This will probably annoy quite a few people :evilgrin:
My old Pilot PL-220's were basically shot. They were rusted on the outside and had completely lost their reflective coating. The only reason I got half-decent light out of them was due to a 35W HID setup. A few months ago, I went on yet another quest for a replacement.
Finding fogs to fit the non-T/C cutout is always an exercise best left for the blindly sado-ic. You know going in that it will be a painful experience -- surfing pic after pic, blowing them up until the pixels are the size of dice, then measuring with a ruler while knowing it's a fool's errand. Occasionally you take a risk, of course to find that the lights are several inches too big. Then after swearing off the search you try again, a true model of Einstein's definition of the insane among us.
This is where the insanity led me -- NOS 1993 Camaro fogs. The fit is very tight, and one day I might revisit trying to straighten them out, but not until the sunburn at least heals. Yes, it took that long. I even had to trim off a 3/8" corner on the underside of the valence, but at least it's not visible.
The lenses are about 1/8" narrower inboard than outboard, and the profile from the top isn't square. It's not apparent face-on, but looking down, the front face is angled outward to presumably match the Camaro's pointed nose -- which also suits the Bird's beak very well.
Mounting them was a huge PITA. The fogs come with nifty adjustable brackets, which are WAY too large for the curvy underside of the T-Bird's inner bumper. Only major Dremel surgery on par with the best from Hollywood plastic surgeons would get them to fit, and I didn't have a Dremel handy. I made do with some small general-purpose brackets I had.
It's the same 35W HID setup as before, with the old H3-C bulbs swapped out for correct bulbs for the Camaro housings (basically just longer to match the correct filament position). That said, these are BRIGHT. They're 4300K like before, but it's amazing what difference a good reflective coating and a Fresnel lens makes (the old ones had no Fresnel pattern in the lens). Pointing these down was a must.
For the similarly insane: the only way to mount these (or any fogs) is directly to the fiberglass inner bumper. You'll also have to trim off a corner on the outboard, top part of each cutout so the outboard portion of the lens can come forward. The inboard portion of the lens fits in the cutout without any problems, but the outboard side is just a bit too wide. Luckily, the cutout is narrow at that end, so the lens can just sit flush against the back of the cutout and the top-down profile will line up.
Who cares what they come from? if they work, use them. Camaro, Dodge, it doesn't matter. Good work.
i agree, nice work!
A little pen 15-eyed in there, but yeah, it fills the opening.
[SIZE="1"](that's what she said) :D[/SIZE]
Great idea for those of us who don't have the TC bumper :)
Nice!!