Hey CL,

I am looking at changing up some bulbs in the '07 460 I have. What I want to do:

1. Replace fogs with 3000k LEDs
2. Replace high beam bulbs with LEDs
3. Replace turn signal bulb with something like this dual tone amber/white LEDs: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005...8da5p2jAg&mp=1
4. Disable high beam bulb for DRL duty so there won't be flicker, keep high beams
5. Program the DRL to the dual tone turn signal bulb
6. Independent control of Fog lights, ie. Don't need headlight to be on to turn on fogs

Questions:
1. Can I do step 4-6 in Carista or TS?
2. If I can't get Step 5 done, I guess I could just go for a independent fogs, disable the DRL, and run the fogs as my DRL
3. Are there any guides for TS or Carista?

 

Your fog lights are hard wired to be on with headlights only, nothing to be done by any programming. I don't have a schematics in front of me but I believe there was a wire going from headlights switch to the body computer, which was enabling the fogs with low beams on. I had to cut that wire off and used input from the side markers instead. This way I was able to switch my fogs on and off regardless of the headlights, as long as side markers are on. Your DRL can be switched off from the car settings in the menu somewhere if you want. Also, decent LED kit includes special module and they won't flicker. Last time I bought GTR Lighting Ultra 2 kit and it was working like a charm with no flicker.

 

For #6 on your list this should help.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...light-mod.html

I see you've already replied to the above thread.

 

Awesome! Thanks for the info!

Are these the ones are you were talking about for the DRL/HighBeam? https://www.headlightrevolution.com/...0_2?quantity=1

If I can get the DRL to not flicker, I think I can skip the turn signal as DRL idea, and just wire the Fogs to the side markers and change the bulbs, makes it a lot easier!

 

Yes, that one. Just make sure you order that anti-flicker harness with it (it is optional). Expensive but real good quality LED kit, very good beam pattern and very bright.

 

I believe someone's already shared the thread with the instructions for wiring the fog lights to operate independently. I made a PDF for myself of the instructions, notes, and photos from that thread so I'd have it to reference when I got around to doing this. I've attached it here for you.

​​​​​​I would caution against installing LED bulbs in the stock fog light housing, and I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but I strongly suggest you consider either installing HIR 9011/9012 halogen bulbs if you just want a bit more output...or track down a set of the jdm HID fogs, or retrofit a set of projectors into the factory housing - then you could install HID or LEDs that will not only look clean and sharp but also provide usable light.

When installing LED bulbs into the high beam projectors you'll notice the bulb socket is at a 90 degree angle to the projector. You'll still want to align these as you would if they were straight on with the housing. LED chips at 3 and 9 o'clock.

I just finished opening my headlights and installing STI-R clear lenses in the HID projectors. I still need to finish tuning/rotate the lenses so I only have a crappy output photo against a fence and it wasn't quite dark out yet, but you can see the cutoff has sharpened up considerably already (hope to be able to sharpen it some more) and the color band is on point.



This is an involved and time consuming process but not complicated. If you're interested I'd be happy to type up instructions.

You can't program the factory LEDs into switchbacks (that's the type of light you're referring to that functions both as a white (usually) DRL and also an amber turn signal.


The possibilities are near endless when it comes to retrofitting and otherwise customizing lighting.

There are quite a few options for quality HID bulbs that can improve the look and output of your HID projectors. I am currently running a pair of Osram Cool Blue Boosts which I find a bit underwhelming and a tad too blue for my tastes, but these have been considered the best of the best by many. I am excited to give the new Osram Cool Blue Intense Next Gen and Osram Nightbreaker Laser Next Gen bulbs a try. They're both rated at approx. 3200lm to 3500lm output, just the CBN are 6200k and the Nightbreaker Laser Next Gen are 4200k.

I just ordered a set of Profile Performance Hi-Lens 2.0 LED high beam projectors which I am going to retrofit into the location of the factory high beam projectors. I also picked up a set of Morimoto Powerhouse 35w-50w variable ballasts to replace the factory Denso HID ballasts and once wired in will boost my HIDs to 50w when the high beams are activated.

 

Wow, Thank you so much for the amazing writeup!

I just downloaded the PDF, it's super helpful, thanks again.

Do you have any halogen fog that you could recommend? If I use 3000k LEDs in the halogen housing, I guess because of the beam pattern it would not get the best beam pattern and usable light?

Yes I am leaning towards the Osram cool blue or the night breaker for the HID lows, I am really intrigued about the Morimoto Ballast. So our standard ballast is rated at 35w, and this one could jump between 35-55w depending on low vs high beam right? I think that'll be super helpful, could you let me know how you would wire it? I think I am looking at the Osram/Philips + Morimoto Ballast + OE Projector.

With the LED high beam projector you are getting, how would the DRL work? Do you use a pwm module or are you disabling them?

Could you go into a bit more detail on the installation of the LED into the high beam projector? or if you have pictures?

Thanks a lot!

 

In case you don't know... led lights are more complex electrically. I give you credit for researching and asking before proceeding. Avoid inexpensive Chinese leds as they are more likely to create complications. It sounds like you already are going for high end leds. Let us know how it goes.

 

One thing to add. LED's will not align correctly in the halogen housing. Housings/bulbs are engineered in microns. You have to buy a LED housing for a LED bulb.

 

Sorry, I haven't forgotten about you. It's just been an unexpectedly busy week, but I should have time to finish up my reply tonight or tomorrow.

 

Yeah I am basing a lot of my research on HR and Bulbfact's sites, I am narrowing the LEDs down to either the GTR or the Morimoto 2stroke.

I would prefer a switchback for fogs, between the white and amber colors, but I couldn't find a good brand for them.

From my understanding, if I go with the GTR Ultra 2s or the 2Strokes, the beam pattern is a lot better than the cheapo units, mainly due to a custom PCB that is super thin where there LED itself is mounted on, thus mimicking position and 360 degree light output of an halogen bulb. At least much better than a cheap LED with a thicker PCB that might throw off the beam pattern more.

Although I do understand that LEDs are not the best for the high beams unless you do a full retrofit, but it really is the best compromise between brightness, color, ability to turn on instantly for flash to pass or warn, and cost.

No worries take your time!

I am still doing all my research atm, not in a hurry to get it done, want to do it once and do it right

 

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. This has been an unexpectedly busy week. I'm really glad that PDF was helpful. It's been a lot of fun working on these projects and I learned quite a bit over the last year or so as I've traveled down the “retrofitting” rabbit hole. It's always fun sharing with others who have similar interests.

So this is going to come down more to personal preference, but to me the stock fog lights are amongst the most unimpressive things about our cars. We have exceptional headlights that were over-engineered for their time, have AFS,and they use one of the most popular low-beam projectors for retrofitting to this day due to their incredibly wide beam pattern and amount of usable light below the cutoff. To me they seem out of place paired with unremarkably basic parabolic reflector fog lights. That being said I blame Lexus Japan 100% for this opinion because once you've seen their$2k+ HID/LED projector fog lights that are truly a work of art, you'll never unsee the potential that our stock fogs just don't live up to.

A little over a year ago now I installed a pair of Nineo (little known secret right here!!) LED bulbs in my fogs that cost me less than $45 and are 100% identical (same manufacturer, same everything) to the $200 S-V.4 LED bulbs that are regularly rated as one of the top 3 brightest LEDs that still have a nice beam pattern (for LEDs). I have rarely used my fog lights since they're so bad. They are bright as ***** but too much of that light is just blasted all over the foreground and without a clean cutoff, it's hard to explain, but they just kinda wash out and there's light in a lot of places there shouldn't be and not enough where there should. If I did try to use them in fog, rain, or snow visibility would be 0 because they just light up the precipitation like a wall in front of me. This is because LEDs just flat out perform horribly in halogen housings for the most part. LEDs produce significant short wavelength light high amplitude spikes. Wave lengths under 500nmcause significant refraction, which is effectively bouncing light off rain/snow/fog in the air in front of you so that you seethe precipitation the air, rather than the road way beyond it. If driving in regular inclement weather, LEDs with high amptitude short wavelength light would be counter productive. Some of the highest quality LED bulb manufacturers take this into account and do what they can to mitigate.Here's a side-by-side of the Nineo LEDs and the S-V.4s - Crazy right?




This is why I recommended you explore other options for your fogs. That said since you want color that's more in the2500k to 3k-ish or yellow part of the spectrum that means 9011 HIR is effectively out as an option. IIRC there are only two manufacturers of quality high output HIR1 bulbs and they are Philips and Toshiba and both only make them in the OEM or 4000k to 4400k range. (Osram may have a model as well but I can't recall ATM.) There many be a yellow HIR1 option out there but if there is their performance won't be close to the originals listed above.

This leaves you with four options:

1. Upgraded halogen bulbs
2. LEDs
3. HIDs or
4. Retrofitting your fogs.

In a perfect world where you have an unlimited budget and tons of time on your hands I would of course tell you to retrofit them with some quality mini projectors and 35w HID, or Morimoto XB LED Projectors, or even see if you could somehow work in a pair of SS3’s or 4Bangers.


Here's an example of an outstanding LED fog light as far as pattern and cutoff. This is a Morimoto XB LED projector.


Option 3 shouldn't really be an option without upgrading from the stock reflectors

You may have more success with LEDs given the color your after. If you do decide to give them a try I would strongly urge you to chose a high-end pair that was designed with beam pattern in mind, like the Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0 (Fun Fact:LEDs do not produce any light on the IR spectrum like halogens or HIDs (10% of halogen output) and all their heat comes from the drivers behind the housing. This means that LEDs won't help to melt or keep snow and ice at bay. The Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0s are unique in the design in that they are made to emit a portion of the heat generated into the housing to provide this secondary feature.) or GTR Lighting Ultra 2.0 (my current high beam bulbs).

There are quite a few choices out there when it comes to aftermarket halogen bulbs (Philips, Osram, PIAA). My suggestion is to find (if you can) bulbs made by a high quality OEM or reputable aftermarket manufacturer that say “+100%, +150%, ETC.” The reason being is this: Halogen filaments are already small, but every leading lighting manufacture is working to shrink them further in high efficiency bulbs which leads to increased intensity, better focus, hotter hot spot and increased distance projection. These bulbs are designated with a +xxx rating, such as +120 or +130. While they do not actually put out muchmore raw light than a standard bulb, their enhanced focus may put out 100%+ more light on the roadway where you need it. I won't get into the technicals behind why the push to make filaments smaller except to say that a smaller filament will fit more perfectly right in the center of a reflector thus more light is thrown down range.

Another viable and popular option for yellow fogs is to wrap the housings in 3M or Lamin-X film and use traditional white colored light. This gives you the added benefit of your housings appearing yellow even when the lights are off!

Again much of the following is my personal preference, but I have always liked the contrast between yellow fogs and whiter than OEM and almost but not quite blue forward lighting. You really can't go wrong with either Philips or Osram from a quality standpoint but I definitely think you'd be happiest with a pair of Osrams, especially the new CBN if you want diamond white color, or the XNL (Nightbreaker Laser Next Gen) if you prefer closer to OEM. Either of these will provide the highest output (both rated at approx. 3400lm to 3600lm intensity) of any D4S HID. I just ordered a pair of open box (here's another great “secret” I recently learned) Osram Cool Blue Intense Next Gen (CBN) from Lightwerkz to replace my Cool Blue Boosts (CBB) because while the CBB say they are 7000K they are almost identical in color to the old CBI and the new CBN, but the new CBN is just a tad whiter and has much better output. Lightwerkz regularly open and use HID bulbs once for testing and then sell them as open-box at a discount, which is great when you're dealing with bulbs that cost $150-$250 a pair! I only bought and installed my CBB back at the end of January so they haven't color shifted much, if at all. I'd be happy to send them to you so you could check them out for yourself.
Here's an awesome YouTube video comparison of the color and output of the new CBN vs the CBB, it's in German but starting at 2:45 he shows a time lapse of each warning up in projector housings, then a split screen of both, followed by each bulbs output on a wall warming up and finally the two together stacked on each other. You'll notice the difference is color is almost imperceptible. The CBB may end up a tad more blue after quite some time as they color shift up but I doubt it would be that noticeable.


Even though our high beams use halogen bulbs from the factory (I say this referring to my 2011 AWD, but others may have a Bi-Xenon model), they're housed behind a rather large projector lens as well. Our low beams have a 3in lens.Our high beams have to be at least 3.5in. They use what I can only describe as a hybrid elliptical/parabolic reflector at the rear of the projector and of course don't have any sort of shield. The lens does help to focus the light but only to an extent. I mentioned this in my last post but our high beams are a bit unique in that the bulbs install at 90° to the lens. The drawback to this is of course when using LED bulbs that don't have truly omnidirectional output because you can either point the chips on one side of the bulb toward the center of the reflector, or straddle the center with both sides perpendicular to the center of the reflector. I currently have GTR Ultra 2.0 LEDs installed in my high beams and they are an improvement over stock but not to the extent that a retrofit or even HID capsules would be. The reason you don't often see HID used as high beams outside of as part of a bi-xenon projector is because the warm up time effectively eliminates the “flash to pass” feature and could lead to slightly reduced visibility during warm-up especially if you use your high beams sparingly. In our case they also would not be able to function as DRLs. LEDs often suffer issues with DRL use but most of the high quality products have dealt with this already. Personally I turned off my DRLs the day I got my LS. When I rewired my fogs I wired them to function independently of the headlights so that I can turn them on with the driving/parking lights, and leave them on with the high beams. I mentioned I don't use my fogs but I do turn them on during the day as a sort of DRL if you will.

To answer your question about wiring up the Powerhouse ballast it's actually super simple. You just plug a high beam splitter from your existing high beam connection into the boost port on the ballast and you're done. Then when you activate your high beams the ballast computer just boosts the output.
My plan to retrofit the Profile Hi-Lens in place of my stock high beams is actually something I just recently decided on,and I am still working through the logistics of how to go about the install. The Hi-Lens 2.0 has a threaded shaft which makes installing projectors in reflector housings quite easy, but when replacing an existing projector it gets more challenging. As far as still using the DRL this is where the Hi-Lens is cool. It had a built in white “demon-eye” feature that serves as a great DRL. There's also a RGBW model as well where with a controller you can change the color to whatever you'd like.
I realized yesterday that my plan was only half formed. This project is growing (like they always do lol) as I've now decided to replace the stock low beam projector with at the very least an LS460 Bi-Xenon projector so that when I activate the high beams I'll have the benefit of the shield drop. More on this to come I promise. I'll show you why I made this decision though. The Hi-Lens 2.0 is super bright and has amazing throw but it's also a super concentrated beam. These highs with boosted low-beams would leave me with visibility "dead spots", where if I pair them with an actual high beam xenon (after shield drop) then it's the best of all worlds!!




Again sorry for the delay. I ended up having to travel this week and it severely limited my time. I am going to spend this weekend really firming up my plan for this retrofit and getting all my wiring and technical data together. I'll follow-up here with what I come up with. Let me know as you make progress as well!


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This is an amazing write up, wow! Sorry for the late reply, I've been caught up with work.

Thank you so much for all the info here, and I look forward to see what you've been cooking up lately hahaha, please post them on CL when you have done something new!

I think for the HIDs, I am pretty much set on the Osrams, either the Laser or the CBN, but I still have some deciding to do with the fogs and high beam cuz I wanted a switchback for the fogs

I am shoot you a PM I think, with some bulb specific questions if you don't mind

 

No worries, I know how it goes. It's 4am local time and I just got back in from a week in Singapore.

I will share my progress here and of course you can PM anytime and I'll get back to you as soon as possible!