I know I’m not alone in thinking the factory GEM headlights left a lot to be desired. Granted they weren’t meant for cruising at 40 MPH but even at low speeds the light on my iPhone performed better. We drive our GEM on public roads and it often gets dark by the time we’re heading home from dinner. I was looking for an LED upgrade to replace the factory lights but most of what I could find were intended for off road use, casting the light way too high for oncoming traffic. Naturally my first attempt at solving the problem was overambitious.
I had a pair of Bi-Xenon Lexus RX350 projector housings with clear lenses leftover from another project. I was thinking I could run them with a D2S LED bulb however the projector with the bulb looked like it would be too long for the factor location. Plus I’d need to run a shroud and then figure out how to form a lens cover. Like I said, way too ambitious. I put that project on the back burner but after a few more trips home in the dark I was motivated to find something else that would work.
I had looked at various lights from Rigid Industries but from all the photos and videos I saw online it looked like their lights wouldn’t be good for use on public roads. Their lights can get pretty expensive so I didn’t want to compromise when spending that kind of money. I contacted Rigid and they recommended their SAE compliant line of lights. These lights are intended for use on public roads and are SAE & DOT certified. I ended up ordering their D-SERIES SAE FOG LIGHT - 504813 from Amazon for $200 and I couldn’t be happier with how well they perform! They are exactly what I was looking for and way simpler than the custom projector setup I had originally envisioned. The beam pattern is wide and has good vertical height, the cutoff is clean, the color is great and they draw a total of 50W for the pair at 12V.
The installation was fairly simple. I used the factory aluminum headlight mounting ring and flipped it around to let the light sit flush with the factory housing. I bolted a piece of aluminum bar across the ring to mount the light to while keeping in mind that the light needed to sit centered in the opening. The lights come with nice connectors and a prebuilt harness with a switch and relay but I cut off the connectors and spliced them in to the factory low beam wiring. To clean up the factory wiring I hid the high beam and secondary bulb wiring inside the split loom. On my first test drive the lights were aimed too high and bounced like crazy. The reflection from the bouncing lights turned every street sign into a strobe light. I added a 5" bolt through the bottom of the ring to keep tension on mount and support the light. The extra support along with aiming the lights to their proper height made a big different. They still bounce a bit simply due to the flex in the front body shell but I think it will be fine. I think to reduce the bounce further I’d need to stiffen up the shell or mount the lights to a rigid part of the frame above the front shell which I’d rather not do.
