Adding fog lights

[paulhagedorn]

I want to add fog lights to my 1973 1.7l. Is the car already pre-wired for this. I have noticed that there are wires on each side of the front behind the bumper.
Has anyone done this and what would I need to do besides adding a switch to turn them off and on.

Thanks,
Paul

[paulhagedorn]

Thanks for the reply.

Now that that question is out of the way, has anyone used any other type of fog light other than stock. I have heard that the stock fog lights are pitiful. Would just using a more powerful bulb work?

[Tim Polzin]

I used a couple of Hella driving lamps. I think they used H-3's. The lamps were a little larger than stock, but by making my own bracket, they mounted in the stock holes and more or less, were centered in the grill opening. They gave a nice pencil thin beam far past the normal headlights (that were H-4's by the way). Don't forget to add the fog light relay on the fuse panel as well.

[JP Noonan]

The relay and fuse are very important. Otherwise you may over heat the switch (Fox body Mustang GT's seem to have this problem, but I digress) or worse yet the wires may heat up and cause a fire. If they don't actually turn into flames just the smoke (and residual smell) from the cooked wire can ruin your day. It seems Porsche did NOT fuse some of the more important circuts in our cars.

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

If you want more light from the foglights, there are a number of options. As mentioned before, there are some aftermarket H-3s that will fit if you do a bit of tweaking.

A friend of mine took the foglights off of his (deceased) GTI and installed them on his 914. They are rectangular lights similar to the 75-76 ones, but fit in the opening in the 70-74 bumper quite well. He even put the non-foglight grilles back over them, since he liked the looks. (They would block a little light, but should tend to aim the light downward. A good thing for FOG-lights.) He never did get the wiring hooked up that I know of, but they were a nice fit.

If you already have stock fog lights, Rich Johnson a914guy@aol.com has adaptor gizmos that will let you plug H-3 halogen foglight bulbs into the stock light's sockets. They're not cheap, but they work quite well. It's also almost completely reversible--the only part that isn't is the one crimp-on connector that you put on the power wire. I have these and they put out a good bit more light than the stock bulbs.

--DD