Thanks to the helpful info I found on this forum. It only took me an hour to install these 10W LED DRL including cutting the lower grills. I tapped the wire to the corner light so that I could have some sort of on and off control over these lights. They are way brighter than I expected. Hope they won't get me into any kinda trouble as they could blind the incoming traffic. Other mods: 55W 6000K HID headlights 35W 3000K HID Fog lights
Nice job! Nice pics! This was the route I was first going to go, it looks nice and bight. It looks like you slit 2 slats legnthwise to fit the lights? How did you attach the lamp body to the grill? Now you just have to match the color temp of the driving lights to match!!!
Wow. Very nice mod. This is almost exactly what I've been considering doing. I'm stuck on the fogs though. Can't decide if I want to leave them stock, do 3000k HID, or LEDs. T_T
slit 2 slats legnthwise is very much needed to fit these lights. And to a get them onto the grills I just drill small holes and tight the lights in with the bolts that came with the kits. I also used some metal wire to secure them onto the upper grill just to be safe
OK that's the same way of mounting that I had figured out. That's some delicate cutting!! Like I said it workd out very well for you!!! Anybody wants to duplicate this, I still have a set of these I want to sell, PM me!!!
3000k HID in fogs will work will during a foggy day. and I like the color contrast of diamond white from HID headlight and the yellow from the fogs. LED wont do anything in terms of light up the road. They will only color match your headlight.
Fog? ...In Fontana? As for the "lighting the road," that's where I'm stuck. I don't particularly want to go about HIDs. I did have HID headlights and fogs in my '02 Eclipse Spyder, which looked rather delicious, if I might add. On top of that, the lit up EVERYTHING, but I don't really want to spend money on having them installed and I don't feel mechanically inclined enough to do them myself. If I were to leave the stock ones, they light up the road decently, but I'm not too sure about them with the 6,000k headlights. I've seen it on a few other cars, but never on a Prius. On top of that, I plan to add LED DRLs, which would help with lighting the road (?). Theoretically the DRLs will match the 6,000k headlights. If I did do the LEDs in the fogs, sure they wouldn't provide very much light, but they would match the DRLs and headlights. Worse comes to worse, I spend the little bit extra and put HIDs in the fogs and still get the DRLs, simply because they really add a touch of unique-ness and [possibly] cool-ness. Decisions decisions...
The LED DRL's will not light up the road: even the bright one's are only 5-7W per side. LED bulbs are very bright when you are looking at the bulb, but because of the low wattage the light output is insignificant when compared to the headlights and foglights. As for running HID's in the foglights, I decided against it myself because the beam pattern from the foglight is pretty horrible. if you put HID's in there, it'll light up the road but it will also cause TONS of glare to on-coming traffic. I have HID foglights on my other car but only turn them on when I need them: driving around with them on all the time is not a good idea, IMO.
The LED DRL i've got was very bright as you can see in picture 4 and 5. they light up the road pretty well. Its like you put two 5w tactical flash lights in front of your car. As for HID in the fogs. I would say the same thing - glare to on-coming traffic. If you really want the looks, just get the $10 white bulbs. they are way cheaper than LED ones.
So overall, the best bet is to probably just leave the stock fogs in then? I REALLY like the looks of the DRLs. and Xenon, I'm still working on selling that Camry. Don't get rid of my DRLs just yet... ;p
LED lumen/watt efficiency is typically 3x that of HID, so a 10w LED will be pretty close to a 35w HID. This is why Lexus has moved to LED primary head lighting.
Hmm, okay. So what kind of trouble would I have to go through to do something like this? I think this seems like the ultimate solution. I wouldn't need to alter it at all, right? Just simply swap out the OEM fogs with whatever LEDs I get?
If they truly are being used as DRL's they should only be on during the day, and turn off when the headlights are on, that way blinding other drivers will not be an issue. A NC rely hooked up to the side markers should do the trick. You would have to get the current to drive them from a circuit energized in "Ready" mode.
My DRL has an extra wire that I supposedly should tap onto the headlight wires so that when the headlight is on the DRL will dim to 1/3 of its original brightness when the headlight is on. I havent done that yet, I guess I will try it out this weekend.
i think there is some mis-information here. a 35W D2S HID bulb has an output of about 3200 lumens: about 90 lumens/watt. the brightest LED is rated at about 135 lumens/watt (to the best of my knowledge). However, most LED's used in aftermarket automotive applications are only rated at about 50-80 lumens per watt. So that 10W DRL is not going to put out anywhere near as much light as the HID headlights. in the OP's pictures, the DRL's look bright when they are on by themselves, but you'll notice that it's output is barely noticeable when the foglights are on (last picture). with LED's, the light is emitted from a very concentrated source so when you look at the LED bulb, it looks VERY bright. when you mount your LED DRL's, make sure to aim them low. ... just want to make sure the correct information gets out there... if i am wrong, please feel free to correct me...
Well, with the LED fogs and the LED DRLs, they'll add up to just enough. You already know how much fog we get out here, so that won't be a problem at all.
