C230- aftermarket fog lights?
 

I'm considering adding aftermarket foglights to my '97 C230 in the outside edges of the lower grill in the front bumper for visual effect. My question is, how would I wire them? Could I wire them in with the stock foglights or would they need their own power source?
Thanks for any help anyone can give.

C230:

If your 1997 is like my 1998 C230, those outer slots in the airdam vent cool air into the front wheel wells - whether to cool the brakes or to equalize pressure areas is not completely clear. I wouldn't want to fill them myself, I would move the lights inboard to the center airdam slot, or possibly a set of the Hella Micro xenon driving or fogs behind the grill.

Wiring additional lights would be interesting. The safest bet for your existing wiring, fuses, and switches would be to have your existing fogs switch on a relay that fed current from the battery to the aftermarket fogs. Since your battery is in the trunk, this wiring will be more difficult, as it invilves running heavy gauge cable from the battery to the relay, from the relay to the aftermarket fogs, as well as lighter gauge wire from the relay to the existing fogs.

John,

The lower front spoiler section on the 97 is different from the 98, but on close inspection it seems that the outboard vents follow the same function. Looking at the C43 spoiler unit, which has the fog lights installed, the venting is different, coming from a more inboard location. When we had the C36, I investigated lower fogs for the C230, and decided to leave well enough alone.

1. The outboard vents are not purely cosmetic. so that ruled out that location.

2. Adding them would require a separate switch on the interior, and I didn't like that. (see #3)

3. Wiring them to the factory switch would be possible, but difficult to keep the bulb-out indicator working properly.

One other reason I didn't go for any "extra" lights was the fact they would not be factory. I am always leery of "rice" appearing stuff on the car...

I had some aftermarket lights for appearance only in my car. Since the accident, they are not in since one got broken, I decided to take them out.

I know others will cringe at this, but I had them wired up tot he headlights. Very simple single wire tap. The other wire, simple ground.

Thats all it needed.

If I were to do it over, Relays and allw ould be what I would use, and I plan on it since I am going to install new ones again after I repair the bumper.

Alon