Dynamics SS3 Max LED Pod Light Kit- SAE Fog - 7,920 L - 3" Cube - Qty 2

Video Transcript for Installing the Diode Dynamics SS3 Max LED Pod Light Kit on a 2023 Subaru WRX

Hey there, neighbors, Kevin here with etrailer. And today my buddy, Corey, he's one of our warehouse managers here, and we're gonna be going over the Diode Dynamics SS3 LED fog light replacement kits that we installed on his Subaru WRX, and give you guys a little bit of a lowdown on exactly how these are gonna work and what the install is gonna be like. If you're into the overlanding group, or maybe you're just a car scene person, then you know Diode Dynamics is one of the top-tier brands for replacement lights. Whether that's gonna be your fog lights, your headlights, maybe a light bar, or even some ditch lights, Diode Dynamics is gonna set you up with a nice, premium product that's gonna give you the best visibility. So why don't you tell us a little bit about why you chose these specific fog lights for your Subaru So I chose the SS3. They are locally made factory fog lights.

Were not cutting it on a rainy night, couldn't see the lines. So I went with the SS3s to give it that classic Subaru rally look. So that way on rainy days, track days, if you need those bright amber lights, that's why I went with the SS3s. So we originally installed these back in February. It is now May, around the beginning of it.

So we've had this for about three months. The big thing here was we we inchesre just starting to pick up Diode Dynamics. Corey had already purchased the lights and was planning on installing them himself, but since we can get the content out there for you to do it at home now, just win-win for everybody. You know, what did you initially find when you we inchesre looking at this and you we inchesre gonna plan on doing it yourself So when I initially looked into doing this myself, there we inchesre no videos out there, couldn't find any instructions for the '22 plus WRX, and it was a project I was not willing to take on myself. So I brought it here to Kevin at etrailer to get the video out there.

Yeah, so when I looked myself, the instructions that Diode Dynamics have typically are gonna be pretty good. They love to make videos and show everybody how to install their products. But unfortunately, this was just a a vehicle type that they just had not had in yet. And there we inchesre no other videos or any other kind of content or step-by-step instructions for us to go through. So this was a bit of a learning curve here.

I did have to kind of figure this all out myself. And it was just by taking piece by piece by piece off and working our way through it that we we inchesre able to get it installed because this is not gonna be that simple swap out like it used to be with the model years prior to '22. So before we get too much into the install here, let's take a closer look at our lights themselves. So with this being an SS3, that's gonna be a three inch by three inch pod right here, and that's going to come with some custom-fit brackets. That's gonna be those Foxbeam brackets that are gonna mount right up so that way you're not having to drill or cut anything and then bolt in some separate stuff. You're not having to manufacture anything yourself here. You're gonna be able to pop it right in once you get the old one out. Along with that, since Corey's had such a long time to use these, why don't you tell us a little bit more about your experience with them So with my experience with these going on about three months now, this is my daily car, so I have 'em on all the time. Driving at night even when they're not needed, the field of view is very wide on 'em, goes down into the ditch, allows me to see any wildlife that is on the side of the road before I get there. Even at night, when it's raining, I can see the lines perfectly just fine. Yeah, so the reason why it's pushing out so far and we're seeing that over into the ditch, like Corey was talking about, is because Diode Dynamics does a super awesome job at focusing the light beam, and that's super important when it comes to your lights. The LED or diode that's in there, all of 'em can kind of pretty much put out the same amount of light, but it's really about how you focus that light and harness it to have that field of view really show brightly. And with these fog lights, it's gonna be a really, really wide cone of view that you're gonna have, but there will still be that strong center view so that way everything in front of you is gonna be visible, and then with the width of that, now we're getting that side action to where we can kind of see some other things that are going on, which can be pretty helpful. Especially like Cory was saying, on those rainy nights, maybe when you're coming up to an intersection, you might not be able to really see what's off to the side street that you might be turning through. If you're at a four-way intersection and you got heavily tinted windows, especially like what I have on my truck, it is really hard to see. So having something that's gonna spread that light out and give you more visibility is really gonna make a difference here. Now we've gone over some of the features, why don't we roll back the clock and show you how to get this installed Just to preface that though. If you are not wanting to do this yourself, maybe it's just a little bit more involved than what you want to do, please feel free to use our dealer locator. You can enter in your ZIP code and find a shop near you to get it professionally installed. But with that said, let's go back to the shop. Starting out our installation, we are gonna have to remove our fascia, unfortunately. So what we're gonna need to do is get inside of here. In our wheel well, there's gonna be five push pins that you're gonna need to remove, and some of those will be kind of in the wheel well liner and then kind of down at the bottom right here where the wheel well liner plastic kind of meets the other plastic that connects our fascia up to the vehicle. And then as you move around, there's gonna be even more on the both the bottom and the top as well. Let's show you how we got those out. We'll start by popping out these two. I'm just gonna work my way down. There are so many push pins on this fascia that it's gonna be really easy to kind of mix up which one goes where. So I would definitely set these aside in specific order so that way you can easily put 'em back. It's not every one of these push pins is going to be the same style. Like these two right here, pretty small, and there'll be a much larger one down here. (push pin fastener clicking) I would definitely invest in a very skinny flathead screwdriver. That's gonna be your best tool for getting all these out. This one's quite a bit of dirt kind of packed into it just 'cause of how low it sits. So you might struggle with it a bit. Plus, it's also going through like three different pieces of plastic. And if your little flathead isn't working, that's where you can grab a trim panel tool and keep working, working it out the rest of the way. I'm gonna keep just working my way along our fascia. We are gonna need to pop out this one just because this piece of plastic's coming with us and it's tied in right here. (plastic clacking) (push pin fastener popping) Next, we'll go over just a little bit more. And on this one, it has a little spot so you can easily kind of pop it out. It's got like a flathead screwdriver to loosen it up, which makes it a little bit easier to get out. (push pin fastener popping) So I don't think that this one is part of our fascia. We might find out it is though. I'll just go ahead and pull a couple others out. I'm gonna stick with this one 'cause I know this one is gonna be part of this guy, which is also part of our front fascia, so we'll take him out. (push pin fastener popping) So now we're just gonna work our way over. Like I said, it's gonna be like five push pins going across the bottom and five going across the top. Once we get over to that other side, we're gonna take out the same exact ones that we took out from this side. Now on the top of our fascia, I'm just gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna work my way from the driver's side over the passenger's side, just keeping in mind which ones go where just so that it'd be easier if you install later on. (push pin fastener popping) (push pin fastener popping) Using our 10 millimeter socket, we are gonna have three bolts on our driver's side and three bolts on our passenger's side we're gonna remove. Once we have all those passengers out, this little trim piece right here with the gasket for the hood is also gonna be detached from it. So I just set it up outta the way, and we're gonna get a second set of hands. We've got Brad over there on the other side, and we're just gonna kind of pry up. We've kinda looked through it already. There's only push tabs in here so we don't have to worry about any other screws or anything like that. But you gotta be really careful. It's really easy to break these fascias if you start bending too hard on it, especially when you're around the taillight like that, with this other accents here. We also put some tape on here, and that's just gonna kind of help protect that edge right there between the two pieces of fascia in the quarter panel. That way it's not rubbing paint on paint. So we'll start prying back on that and we're gonna try and pull forward, away from the vehicle so that we can pop this out. (fascia popping) Came right off. And we're gonna have a couple connectors we're gonna take out. So on our fog lights, we'll have a little push in connector here at the bottom. So just be careful around this headlight right here. We'll pop that off. And there'll be one on the passenger's side as well. We can set our fascia down. Now we have our fascia off, we can remove our housing for our fog light. So the whole reason that we have to remove this fascia is this one screw right here because it's blocked while the fascia's on. There's no way to get to it without drilling through some of the other plastic. So this is our culprit right here. We'll pop him out. And we have one push pin that's also holding us in place. Pop that out. Then we can lift up. You want to kind of lift up on the left side, pull straight out because we have two little tabs right here, and in the fascia, here are those two slots that those go into. Next, we will take out these two screws right here and here, and then also this push pin, and that's gonna allow us to remove the factory fog light. Pop that push pin out 'cause we're gonna reuse that. And we're not gonna keep this. You can just toss that, save that for somebody else if you want to. That part of the plastic's gonna be going away with our new light. All right, the orientation of your light is gonna be super important, so we wanna make sure that we're doing this correct way. If we look at this, this is our passenger's side 'cause we got our tabs on the right-hand side here, on the back of our light, you can see the orientation based on where the connection point is. It's under all these cooling fins, and you can also kind of fill from the front because it has a D for Diode Dynamics at the front, you wanna make sure that that's facing up. As we slip this into our housing, we are gonna have to kind of hold it in place because we do need to put it on our hardware and then put on the actual mount that's gonna hold us in the housing. In your hardware, you're gonna have some lock nuts. We're gonna put that into the little slots that we have right there. And that's gonna hold those in place so that we can put in our screws. For the screws, you're going to have a washer and a lock washer. And we want to have that washer first, and then that lock washer, the lock washer is gonna bite into the side here. All right, with those two nuts in place, we can put on our mount. And if you look at the very top of it, it's gonna have a directional arrow, telling you that this needs to go facing forward. So those little tabs right there will be facing down towards the light. We'll drop that guy in. And then we can take our screw, which is going to have a washer and then a lock washer with little teeth on it, and those teeth are gonna bite in and prevent this from moving. So that way when we tighten it down and we get our height setting how we want it, we can keep it locked in place and don't have to worry about any road vibration causing issues. This is gonna be a little bit harder to tighten up. You can put an Allen key in. So if you take a look at the side, the problem is is once you have this locked into the housing, you can't really get an Allen key in there anymore. So if you have, you know, some skinnier pliers with some teeth at it, so where you're just using some wire strippers, that will be able to kind of bite into those little neurals on there and be able to help you tighten it down once you start getting into the adjusting phase. We'll have those two screws that we took out to replace and that push pin, and that's what's gonna help hold our mount to the housing. So you can see right now just how loose it is. We're gonna tighten this up quite a bit. You want it to where you can move it just slightly, just enough to adjust but not enough to where it's that loose. So we'll tighten this down quite a bit. And like I was saying, you can't really get to that other side so we're gonna need to use pliers for that. So now I have a lot more resistance, as I go to adjust this, it's gonna actually hold it in place now. With the light now in the housing, we're gonna put it back in place. You'll wanna push those tabs in first, then drop down. You want this to be on the inside of that fascia. Should be just like that. Otherwise, your screw, or your push pin hole up at the top there isn't going to fit. We will put our screw in and then that push pin. The next step would be connecting up our wire harness. Now they are gonna give you this guy right here, which is just gonna kind of be a T-connector. It's gonna pop right into our light and then connect to our factory wiring. But it also has this extra wire, which you can run to a 12-volt fused power source, which is going to be probably a running lights is what I'm gonna tap into. This is optional. You don't have to do it. But if you're going for the aesthetic of it, to have that backlight option kind of a must, especially with, you know, this style of vehicle, you know, this is here for looks. So we're gonna go ahead and figure out exactly which wire we need to splice into. They also provide you with a quick splice so you can easily just kind of tap right into that wire without actually doing anything hard. So we'll figure it out and we'll let you know how we do it. To complete our connection to our fog light, we're going to take this female end right here, pop it into our factory connector, and I'm gonna pull our bumper a little bit closer and we'll pop our connector in. We want to have that tab facing down towards the bottom, and we'll pop it in. And then we can lift up our fascia. We we inchesre gonna get this almost on so that we can adjust our headlight or our fog lights. 'Cause as you can see, you know, we can still kind of put that up and down and get that set just how we need it. So I just have this sitting on here. It is not fully held in place. You might wanna grab, like, an extra set of hands or something. We're gonna adjust this just like this. And what our goal is is we want the fog light beam to just barely be kind of meeting up with our headlight beam. So I'm gonna go turn that on, we'll turn off the lights in here, and then we can adjust those up and down. And then we'll pull it back off, we'll tighten those screws in the mount so that way that light's not gonna be able to shift anymore. If you look over on our passenger's side, you can see that the yellow's almost up to right where that white light is hitting from our headlights. But if we look over at the driver's side, we're pointed down a little bit too much. We've got this black gap right here where you can see that there two beams are not meeting up. So on our driver, or yeah, on our driver's side, we're gonna need to kind of push that light just a little bit up until those two meet. All right, we'll push that up just slightly. So to get power for our back lights on our fog lights, we we inchesre trying to tap into the wiring that runs up to our headlights, trying to get into that daytime running light. Unfortunately, with the way this car is wired up, you just can't. So instead, what we're gonna do is tap into one of our fuses, it's tied into the ignition, and then we'll run wires out up to our fog lights and we can show you how to do it. Here on the driver's side, we have this 20-amp cigar fuse. So we know that's this little outlet right up front 'cause we pulled it and checked to make sure it was this. We're not gonna be pulling that much. The back lights are only pulling two milliamps. So what I did was I pulled that one out, I stuck a fuse tap in, which you can see right up in there, and then I ran the wiring down. And if you get up under the dash right here on the left side of our driver's area, there's gonna be two different gaskets and our grommets, and we went through the top one. And that kind of comes out into the quarter panel. So we had to remove this little piece of trim right here and we just kind of felt inside there and just kept pushing wire so we could grab it. So it'll come out right back here. And then I just ran it all through our framing. And I tried to follow the wire that runs up to the latch for our hood. And then once we got up to the latch, I had it kind of sitting across the radiator, just coming down by our passenger's side headlight. The harness is gonna come with a spade connector. I cut that off and then just used a heat shrink butt connector just 'cause this is gonna be sitting outside where moisture is definitely gonna be a contributor to any kind of corrosion here. As you can see, just down below, there's a bunch of dirt and rocks and stuff like that, and our neighbors only had the car for a few months, so that just to give you a little idea of what's all gonna be up in here. So you'll really wanna protect that and use a heat shrink if you do go ahead and tap into it that way. Now that we know we have power, just go ahead and double-check that you're happy with that tilt, and then we can tighten that up. You wanna make sure that you do this before you try and put the bumper back on 'cause you're not gonna be able to get back in there with that Allen key. It's gonna be a huge fight. So make sure you do that first and then we're gonna reinstall our bumper and all the trim pieces that we took off just to get all that wiring in. Now that we walked through the install and showing you how to do this yourself, you too can also have that high-end performance out of your fog lights as well as keep that nice, bold Subaru look. So with all that being said, if you do still have some questions on what's gonna be the right kit for your specific vehicle or maybe you just still have some installation questions, please feel free to reach out to us via our ask the experts link, a comment on this video, or a phone call to our customer service department, and we would be happy to help you out on your journey. I wanna thank Corey for trusting us with your Subaru and for coming out here and having this interview with us so that neighbors can also see what it's gonna be like to get this installed on their vehicle. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm loving the look of them.