You may remember, long long ago, I put some fog lights on the Subaru and built a light bar. Well, now it’s time to actually get some light out of these by adding electricity. The wiring job will be more complicated than the light installation, I think, and will be broken up in several parts.
I have managed to scrounge some Subaru OEM foglight switches from the junkyard, and those will be the means of adding and removing blinding light from the road ahead.
The problem with used Subaru foglight switches, however, is that each one has two bulbs (one lights up with the interior lights and one lights up to indicate lights on) and every damn light bulb except for one of them was burnt out. This is apparently common with Subaru lighted switches.
These Subaru-specific bulbs may or may not be available from your local Subaru dealer, and may or may not be up to $10 each. From what I’ve heard, most dealers would rather sell you a new switch assembly than the bulbs. Thanks to other cheap Subaru owners on the internet, we know that a #7219 micro lamp can be adapted to work. These can be found at an American Radio Shack (the Canadian ones haven’t sold components like these in some time) or another electronic components supplier.
To start, we need to get the old bulbs out. They are held in the sides of the switch, and come out with a ¼-turn. You may have to tap it with a screwdriver until the bulb falls out, or you may have to gently pry it out from both sides. Some of them can be stubborn.
When they are all out you can see that some of them have a coloured filter “condom” over the bulb. This provides the orange colour of the indicator when the fogs are on.
Now for the delicate work. I used precision screwdrivers to gently pry up the wire leads from the old bulbs, separating the plastic base from the glass bulb. Here is the old bulb out of the plastic base compared to a new 7219 bulb.
Notice that the new bulb is substantially shorter than the old bulb. A bic pen comes to the rescue by using a portion of the inner ink tube.
Now they’re the same length, and we can put the new bulb in the plastic bulb holder. The bulb is carefully fed into the holder, making sure that the wire leads don’t cross or touch when they get fed through the holes in the bottom. Because these are incandescent bulbs and not LEDs, it doesn’t matter which wire goes where - as long as there is current across the leads, there will be light. Wrap the extra wire around the bottom of the plastic holder or just snip it off. You can see how the wire is wrapped here, and a burnt-out original light is seen for comparison:
Now the bulbs can go back in. The orange filters should go over the bulbs used in the top part of the switch. If you are missing a filter, you can colour over the bulb glass with a coloured marker for a similar effect.
The last thing I did while the switches were out, with help from this guide at rs25.com, was to use my multimeter to test and label all the wire connections for future hookup.
In a forthcoming installment, I’ll be putting these switches in the car and moving my boost controller to a new location. I’ll finally be running some wire!
Cost breakdown:
$6 - junkyard Subaru switches
$9 - #7219 micro lamps (box of 10)
== $15
I have managed to scrounge some Subaru OEM foglight switches from the junkyard, and those will be the means of adding and removing blinding light from the road ahead.
The problem with used Subaru foglight switches, however, is that each one has two bulbs (one lights up with the interior lights and one lights up to indicate lights on) and every damn light bulb except for one of them was burnt out. This is apparently common with Subaru lighted switches.
These Subaru-specific bulbs may or may not be available from your local Subaru dealer, and may or may not be up to $10 each. From what I’ve heard, most dealers would rather sell you a new switch assembly than the bulbs. Thanks to other cheap Subaru owners on the internet, we know that a #7219 micro lamp can be adapted to work. These can be found at an American Radio Shack (the Canadian ones haven’t sold components like these in some time) or another electronic components supplier.
To start, we need to get the old bulbs out. They are held in the sides of the switch, and come out with a ¼-turn. You may have to tap it with a screwdriver until the bulb falls out, or you may have to gently pry it out from both sides. Some of them can be stubborn.
When they are all out you can see that some of them have a coloured filter “condom” over the bulb. This provides the orange colour of the indicator when the fogs are on.
Now for the delicate work. I used precision screwdrivers to gently pry up the wire leads from the old bulbs, separating the plastic base from the glass bulb. Here is the old bulb out of the plastic base compared to a new 7219 bulb.
Notice that the new bulb is substantially shorter than the old bulb. A bic pen comes to the rescue by using a portion of the inner ink tube.
Now they’re the same length, and we can put the new bulb in the plastic bulb holder. The bulb is carefully fed into the holder, making sure that the wire leads don’t cross or touch when they get fed through the holes in the bottom. Because these are incandescent bulbs and not LEDs, it doesn’t matter which wire goes where - as long as there is current across the leads, there will be light. Wrap the extra wire around the bottom of the plastic holder or just snip it off. You can see how the wire is wrapped here, and a burnt-out original light is seen for comparison:
Now the bulbs can go back in. The orange filters should go over the bulbs used in the top part of the switch. If you are missing a filter, you can colour over the bulb glass with a coloured marker for a similar effect.
The last thing I did while the switches were out, with help from this guide at rs25.com, was to use my multimeter to test and label all the wire connections for future hookup.
In a forthcoming installment, I’ll be putting these switches in the car and moving my boost controller to a new location. I’ll finally be running some wire!
Cost breakdown:
$6 - junkyard Subaru switches
$9 - #7219 micro lamps (box of 10)
== $15
- mounting the fog lights
- building the removable light bar
- wiring part 1: new bulbs in OEM foglight switches
- wiring part 2: the plan (wiring diagrams)
- wiring part 3: switches (more diagrams)
- wiring part 4: parts and pieces
- wiring part 5: under the dashboard
- wiring part 6: fuse and relay box
- wiring part 7: prepping the lights
- wiring part 8: final connections
- wiring part 9: aiming the lights
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