marcucci

I thought I would post this as I think it is, in general, a safety issue.

In short, Honda ****ed up. Bad, in my opinion. I'm not sure how many of you have noticed, but Honda only uses one 18 AWG (or close metric equivalent) to provide power to the fogs from the inside wiring/relay. When I installed my first set back in 98 or so I thought this was odd, but "Honda knows best" so I just let it go. Given my electrical background I should have trusted my own knowledge rather than them.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I installed an HID H3C kit in my JDMs. After installing, they only worked intermittently. Before I got pissed about the reliability of lowest-bidder Chinese products, I decided to troubleshoot the wiring. With the fogs on, the relay and wire were noticeably WARM. This is not good. The bullet connector behind the kick panel area was HOT. Too hot to keep your fingers on. I also noticed the connector sleeve looked a little charred (should be clear).

After wiring things up under the bumper I realized that Honda really did use just one 18AWG wire from the kick panel area all the way to the furthest fog, then a wire is run from that fog to the other one. The ground is similar- one wire to one fog, then the other is daisy-chained off of it. Assuming there is about 10' of wiring one-way (I think it may be a little more), that means that with the OE 55W lamps there is around 9A of current in the circuit and 1.2V of drop end-to-end. That means around 11W of power is consumed just in the wiring (about 10% of the total load).

This is unacceptable in my mind. I went ahead and took apart the harness in front and the harness inside the cabin and ran an extra wire between the two. I went from the relay contact (soldered to the connector) to an extra bullet connector that I attached to one of the fogs. I also ran an extra ground wire from the other fog to the grounding point in front.

I was pretty pissed to find this but am glad I got it fixed. I ran a 16AWG wire this time, so it should handle the half load a little better than the OE one, though I didn't do anything with it. I should have completely rebuilt it but I was too lazy for that. At least that circuit is carrying half the load now.

My HIDs now fire up on the first attempt every time. I think the voltage drop was causing the ballast not to light reliably.

Given how hot the wiring and connector was inside the car, and that the sleeve over the connector was melting, I think this is a safety issue EVERYONE with JDM or USDM fogs should consider. While the wiring is a little different between the two, the one wire that Honda put in the car and uses to carry current from inside to the bumper is the same on ALL 5gs and is independent whether USDM/JDM fogs are used.