How to properly aim your fog lamps

[FusionDiffusion]

After driving in some low-vis weather, I recently discovered my fog lamps were almost useless to me because they hardly lit up anything past my hood. Disappointed, I did some reading and discovered the fog lamps are not at all properly aimed at the factory! In fact, they were aimed down about 5 times the proper angle, which I would succinctly classify as "way off." Because I want to have working fog lamps the next time I'm stuck in pea soup, I decided it was time to properly aim them. Here's how to do it the right way:

It just so happens the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has developed a standard for aiming of fog lamps! Among other things, their standard SAE J583 specifies the vertical inclination (angle) of the top beam cutoff should be equal or lower than 0.75 degrees down for lamps lower than 0.65 meters (25 inches) above ground. Fog lamps higher than 0.65 m should be aimed 1.00 degrees down. The fog lamps on the Fusion are about 15" above the ground, so the angle we'll use is 0.75° down.

Tools: Tape measure, T15 torx driver, 7mm wrench/socket, calculator

The first thing you need to do is find a good place to aim your lamps. You want to find a smooth level surface in front of a light colored vertical wall. Ideally this would be something like an empty parking lot next to the side of a building, but a small garage will work too. Park your car as far away from the wall as you can while still keeping the car level. 25 feet is a good distance. Check your tire pressures and take any kind of heavy items out of the trunk first (weight sets, junk, dead bodies, etc). Next, turn on your fog lamps (turn on the parking lights first and pull the knob out). On my car, I had to turn the key to "ON" without starting the car to get them to come on. Get out and measure the top beam cutoff right in front of the fog lamp, being careful to keep the tape measure plumb. Make a note of it. On my car, it was about 15½" on each side. Now measure the distance from the fog lamp to the wall in inches and record.

Here comes the fun part called trigonometry. Yes, you learned it in high school for a reason that is finally apparent! We need to find the proper beam drop for our specific distance from the wall that equates to a 0.75° downward angle. The drop and distance conveniently correspond to the opposite and adjacent sides of a right triangle, which means we can use the tangent function to solve the triangle.



So to solve for the drop, just multiply the tangent function by the distance you recorded in inches (if you don't have a calculator with trig functions, tan 0.75°=0.0131). This is the proper beam drop. From 25 feet this drop is about 4 inches, and from 10 feet the drop is about 1.5 inches. Subtract this number from the initial beam height to find the proper aiming level above ground at the wall. In my case, my lamps were 57" away from the wall, so my calculated drop was ¾" below 15½" and thus my aiming level was 14¾". Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

Now that you have your measurements, you need to get access to the height adjustment on the backside of the fog lamps. There are several ways of doing this, so if you have your own ideas go right ahead. On the bottom of the bumper, there are two small 1" holes are presumably for adjusting the fog lamps. However, the hole on the driver's side doesn't line up with the adjustment screw. It's also almost impossible to see what you're doing using these holes with the car on the ground, so I wouldn't recommend it. The next option is to loosen the wheel liner right below the fog lamp. Take out the five 7mm bolts on the bottom of the panel and pop out the lower two plastic fasteners in front of the wheel. The panel should now be loose and you can get your hand up to the lamp housing. The other method that worked for me on the driver's side was reaching my arm down behind the headlamp and reaching forward with the torx bit in my hand. Again, I was only able to access the driver's side fog lamp this way; I got the passenger one from below.



Here's what you're dealing with. There's an adjustment screw on the passenger side of each lamp with a T15 head. To bring the beam up, you need to turn the screw counterclockwise as viewed from below. Mine needed about three turns to get them close.

Get your tape measure stuck to the wall in a vertical position (a helper is nice). Cover up the fog lamp you're not adjusting. Now recall the aiming point measurement you figured out before. Looking at the cast beam pattern, you need to decide what part you're going to use as a reference. The SAE standard defines the reference as the portion of the beam that has the sharpest intensity cutoff. The beam has some color fringing at the top and bottom and I noticed the beam got much dimmer between the red and blue portions of the spectrum, so I used the boundary between the red and blue as my reference cutoff. I adjusted the screw until this line was at my 14 ¾" aiming level. Now, cover up the side you just did and adjust the other side the same way. After you're done, jounce the suspension a few times to make sure the level stays the same. If you're happy with things at this point, you can put the wheel liner back and you're done!



Now if all this angle business is too much trouble for you, the bulletproof way of aiming the fog lamps is to just put the very top edge of the beam level with the height you measured right in front of the lamp. In the picture you can see the fringe of the red portion lines up with the 15½" level point nicely, so you should get them close using this simpler method. When properly adjusted, the fog lamps should always fall below the low beam pattern.

Go for a test drive and enjoy your properly adjusted fog lamps. Driving in fog should be like night and day!

Edited January 19, 2015 by FusionDiffusion

[bbf2530]

Hi FusionDiffusion. :D Thanks for the great write-up. :grouphug:

 

Good luck. :beerchug:

Edited December 10, 2011 by bbf2530

[andrewdingemans]

I am soooooo glad I stumbled on this. I can't believe the fogs are so useless. When I was fitting up my headlights I was temporarily using the fogs only, and wow are they ever useless. Thanks for the write-up... +1 :happy feet:

[bbf2530]

Hi gang. :D I am pinning/making this extremely helpful thread a sticky so it stays up top for accessibility to all members.

 

Can only blame not thinking of it before on a temporary "brain cloud".

 

Good luck. :beerchug:

[companycar]

as noted in another, I just adjusted my 2012 fogs. No need to pull any panels. I put my car on ramps and I could from the center reach over the panels and easily access L and R adjusters..just need a light. Good luck. Much improved , now they are more like aux low beams..

[Clark A Mansur]

Great thread! I had the same issue with my 2012 SEL. When I complained to the dealer I was outright told that the fogs are stationary with no possibility of adjustment. I used the above information, and now my fogs work as they should! Very simple adjustment. As mentioned in another thread - I was able to get to the two T15 adjustment screws by putting the car on ramps, and reaching in from the center.

[biamonte101]

Can someone please for the love of god show me how to adjust the low beam lights with pictures? I can only see about 4 feet in front of my car, I put in hid's hoping it would help and no dice, but after seeing this I figure my lights are angled to far down, if anyone knows how to fix this it would be a great help!!

[FusionDiffusion]

Try the lights section of your owner's manual (around page 58 or so). It explains the whole aiming procedure. If you have no beam pattern, it's probably more likely you have the wrong bulbs or they are installed incorrectly.

[Ddakota00]

Headlight aiming- Can anyone tell me if there is an adjustment for the headlights from side to side...? I know how to adjust the headlighta up and down but not left or right...? I have a 2010 FF SE. There projector headlights but the main beam on both lights are pointed towards the center of the car. Any help would be great on this matter. Thanks!

[FusionDiffusion]

Nope. American cars do not have lateral adjustments anymore. The service manual specifies replacement of the headlight assembly if the beam pattern is out of specification. If there is body damage causing them to be pointed inwards, it needs to be corrected first obviously. How are you determining the lateral angle?

 

I might add that the reason they discontinued the lateral adjustments is because it's very difficult to do a proper lateral adjustment without proper equipment (vertical is much easier to do properly). They found that most people that adjusted their own headlights did so improperly, so they decided to just remove that adjustment. The only headlights that can be laterally adjusted have the three prongs sticking out of the headlight housing around the beam. They must be adjusted with a headlight aiming device (which are getting rare nowadays).

Edited May 13, 2012 by FusionDiffusion

[BlkDrivr]

It's a bit of a process, if you take the time and do it right and so that it fits your needs, the road will be illuminated quite nicely. After some trial and error, I finally adjusted both my headlights and fog lights correctly, and added SilverStar Ultras, so now I have a brighter and farther light throw pattern in front of my car. I can't wait to see how brighter and cooler it will be once I install 6000K HID's.

[kd8tzc]

Awesome post! Thank you!!

[akirby]

whats the deffirence between a 5000k bulbs and 4300k ones??

 

700K.

 

Seriously though, 5000K bulbs will be a bit whiter while the 4300K will be a bit yellower. As you go up in temperature the color goes from yellow to white (5000K) to blue (8000k).

[bbf2530]

Hi gang. At the request of the OP, posts referring to HID's (essentially all after post 13) have been deleted so that the thread can return to dealing solely with the "How-to" concerning fog light adjustments. Please post HID discussions in any of the numerous and already existing HID related threads or start a new thread.

 

.

 

Thanks.

[mgorman87]

When it says to measure the cutoff right in front of the light, does this mean to actually take the tape measure and hold it up against the car?

[squigmire]

Has anyone ever heard of the fog lamp casing seals breaking? My fog lamps barely light up..very dim. I was told the seal was broken and need new lamps $130 per lamp!! Yikes...do I really need these lamps?

[BlackBetty]

Awesome write up! Thanks!

[k3llogskid]

Thanks for this! My 2011 SE fog lamps were always pointed like straight down and they were useless. I got some ramps yesterday so now it's time to do some tinkering.

[FusionDiffusion]

When it says to measure the cutoff right in front of the light, does this mean to actually take the tape measure and hold it up against the car?

 

Hold it vertically so the end touches the ground, and move it as close as you can to the light, so yes it will touch the tip of the bumper right in front of the light. If you hold it against the car you will distort the tape measure and throw off the reading, and you also won't be able to see the cutoff on the tape because the beam has to be shining on it.

[rico46]

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