Foglights without the harness

[Dammerung]

I stripped the foglights off of a Jeep Cherokee, but the harness it had was shot, and I didn’t even bother to bring it home. Is there any way I can hook up fog lights w/o it? I have the interior switch too, if that helps.

 

 

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[ftpiercecracker1]

You might luck out and find the factory plugs buried in the harness behind the grille (grill?). If you already have the switch in the dash and its not something you just put in, meaning factory, there is a very good chance you will find those plugs. Now whether or not they will be compatible with your lights, you will just have to find out.

 

Running wires for fog lights can be as hard or as difficult as you like. Just need some wire, a switch, power, ground, and some electrical connectors. An amateur could do it in an afternoon.

[eaglescout526]

I bought a 96 and down head light harness and harvested a prong from it and joined the hella light harness with it and hooked it up to my headlight harness using the factory prong and it looks like a clean factory install for my driving lights.

[Eagle]

All you need is a relay. The fog lights get their power feed through the relay. To control the relay, tap into one of the low beam headlight wires, run from that to the switch, then from the switch to the control terminal on the light relay.

[AZJeff]

13 minutes ago, Eagle said:

All you need is a relay. The fog lights get their power feed through the relay. To control the relay, tap into one of the low beam headlight wires, run from that to the switch, then from the switch to the control terminal on the light relay.

When I run auxiliary lights, I prefer to tap into one of the front parking lights for control line power for the relay.  That way I can run the aux.  lights any time the parking lights OR the headlights are on.

 

Just another way of looking at things.....

[Eagle]

8 hours ago, AZJeff said:

When I run auxiliary lights, I prefer to tap into one of the front parking lights for control line power for the relay.  That way I can run the aux.  lights any time the parking lights OR the headlights are on.

 

Just another way of looking at things.....

 

That is another way to do it. Unfortunately, it's also illegal. By law, fog lights MUST turn off automatically when the headlights are switched to high beam. It is possible to take the trigger tap off the parking lights and still make it legal, but doing it that way requires two relays instead of one.

 

If the aux lights happen to be "driving" lights, as opposed to "fog" lights, then they can be on ONLY with the high beams.

[gogmorgo]

For reference, whatever fog lights you mount must meet SAE J583, in addition to only functioning with low beams, to be legal. Driving lights must meet J581, and only function with high beams. Number of lights and where you mount them on the vehicle also affect legality, but you can't just stick any old light below your headlights and call it a fog light just because it's below the fog lights. That may be obvious to most people, but it's a myth that gets brought up from time to time on social media and it's rarely refuted. But back to the subject at hand. 

 

The connector for the factory fog light switch always exists under the dash, or at least I've never seen someone say they couldn't find it. It takes power from the low beam side of the headlight dimmer switch, and feeds it through to one of the wires in the ten-pin headlight harness connector up under the air box. This wiring will exist from the factory. 

If you don't have a factory fog light harness you can tap into that wire at the headlight harness connector, like I did. I suppose you could add a pin and wire to the connector, but I just snipped and spliced on the truck side. I ran it through a relay to trigger my LED flood lights. The relay gets power from a fused line going to the battery.

I also snipped the wire from the dimmer and connected it to a constant hot on the fuse panel, so I could control the lights independently from the low beams. 

I have soft covers ($7 a piece at Princess Auto) so it's legal to drive around with the lights mounted (but not turned on), even though they're not SAE fogs or driving lights. Some jurisdictions are more concerned about compliance, but most can issue a ticket for uncovered off-road lights, even if they're not in use. 

I'll get off the soapbox now. 

[Dammerung]

Anyone know what brand these foglights are? Because I don’t think they’re stock.


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[gogmorgo]

I don't think they're stock either.

They look like a Made-in-China set I picked up at Crappy Tire for cheap. Probably could the same ones in a different box at Walmart, or name-your-chain parts store. 

[Jeep Driver]

17 hours ago, Dammerung said:

Anyone know what brand these foglights are? Because I don’t think they’re stock.


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Those look like old Blazer brand from 20 years ago.

[AZJeff]

On 9/26/2019 at 5:12 PM, Eagle said:

 

That is another way to do it. Unfortunately, it's also illegal. By law, fog lights MUST turn off automatically when the headlights are switched to high beam. It is possible to take the trigger tap off the parking lights and still make it legal, but doing it that way requires two relays instead of one.

 

If the aux lights happen to be "driving" lights, as opposed to "fog" lights, then they can be on ONLY with the high beams.

Yeah, I know that is the case in most states.

 

However, here in AZ, there are PLENTY of areas out in the boonies where you want all the light you can get.   So my aux. lights are set up so that I can switch on the high beams, the light bar above the front bumper, and some driving lights mounted on the bumper.   It probably violates state law about maximum candlepower, but I also use them intelligently--out of the open road with no oncoming traffic.

 

But we all know of nimrods that run around with all sorts of auxiliary lights that blind other drivers, as well, so there is THAT consideration.

[eaglescout526]

5 minutes ago, AZJeff said:

But we all know of nimrods that run around with all sorts of auxiliary lights that blind other drivers, as well, so there is THAT consideration.

Yeah...That or because kids weren't taught the difference between high and low beams so their gaudy LED Mercedes or their japanese car lights are blinding because they don't know the difference.

[Dammerung]

Well, I modified them because I thought the grill looked both tacky and garbage.


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[DesertRat1991]

On 9/25/2019 at 9:25 PM, Dammerung said:

 

I stripped the foglights off of a Jeep Cherokee, but the harness it had was shot, and I didn’t even bother to bring it home. Is there any way I can hook up fog lights w/o it? I have the interior switch too, if that helps.

 

 

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Light bars are so popular these days that you can buy a pre-made aux light harness with dash switch from just about any car audio shop.  I also know for a fact Harbor Freight has a harness with relay you can buy right off-the-shelf.  Dozens of universal kits listed on amazon/ebay too. Just keep an eye on the wattage ratings.