Versa: Foglight Installation

[CodeRed]

CREDIT FOR THIS TUTORIAL: CLIPSED

Well ladies and gents, here is a do-it-yourself How To on installing some fogs on your car. Weather or not you choose to go this route, or use the general idea of how I did this is up to you. Please excuse the poor picture quality as I did not have my regular camera, and had to use my 1.2 crappypixel camera phone.

I ended up using the factory mounting spots with Blazer Black projector fog lamps that I bought at Auto Zone for $39.99+tax, they ended up being a darn good fit after they were installed!

On to installing!

First go and grab the items you see in the pic.



Basically a wire coat hanger bent straight. A dremel, or something similar to cut and sand. 120 grit sand paper for the dremel, and a spiral cutter for the dremel. An assortment of screwdrivers phillips and flat head. A panel popper. A 10 mm wrench. Zip Tie assortment. Drill Bit assortment. Wire cutters, strippers, and crimpers. A drill. A Digital Multi-Meter. And not pictured, an assortment of wire crimp caps, spade caps, and f-f caps. And some electrical tape.

Start off by popping out the original fog lamp finishers with your panel popper wrapped in a cotton cloth or micro fiber towel. Start on the outside side of the bumper for the left and right, and once popped out there, you can gently pull with your hand. Take care when doing this as not to stress the bumper and paint, and as not to scratch the paint.

Photos of left and right side of bumper with fog lamp finishers removed.

Now we have space to work with!

Take those finishers, and drill a 1/4 inch hole in the center of the dimple. Now with your spiral cutter attached to your dremel cut out the dimple of where the fog lamp should be. Cut the general area out, but don't try to be exact, because it won't work. Your dremel will want to kick back at you, but be aggresive and don't let it, it is plastic so hold er' tight and cut her up!

Here are pics of how the process should go

Original on the left, finished one on the right, this is how to do it. . .

Original finisher

Drill your 1/4 inch hole in center

Cut with your spiral cutter in the general shape

Now with your 120 grit sanding attachment, sand to your pref. I sanded to where the about 1/8" flat circle was. Should look like this after you finish.

It is going to be rough, the sander will melt the plastic at high speed, and cool back to the fog lamp finishers, not to worry, clean it up with another slow pass to get up most all of the left overs.

Finish it off with your hands to clean up the hole, I used my nails to perfect it.

Both should look the same when finished.

Now we want to head down and start our wiring before installing the lamps. I would recommend if you need extra wire to use 14AWG wire. Grab your wire hanger and bend it straight with a slight bend, approx 10*. We are going to use it to push through the firewall grommet.

Push the hanger through underneath the driver side above and left of the brake pedal.

Now the hard part is getting that hanger to show through to the other side. You have to have it bent very slightly. When you push through the grommet get the wire as close to the wires as possible w/o it being so close it could mess them up, and push it through. You are going to hear it punture the rubber which is ok. Keep manuvering the hanger around until it has only about 8 inches or so still showing inside the cabin, and go check outside for the hanger under the hood. It should show up in the following place (see pic) If not continue with trial and error, eventually you will get it, as it took me a while to even figure out what things I was getting stuck on!

Once that is through, wrap the wire in electrical tape from top to bottom, tape it to the hanger, and pull back through into the cabin.

Once I got here, I decided to figure out where to mount my switch and decided at the bottom near the hood and gas release hatches. You are going to need wire for the ground on your switch, IF you have a lighted switch, if not skip that and move on. The ground you can grab from behind the fuse box panel at the screw circled in red (see pic) You can also see in the pic where I mounted the switch mount that came with the fog lamps.

I didn't happen to take pics of the next step, because I forgot to, but you will need a add-a-fuse mini to plug up in your fuse box for a new power source for your fogs. Grab it from the power socket fuse, hook up your splitter, and fuse the 15 amp fuse back, and your fogs with a 10 amp. (LEAVE THE FOGS UNFUSED UNTIL INSTALL IS COMPLETED!)

When installed and all cleaned up, it will look like this.

next we need to run the wires for the fogs.

I attached the main splitter on the top in between the battery, and headlamp with zip ties to another wire.

Figure out how much you are going to need to extend your wires, as more than likely they will need to be extended.

Splice em, dice em, crimp em, and wrap them up in electrical tape from top to bottom.

Next we need to remove the black cover outlined in red in the pic.

With a screwdriver, get between the notch and the head of the black plastic holders, and slightly push up, they will pop up, and remove them with your hand, careful not to break them, and put them in a safe place. Pull the cover off, and set it aside.

With that cover now off we gain access underneath to run our wires. They should by now be wrapped in electrical tape, and if not do that now from top to bottom. Make sure the run from the bottom is hanging out of the fog lamp hole, and wire up your grounds.

I grabbed grounds from screws at the top of the engine bay, one was where the engine ground it self is, and opposite side of that, you will know what I mean when looking at your engine bay.

run the wire across and zip tie where the original harness is. You can see where this is in the pic, along the red line.

once run and connected, we can cover it back up, and clean up the engine bay.

Now we want to mount the fogs, figure out where they will mount the best, as this is kind of hard to explain, but figure the mounting points, test with the covers, and get your screws and screwdriver to mount them.

Testing it

Once the holes are there, take the double sided tape, and put it on the back of the fog bracket with holes in the tape.

With the fog lamp loosely attached to the bracket, place the bracket to the mounting point, and screw it down.

If it is dark enough, before putting your fog lamp finishers back on, you can adjust the aiming of the light first, if not you will have to do it later.

Do the same for the other fog lamp, and you are finished, wire it all up, and test them out.

Here are some pics of mine after I finished.

There you have it, good luck, and enjoy having some new fogs!!!

Some pictures people requested.