My H4 headlamps are barely bright enough on the straigt-away, but when turning corners, especially when turning onto a side road from a mainer, a more main, road, they are just about useless, they don't light up the sides of the road I am turning onto, so I have to make the turn very very slowly, in order to see the road I am turning on to better, which may increase the risk of being rear-ended while still on the mainer road. I can't see where the side of the road that I am turning onto ends and the shoulder begins, or the ditch or the cliff. I thought about getting brighter headlight, or headlights with more spread to the side, but later it occurred to me that perhaps adding fog lights might help. Not amber ones but plain white fog lights. Anyone know if they would help?

 

not really unless aftermarket. factory ones are basically useless.

also aim your head lights a tad upwards. i did this on my wife's GK and it noticeably helped. but nowhere remotely close to the lamps on my cars.

 

Yes, I was thinking aftermarket, with LED lamps. I would switch them on only when needed. Wiring them in and installing a switch in the dash sounds like a bit of work though - routing the wire through the firewall to the dash.

 

yah, definitely go aftermarket. should be easy to do. check out some of the threads in the ICE section for which grommet to pass the trigger wire. GL.

 

Can't find anything in the ICE section. Don't know what a "trigger" wire is. I figure I just need a wire of the appropriate diameter to carry the total amperage of both frog lights, and a single-pole-single-throw switch.

It isn't just finding the grommet that one needs to do. You need to get a wire from there to a spot on the dash where u can mount a switch, such as for example on the left side of the dash to the left of the steering wheel, near where the VSA button is – 2 wires, if you pick up positive voltage for the frog lights from inside the engine compartment. In the LX there are 3 holes with removable hole-fillers to the right of the VSA button, where some sort of rocker switch or rubbery flexible-handled toggle switch could somehow be mounted, perhaps by drilling or cutting a hole for it in one of the hole-fillers, but without a service manual I have no idea what I would have to do to get a wire or 2 from there to the grommet. I don't want to just start removing things, one after another, in the hopes that maybe some day, if the lord be with me, I might be able to find a path to the grommet.

 

yah, best you study how to install fog lamps. i mean this is a super easy mod to do. maybe just do a random search on google on how to install piaa fog or driving lamps to get you started.

most kits will come with a relay. the lamps get wired to your battery through the relay and you will trigger that relay to turn the lamps on/off from a lower amp 12v switched fuse source inside your cabin. that trigger wire can have a switch in series for you to turn on/off your lamps.. or just wired directly to the switched fuse for the lamps to turn on every time your car is on and shut off automatically when the car is off.

anyway read up/watch youtube. it's very easy to do.

 

I've been doing that quite alot but haven't found anything useful. Mpost of the people making videos are rather inarticulate. What I need is a diagram showing where the existing wires go, what diameter they are, where they are fused, where connectors are, what the amperage of the fuse is, etcetera. A schematic would also help. I know how a relay works. It is simply a high amperage switch which is opened and closed by another, lower amperage switch. I am not aware of any "triggering" going on, or of any thing called a "trigger wire." What I am aware of is closing or opening the lower amperage rated switch, which sends power to an electromagnet which closes or opens a higher amperage rated switch, which sends current to the lamps. The difficulty is in the mechanical aspects of getting wires from the cabin switch to the relay and from the relay to the lamps, in where to locate the relay and how to hold it in place physically. The low amperage side of a relay does draw current so you have to know how much it draws, and what fused circuit you can use to get 12 volts for it without overburdening the fused circuit and blowing the fuse, or worse, overheating the wires and starting a fire. You have to figure out what else is on the circuit, and if the extra amperage from the relay will over load it or not. Can't do that without a circuit schematic, and diagram of where things are located.

What is a "fused switch source."? All you need is a place where you can pick a fused source of 12 volts. It isn't a "switch" source; it's source of voltage for a circuit element - such as for the low current side of a relay. It is the low amperage side of the relay that needs to be connected to fused source of 12 volts, and that determines how much current will flow, not the switch. You need a fused source of 12 volts for the relay. Ideally there is a fused source of 12 volts somewhere that doesn't have any circuit elements on it, and you can add the relay as the only element. But since it the relay has a low draw, a circuit with other things on it is probably ok.