stern@tilt.FUN (09/17/85)
A hint for Celica owners and a question for fog light gurus:
While in Boston a year ago, I purchased a set of Hella amber foglights for
my 1984 Celica. Being without a garage and without a wide assortment of
tools, I didn't install them until just this weekend. The newer model
Celicas have an annoying feature -- there is no real place to mount the lights
under the bumper. I finally decided that the best thing to do was to make my
own mounting bracket and attach it to the steel lip that the plastic mock
front spoiler is bolted to. After an hour and a half in the machine shop,
I came up with a pair of stainless brackets that bolted in and snuggle
the fog lights in the middle of the plastic spoiler.
This does several nice things: (a) it gives me fog lights where some people
told me I could never have them (b) the lights sit up high enough so that
the bottom of the spoiler takes the hit when you slide too far into a parking
space and grate over the stop block (c) because the lights are set back into
the spoiler, even when they are poorly aimed the top of the beam gets cut off
by the spoiler -- and you cannot blind on-coming drivers.
If anyone is interested in more detail, I can send out copies of the
mechanicals for the mounting plates and wiring harness I used. The whole
thing took me a few hours and I consider them well-spent.
Now for the question: (attention all of you "don't blind me!" drivers)
My guess is that fog lights should be aimed so that the oval (pear?) shaped
beam extends 25-30 feet in front of the car. One cheap way I have thought
of to aim them, then, is to park abut 25 feet from the curb, drape a towel
over the headlights, and then adjust the fog lights so that the edge of
the beam hits the curb/pavement border.
Is there a better, more efficient way of doing this?
Reply by mail, novel techniques will be summarized and posted.
Hal Stern
Princeton University
{ihnp4, allegra}!princeton!flakey!stern