Despite knowing that JDM vehicles aren’t equipped with rear fog lights it took a particularly misty day and the lack of a switch for the penny to drop. With the first MOT looming (how it passed previously I have no idea) I hatched a plan which would give me a rear fog light… and a reversing light too!
I wanted to stay well clear of the usual tagged-on fog lights you see cut into/dangling from the rear bumper, mostly because they always end up looking naff but also because hacking into a bumper who’s nearest replacement would be 5000 miles away if I got it wrong didn’t really appeal. Instead I decided to use a Rigid Industries Dually LED light in combination with a translucent red clip-on cover, giving me the flexibility to run it as a both as a rear fog light and also as a switchable white reversing light – very handy at night due to the JDM rear tint.
Zen Overland, who I’d purchased RI lights from previously, also do lots of metalwork fabrication and they were kind enough to help create a special mounting bracket I had in mind which used the spare wheel carrier as the attachment point. Needless to say they did a fantastic job, especially given there was no car to check the bracket against as they built it!
Removing one of the 5 wheel carrier bolts from the set up gave me access to run the Rigid-supplied wiring harness through the door and into the car, tracking up the driver’s side to the bay of switches to the right of the main instrument cluster (and from there on through the firewall to the battery). Feeding the wiring through the door required dismantling and reassembling the Deutsch connector used for the light – YouTube to the rescue! – and I also took the opportunity to 3D-print a special rubber grommet to feed over the wiring to help seal up the 5th carrier bolt hole properly.
The bracket itself sandwiches between the door and the carrier, secured across the two upper bolts – spacers on the two lower bolts (also made by Zen) push the carrier out to keep everything true. As the carrier and wheel now sat further out from the door I also had to 3D print a longer set of the rubber stoppers designed to stop the wheel wobbling from side to side in the carrier.
Download the SketchUp & STL file [zip]
Unsurprisingly the ~1600 lumen Dually is comfortably brighter than the brake lights and has that particularly piercing LED glow that will help it work well as a rear fog light. As a reversing light the “diffused” beam pattern throws a lot of light close to the car at the expense of throw, although again the power of the Dually means there’s more than enough distance on the light.
