Acura MDX SUV Forums banner

How to open fog light housing?

5K views 15 replies 4 participants last post by  habbyguy 
#1 ·
I watched a youtube video of a guy putting a hid conversion kit to his fog lights and he opened it up from the side of the front grill with a 10mm socket. I tried opening up my fog light housing and my 10mm socket wouldn't even fit through the hole.

I got a 05 mdx. My fog light actually came out on my drivers side and i tried to grab a coat hanger and grab it out but it fell down even more, so now I have no choice but to take out the fog light housing and retrieve the wire from under the bumper somewhere and replace the bulb.
 
#3 ·
Let us know how the conversion works. Most HID conversions end up putting less light down the road where it helps, but a whole lot more everywhere else (including into the eyes of oncoming drivers). Maybe you could put up a photo of the lights shining on a wall or garage door so we can see what the pattern looks like. Most of 'em work out pretty good if your goal is lighting up street signs, trees and mailboxes. ;-)

OTOH, there are projector conversions that look pretty cool, and work a LOT better than a stock fog/driving light (or a stock housing with HID conversion), but I haven't seen any that wouldn't be a pretty big job to install.
 
#4 ·
Habbyguy I am not doing a HID conversion. My driverside foglight fell out of the housing and down the bumper. I need to take out the whole housing to get the wire and bulb out and replace it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYNiOX6VRRk in this video he shows how to take out the housing on his 02 mdx. I tried his method but the 10mm socket wont fit through the hole I have on my 05.
 
#5 ·
sERKZ, ahhhhh, got it. The way I read it was that you were doing an HID conversion and that the lamp fell down while you were trying to take it out. The '04 and onward fog lights are different than the '01-03 lights, so I'm sure that's what you're running into.

This should help you locate the fastening bolt (it's NOT obvious!)...

 
#10 ·
I actually just got done removing the driving / fog light bulbs from my 2002 MDX to add HID's. The diagram is indeed very accurate on removal, Mine was a 10mm. I used a double back tape as to not lose the screw in the splash guard / bumper plastic.

Once the screw is out there is a lip that tucks in the outside of the housing do pry with a small standard screwdriver on the inner side where you removed the screw and it should pop right out.

There is a lot of room to reach in and hide the ballasts for the HID's and even holes in there to zip tie them to so they are not just bouncing around in there.

Wish I would have taken progress pics for you guys but I can post some pics of the light patterns. Mainly lights up right in front of the car and the ditches very well and I have NOT been flashed even once by oncoming vehicles.

Hope that helps and answers other questions.
 
#11 ·
Packer, I'd really like to see the light output pattern of your fog lights. I suspect that they'd really not do a good job in that department after an HID conversion, since the purpose of fog lights is to keep the light output down low where it illuminates the road but not the fog in front of the hood. Not that it matters much to me - I live in the desert where we might have fog once every blue moon. ;-) But I would be happy to take a photo of the output of my stock fog lights so we can compare and see what the effect of an HID conversion on this particular application is. It's entirely variable based on the design of the reflector and the HID bulb. If you take a photo, let me know how far it is from your front bumper to the wall / garage door so we can do an apples-to-apples comparison (I'll take the "same photo" with the stock lights).

And yeah, if that's really a 10mm bolt holding the housing in place, it looks like sERKZ just needs to buy a thinner socket (I'm betting he's using a 3/8" drive socket, which is a LOT thicker than a typical 1/4" drive socket).

FWIW, I'd love to find a projector HID conversion for the fog lights - I'm amazed at the projector HID lights on my BMW... I'm lighting up signs literally a mile away, and can see SO much farther down the road than with any halogen light, and the pattern looks like it was cut off with a razor blade, so there's no light at all getting up to the oncoming driver's eyes (or into the rearview mirror of cars ahead). I'm guessing that the low location of the MDX fog lights would keep an HID conversion from being too annoying to other drivers.
 
#12 ·
Packer, I'd really like to see the light output pattern of your fog lights. I suspect that they'd really not do a good job in that department after an HID conversion, since the purpose of fog lights is to keep the light output down low where it illuminates the road but not the fog in front of the hood. Not that it matters much to me - I live in the desert where we might have fog once every blue moon. ;-) But I would be happy to take a photo of the output of my stock fog lights so we can compare and see what the effect of an HID conversion on this particular application is. It's entirely variable based on the design of the reflector and the HID bulb. If you take a photo, let me know how far it is from your front bumper to the wall / garage door so we can do an apples-to-apples comparison (I'll take the "same photo" with the stock lights).
I know it is not what you were looking for being in front of a garage from a certain distance but I will add that later. This was in front of work when the parking lot light went out so I figured good time to try to get a pic.

 
#15 ·
Habbyguy, Sorry for the delay, Took this one with my phone and then forgot about it. As you can see it was not totally dark yet and there was a light on the front of the garage but it shows the light pattern. I was exactly 12' from the front of the bumper to the garage door. Picture was taken out the top of the sun roof just about an inch above the roof. Hope this helps and you can see how wide the beam is from the driving lights, I love that as we have a lot of critters around here.



Enjoy!
 
#16 ·
I got kind of the same results, but I think that's because the headlights swamp out pretty much everything coming from the fog lights... here is the pattern I got doing pretty much the same test (12' from the garage door - didn't notice that the photo was blurry, but you can still see the pattern)...



Since this was essentially a test of the pattern of the fog lights, I draped shop towels over the headlights and took another photo (same conditions). I'm impressed at how sharp the vertical cut-off is for a halogen light. I suspect the pattern would be better (less light "leakage" above the main pattern) if my fog light lenses weren't as foggy as they are (oh, the irony...). Guess it's time to break out the rubbing compound and wax...



The important thing is that the bulk of the light is in a narrow vertical band that (presumably, assuming the alignment is correct) is focused down the road where it can show up things (think "deer") but low enough to not illuminate rain, snow or fog light the main headlights do. It would be helpful to see the pattern of your fog lights with the headlights blocked, to get a feel for just how much those HID bulbs affect the vertical pattern.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top