long power cable to the battery for the relay was unceremoniously ziptied into a poorly executed but not intrusive bundle and attached to the hood latch cable that runs along there to prevent it from moving around. After thorough testing, it doesn’t foul on the hood latch at all - nothing rubs and all works as intended! I found a handy bolt to screw the relay and fog light harness fuse to by removing the frontmost bolt for the engine bay fusebox and attaching it there at an angle for easy access to the relay plug!

The power cable from the relay to the battery as well as the wiring to the foglight assemblies then run across in front of the battery. The battery power then snacks up to the battery terminal and the fog wiring runs down past this small air cleaner box and through a hole next to the headlight towards the bumper area. A modicum of zipties keps things relatively neat and tidy and from moving around too much.

It was at this point I stopped doing a good job of taking pictures because it was 36-38 degrees Celcius outside and I was roasting and just wanted to get it done (Nova Scotia’s had a lot of unseasonable heat lately). I swapped the plain halogen bulbs that came with the fogs for the Sylvania Fog Vision bulbs I bought (+1 for Selective Yellow!), plugged the fog assemblies in, reinstalled the bumper cover. Reconnected the battery, re-set all my radio and clock settings to where they should be, put the key on ‘Accessory’ and hit the fog light switch...

Success! :D They worked and the yellow is quite noticeable. Should help a lot in cutting through the fog and heavy snowstorms we get here when I am out and about. The fogs are wired independently of the high or low beams, but they ARE wired to ‘Accessory/Ignition’ power, so I don’t have to worry about forgetting to turn them off when I pull the key out and walk away from my car...BUT...

...there was a problem. No matter WHAT I did, I could not get them to adjust whatsoever. Screwing in or out the adjustment knobs on the back did nothing. The way the fog assemblies adjust is simple but effective. They are held in by four screws to the bumper. Two at the top where the actual light assemblies hinge from so the bottom can move back and forth to tip the lower edge up or down. If it helps, think of a swingset - hinged at the top. When the swing swings forward the bottom of the swing tilts up. When it swings backward, the bottom of the swing tilts down. The light adjustment works the same way. You can see just how far down they were pointing no matter how many times I screwed the adjustment knobs one way or another...

I drove the car to work with them like that to see how the light spread was in the dark on my way home from work later that day. They were useless. You couldn’t even tell they were on from the driver’s seat other than a little extra yellow light off to the sides. Something was seriously wrong with the adjustment somehow...

The next day, I crawled back under the car (without removing the bumper’s a billion and a half clips...) to look closely at the adjustment assemblies and noticed something. The screws would tighten or loosen like they were supposed to for fun, but there was of course no adjustment happening at all. Why? Well, it was because the adjustment knobs were assembled wrong at whatever factory made them. They featured a spring that I couldn’t understand the purpose of at the back of the adjustment mounting around the adjustment knob/screws that seemingly did nothing. That’s because they WERE doing nothing....they were in the wrong place. An hour of swearing and fiddling in tight quarters scraping my knuckles because I didn’t want to have to go through the hassle of taking the whole bumper off again and I removed the knob/screws completely, used zipties as impromptu mini spring compressors and squeezed the springs in between the fog assembly bracket and the adjustment bracket where they were supposed to be. Voila, the adjustment worked PERFECTLY now!

Went for a drive that night to test them in the dark again to see the light spread and it’s SO much better. They’ll definitely be a help when bad weather comes.....they also look pretty awesome (not that I am going to drive around with them on all the time!). Proof:

Excuse the crappy phone shots, but I am happy with how they turned out! :)

vicali > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 08/29/2018 at 17:49

0

Very nice, most factory fogs are useless as they aren’t independent from the lowbeams. In real fog conditions where the headlights are too bright/reflected you need to be going 15km/h with just the fogs on. Bonus points for a euro rear fog so you don’t get smashed into by the car behind you..

W e h e a d e d h o m e f r o m v a c a t i o n l a s t w e e k a t 4 a m - 4 0 k m o f t o w n s h i p g ravel farm roads full of deer made me appreciate a l l o f m y l i g h t s .

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 08/29/2018 at 18:17

0

Well done! We don't have much of a fog issue here so most fog lights are actually DRLs. And all aftermarket lights are spot lights or light bars. There's a couple of Accents like yours around town and they've both got 6 to 10" light bars on them..

DutchieDC2R > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 08/29/2018 at 19:20

0

Man, that gives the car a much more ‘chique’ look! Very nice. I dont have ‘extra’ fogs on the DC2 (they never came with those from the factory), but then again, the weather here is never that bad that I really need them. 

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > DutchieDC2R 08/29/2018 at 20:11

1

Thanks for the compliment ! It was a fun project for me to do as well aside from the benefits of seeing better in poor weather. :)

They are OEM-style, so if your car had fogs from the factory on this model of Accent, this is what they would’ve looked like...2006-2010 Accents are old enough they don’t have any ‘extra’ LED DRLs or anything of the sort, so all you got was dual-filament single-bulb headlights (high/low beam) and your turn signals unless you opted for the fogs as well. :P

I always thought they did a decent job of integrating them on this generation....they’re not ‘look at me’ in your face huge or oddly shaped or whathaveyou, but are big enough and clearly placed enough to be decently effective!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media 08/29/2018 at 20:16

0

Thanks! No Accents of my vintage around here with light bars...the go-to brand for high-school / tuner kids, etc is VW and Honda...strangely VW more than Honda in this area, so you don’t see off stuff done to many Accents like mine. There is one person who has a tastefully modded Accent hatch like mine in white with a slight lowering kit, some nice wheels and the like. He installed his own aftermarket round fog lights but actually installed them behind the main grill...not sure how effective they are, but they look interesting!

I did catch this poor Echo with a massive light bar in the local Walmart parking lot awhile back...seems like the place you’d find it, eh?

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > vicali 08/29/2018 at 20:19

0

No rear fog, but I’ve actually thought of installing one at some point!

Fun fact, on North American 2006-2010 Accent hatches, the rear clusters have 4 running lights that ALL act as brake lights as well :

However on Eurospec models, only the BOTTOM of the 4 tail lighting areas acts as running / brake lights and the top two act as rear fogs! :)

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 08/30/2018 at 07:12

0

That sort of light bar placement round here would get you a defect notice from our friendly police force in no time...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media 08/30/2018 at 07:18

0

They’re pretty high on safety (brakes working, everything solid - no compromising rust), but they seem to be a bit more lax on mods during vehicle inspections around here, especially with mom and pop shops.

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 08/30/2018 at 07:57

0

And here the shop can get you on both during the annual while the coppers will happily defect  you any time they see you...whether it's legitimate or not.