I would love to hear your thoughts on fogs and driving lamps. Over on the "normal" Saab forums, many of the young guys seem all moon eyed over fog lamps, paying little attention to drivers. One fellow just put a bar with 4 yellows across his grill. To each his own as they say.

Car $ Driver and Road & Track have done tests over the years on the fogs and in the end it always sounded like nothing really works. Is there any fog that works better than the stock?

On driving lights what do you prefer?

My intent would be to mount them somehow on my 2008 Aero XWD.

Thanks, happy New Year and all thoughts or comments are appreciated.

We ran a set of hella 3000 fog lights in a full on blizzard one year and they worked great. if you are going to get fog lights make sure they are actually a fog lens. The fog pattern is usually wide but not tall. You typically want to mount them lower because they wont reflect back into your eyes as much. and for them to be legal fog lights they need to be wired so that they can only turn on with your low beams.

Ouch! Thanks again. This is going to sound lightweight but the first thing that hit me was that with the alu finish they will blend in with the car. The hard part is going to be mounting a bar on a 2008 car. The ideal would be two down and two driving up but with the clear lens and on a budget I could always mix on the bar.

I run a pair of 100 watt fuego 4" driving lights on my 98 900. We were able to pull the grill off and tap two holes in the back of the bumper to put mounts on. Then I was able to put the grill back in place so it looks pretty clean. You may have to do some disassembly but I bet there is always a way.

If there's room behind that grill it can keep things looking clean.
On my Subaru I have some lights behind the grill (hella micro ff) and some bigger ones (hella ff1000's) in the stock fog light location.

All are driving beam pattern, I've never thought "I need less light" in foggy situations, but at night, in rural wherever I can always use more light.
I have always intended to add some projector fog lights, but just never got around to doing it.

Its always a challenge to figure out how to add auxiliary lighting without cutting up the front fascia of the car. You could do something like I did, and your car side brackets are made of square steel tube and stick slightly thru the grille. They bolt to the frame in a place where you wont see the fastener holes when you take them off later. The light frame has a smaller square tube that slips into the larger tube, like a receiver style hitch. use a pin and a butterfly clip, or a bolt to hold it on. When the light rack is off the car you only see the 1" square tube sticking out thru the grille.

Of course its easier to hack up the bumper and drill holes in the front of the car. It depends how picky you are.

I did a bit of hacking away last night and noted that some of the Westin brush bars are very simple, low and minimalist. The trick may be finding one that will come close to some of Saabs potential mounting spots by the grille or intercooler.

Or one of these metal fab companies that build racks and such may bend an exact configuration . It only needs to be an inverted U

What we used on CrazySwede's car were some galvanized 90° angle brackets from Homedeeppoo. They bolt to the backside of the bumper (to the aluminum structure of the bumper), protrude out under the grille (they're only about 1/4" thick by 1" to 1.5" wide) and then opened up one of the holes at the lead edge of the bracket and mounted the light to it. We didn't even have to remove the bumper because I found some holes in the back of the bumper that were in the right position and the right size to accept a M6 tap so I just removed the grille, put the tap in the hole, and turned it with a wrench. I test fit the brackets on my girlfriend's 9-3 before going over to the Crazy house where we mounted the lights the night before a TSD rally.

The brackets are thick enough to keep the smaller Fuego lights steady yet thin enough to protrude under the grille (or through the grille if you needed) and the lights are mighty bright.

bajadesigns 4" fuego lights: $125 each, 100 watt bulbs...also available in HID



twice as expensive as a pair of Hella 500's and a lot more durable.

Thanks and

So far I have it narrowed down to Hella and Baja now and that is a good chunk of the battle just finding "old school" that are not LED.

Hella has a Compact 3000 that are only 6". Price over the net was $220 to $280 ish.

I dug out a photo of my old MGB Limited (black bumper), and it all came back.

I am the man I am today because of those lamps .. (as a loon)

The vibration from my primitive bracket drove me past what "waterboarding" could have possibly hoped to have accomplished. I mounted a set of Optilux on (not so sturdy as your pic), L bracket. They were everywhere but the road.

Allow me to share how there are Guardian Angels protecting we fools. A pal lent me a pair of Cibie lights for a rally (SCCA Night Stalker in PA), so I changed them out with my high beams of my Pinto on the day of the rally. Since this was just a quick switch with the regular headlights after a quick "aim" job on the neighbors garage, what can go wrong? Two hours into the event and it is dark and I turn them on only to find they are "Cats Eye", with a great horizontal spread but "0" vertical meaning that they had no depth. In Kansas this is probably not an issue, but in the rolling hills of PA, picture going up a rise that then drops off and has a 90 degree right at the base. As the car "launched" at the top, I could see nothing till it settled again. I live despite myself somehow?

Anyhoo, are there any possible resources for an "out of the box" or with only minor modifications at all?

Same Pinto but another good reason to have auxiliary lamps! NJ to NH on a late night trip and first one high went out then the next, followed by a low and in the final few miles, the last low beam went. I limped in on my Optilux; one fog and one driver. There was nothing wrong believe it or not, with the wiring, I really think it was just filament life and statistics since it was fine till the day I traded it?

Thank you so much .. one mo' time.

look at the range of lights made by IPF as well. They surpass Hella on quality and durability too. Everyone knows the name Hella and assumes they are the best when in fact they are really just the best known name. Hella for the most part offers a nice range of lights but for comparable money there are better alternatives.

I've found that with a large enough beam pattern you can have really floppy mounts and some light will be on the road regardless

I've tried driving with fog lights only (same as your "cat's eye" experience) with some auxiliary lights which had true fog lenses. I quickly turned on the regular driving lights after experiencing the same thing you did.

HID driving lights are nice if you're going to leave them on constantly (stage rally) but if they have a long "warm up" time they might be kind of lame on a road car when you're turning them on and off constantly. I hear the warm up time has shortened but they're still kind of pricey.

I second the IPF lights. I'm running IPF H1 bulbs in my 9000 Ecodes and have used IPF drop in rectangular replacements in my pre '87 900s. WAY better than Hellas.

Thanks I'll be looking over the IPF this evening.

Bracket wise the only thing I have come up with is one from Carr called the Carr Light Wing.

It uses the same 4 bolts as the license plate and then the license goes on last. The only drawbacks may be that it is too wide at 35" and I wonder how those little bolts are up to the job so I better pull it off.

That and I will talk to the family Saab mech because there is no way I am going to mess with this electrical time bomb and drilling into the bumper is becoming more attractive but ...

This is scary

One fellow with a 2006 9-3 posted that he wacked his front valence/diffuser into a snow drift last week. His car died since they ran part of the wires low and behind the grille and from the pic (damage was painful but not bad), just above the location of the intercooler. That is a real bad place to run critical wires on an AWD vehicle.

Drilling looks like the way to go.

To date I only have had this car out in the snow once only to find out that Michelin was not the right choice for a M&S. It was snowing while they were putting the tires on.

TunnanXWD wrote:Thanks and

So far I have it narrowed down to Hella and Baja now and that is a good chunk of the battle just finding "old school" that are not LED.

Hella has a Compact 3000 that are only 6". Price over the net was $220 to $280 ish.

I dug out a photo of my old MGB Limited (black bumper), and it all came back.

I am the man I am today because of those lamps .. (as a loon)

The vibration from my primitive bracket drove me past what "waterboarding" could have possibly hoped to have accomplished. I mounted a set of led tube Optilux on (not so sturdy as your pic), L bracket. They were everywhere but the road.

Allow me to share how there are Guardian Angels protecting we fools. A pal lent me a pair of Cibie lights for a rally (SCCA Night Stalker in PA), so I changed them out with my high beams of my Pinto on the day of the rally. Since this was just a quick switch with the regular headlights after a quick "aim" job on the neighbors garage, what can go wrong? Two hours into the event and it is dark and I turn them on only to find they are "Cats Eye", with a great horizontal spread but "0" vertical meaning that they had no depth. In Kansas this is probably not an issue, but in the rolling hills of PA, picture going up a rise that then drops off and has a 90 degree right at the base. As the car "launched" at the top, I could see nothing till it settled again. I live despite myself somehow?

Anyhoo, are there any possible resources for an "out of the box" or with only minor modifications at all?

Same Pinto but another good reason to have auxiliary lamps! NJ to NH on a late night trip and first one high went out then the next, followed by a low and in the final few miles, the last low beam went. I limped in on my Optilux; one fog and one driver. There was nothing wrong believe it or not, with the wiring, I really think it was just filament life and statistics since it was fine till the day I traded it?

Thank you so much .. one mo' time.

i know LED lights are bright but what about price and life span?

i know LED lights are bright but what about price and life span?

I bought a pair of Rigid Industries 2x2 LED lights for $200 with a harness. I run them on offroad motorcycles and they work great in the woods at night...not sure how they would be at 75 mph on the interstate. They will last thousands of hours and draw almost not current to run.