14/15 silverado - adding foglights

[darkfox1]

OK, so I'm done with what has turned into the "first phase" of this project.

 

It had a few surprises, and beat me up a little but it wasn't that bad for someone who is willing to do some wrenching and has all the parts I mentioned throughout the thread. (I believe the only part I didn't mention in the first post was the screws to bolt the foglights in)

 

What we did:

 

Changed bumpers

Installed foglights

Installed bumper harness

Installed foglight switch in dash

 

What we DIDN'T do that still needs to be done:

Install forward lamp harness

BCM reprogram to enable foglights

 

Now first of all you're gonna need a few tools to do this:

Flat head screw drivers (a smaller one, and a larger one)

7mm socket/wrench

10mm socket/wrench

16mm socket/wrench

18mm socket/wrench

 

I recommend a power drill and a pneumatic ratchet or impact, and some extensions as well.

 

Disassembly:

Step 1. Disconnect the battery. You're working on the bumper. I didn't see any sensors for airbags, but I didn't want to risk a multi thousand dollar "oops" moment.

 

Pop the red lid on the positive terminal, cover your fender in a towel and get a ratchet with at least a 6" extension, and a 10mm socket. Loosen the nut until it starts to get tight again and then pull the terminal away from the battery, its VERY short so don't pull too hard. I wrapped mine in a towel to keep it form re-connecting in the event that the wire fell back onto the terminal.

 

Step 2. Use your small screw driver to remove the pop connectors that hold on the radiator support cover. Once they are out, lift the cover from the back and up and toward the front of the truck to disengage 2 clips that connect to the grill around the hood latch.

 

You should be left with this:

 

 

Step 3. Watch this video as it talks about how to remove the bumper cover. We tried to do this a different way and it was a huge pita. Doing it like this video maker makes it MUCH easier to work on things.

 

 

 

What we did was skip the bumper pad removal process by removing the 4 10mm bolts cited in the video, the 4 7mm bolts on the bumper cap, and remove the cap/grill as one piece. This was a HUGE pain! and not recommended.

 

Removing the cap by removing the 4 7mm screws on each wheel well and then pulling/releasing the clips under the bumper is MUCH more straight forward, and gives you easy access for the next step.

 

Step 4.

 

Now that the bumper cap is out of the way, you need to remove the grill. Do this by removing the 4 top and 4 bottom 10mm bolts that hold it in. When done, lift the grill up at each top screw to disengage the clip. Pull up and forward. The grill should come right off. You should now have something like this:

 

 

Step 5. Now you have easy access to the bumper bolts from the top. There are a total of 6 bolts holding your bumper on. 4 of them are on top (you can see 2 in this picture) The 4 top bolts are 18mm. 2 of them you can see and reach easily, the other 2 are down below the bumper a bit to the center of the truck from the 2 visible here. Remove these 4 bolts.

 

Step 6. The remaining 2 bolts holding your bumper on are under the truck on each side. If you look under the truck you will see support bars that are rounded and connect with 2 bolts to the frame, and 1 bolt to the bumper. The head of the bolt is facing down. Remove these 2 16mm bolts.

 

Step 7. Remove the bumper by pulling straight out from the truck to clear the tow hooks. You should now have this. I removed the headlights because I was looking at the forward lamp harness. If you are not going that route or not changing the headlights in any way you do not need to take them out like I did.

 

 

Step 8. Remove all the black components inside the bumper and set them aside. These are held on in about 6-8 places. Anywhere the chrome bumper curves inward to make a mounting surface there should be a 16mm bolt. There should be a total of 4 brackets inside the bumper. 2 on each side that are connected to each other with 16mm bolts. Using this method, it is not necessary to separate the brackets from one another. (we did it the "Wrong" way so we dont have pics of some of this. Hindsight is 20/20.)

 

Step 9. Use your 7mm wrench/socket/drill to remove the 8 upper screws holding the plastic bumper filler panel, then the 10-12 10mm bolts and 2 plastic popits holding the air dam. The air dam lifts off from the back of the bumper by pulling the airdam up and forward.

 

 

Assembly:

Step1. Transfer the filler panel to the new bumper and connect it with the 8 7mm bolts on the top of the bumper, then the 6 10mm bolts on the bottom.

 

Step 2. transfer the air dam to the new bumper and connect it with the 6 10mm bolts and 2 popits to the new bumper.

 

Step 3. Install the foglights buckets, foglights and foglight covers into the foglight bucket brackets. They should be very obvious (I have no pic, sorry, a neighbor came over to help at this point and we moved very fast) and only fit one way. The orientation of the foglight is such that the more pronounced curve of the light is the inside of the vehicle. Use 3 7mm bolts to attach the lights to the foglight bucket hole in the bracket. These are adjustable, so I would advise getting them fairly tight, but not all the way just yet.

 

Step 4. attach the fog lamp wire harness. The main lamp harness connector should be slightly to the driver side and the harness should be fairly centered. When done correctly, your harness attachment ties will all line up with holes in the bumper, leaving 4 on each end that will connect to the bracket the fog lights are mounted in.

 

Step 5. Attach the brackets to the inside of the new bumper with the 16mm bolts you took out earlier. Your bumper should be almost fully assembled at this point.

 

Step 5. adjust the foglight buckets so that they sit well inside the bumper, then tighten the 7mm bolts. If you don't do it this way you may have odd gaps and alignment of the foglight buckets against the bumper.

 

Step 6. Pull the foglight wire harness through the opening directly to the inside of the foglight bucket, this should provide you with 4 additional holes for your wire straps to connect to. Connect the connectors to your wire harness, then to your fog lights.

 

(Following assembly from this point on assumes you have a way to make the fogs work, or are not planning to make them work at all yet. At this point in the assembly we made a judgement call due to time and complexity to not continue to install the forward lamp harness.)

 

Step 7. The bumper is now ready to be installed. Lift the bumper up and over the tow hooks, making sure that the sides do not interfere. There is a little bit of play room to install this, but not much. It will sit on the frame on it's own, so you don't need anyone to help you hold it, but it is a good idea to have someone to help line up the holes for the bolts.

 

Step 8. Install the top 4 18mm bolts, then the 2 16mm bolts. Finger tight first, then tighten them all down with your wrench/ratchet/impact.

 

Step 9. Re-attach your grill with the 8 10mm bolts, it should click into place, installation is very straight forward.

 

Step 9a. In my case, the bumper came from a salvage operation following a wreck. As such everything was cannibalized, even the riveted on brackets on top of the bumper. These act to keep the bumper cap in place. We just re-riveted them to the new bumper after drilling them out of the old bumper. Chances are, if you got a take-off bumper or ordered one from GM, you will already have these.

 

 

Step 10. Position the bumper cap back onto the truck. It practically installs itself. It was very "eager" to slide back into the clips. This took literally seconds. Re-attach your 4 7mm screws in the wheel wells.

 

Step 11. Install your radiator cover with the popits from earlier. Reconnect your battery, you're done!

 

Here's what it looks like on my truck. I love it. They don't work yet, but it makes the front end look much better.

 

[darkfox1]

Addendum:

We were sitting about 2pm on Saturday afternoon taking a break after having the new bumper ready to re-assemble on the truck when we made the call not to install the forward lamp harness.

 

The forward lamp harness has a number of sensors on it, both headlights, washer fluid bottle pump/level, radiator fan power, foglight harness, and several other connectors I could not locate or identify.

 

The forward lamp harness runs under the radiator and above the skid plate/engine cover. It is clearly visible in some places, but obscured for most of it's path. We were looking at having to remove the air box, intake tube, fuse box, and potentially the battery to be able to access the full path of the harness, and it would have still been quite difficult. I would expect due to the disassembly required for this harness about 4 hours of labor to have someone do it for you.

 

since the truck had to be back on the road for work tomorrow, I opted to tape up the bumper harness connector and think about our next steps very heavily.

 

More parts are coming for this truck as part of my up-trim project, and we WILL have to drop the bumper again to install them, so that gives us another opportunity to try to install this, when we have more time. (perhaps a long weekend, or even some time off from work.)

 

The other option is to return to the "plan C" method as we had discussed earlier in the thread. Not really cheaper, but by far simpler.

 

Here's a closer picture of the new bumper and fog light install.

 

[akm53]

i appreciate you work but:

 

1-you have wasted so much time and money on factory fog which is only looks better.

 

2-please see the rigid industries led's you could install 4 of them two in each pod and they would really illuminate the streets.

[darkfox1]

I did look into those and considered going that route. I only spent $50 on the foglights themselves. To have gone that route vs this one would have cost about the same.

 

The rigid lights are about $200-300 range, I wouldn't have needed the 2 harnesses, which would have saved me about that much.

 

I'm content with the way it looks, I agree though, this is the sort of project only someone OBSESSED with having a "stock look" would go for. Anyone looking for practicality would be better off buying just a portion of the parts I listed here, and going with the rigid.

 

Now, all that being said.. if my goal is to have BRIGHT fogs.. well.. vled sells an 880 LED set for about $220 that would probably double the light output over the stockers when they work. I've considered/am considering that route as well. I may not go that way simple because I want to have these on in traffic. I may wind up with some vleds in my brights though, if they're brighter than my stock brights that is.

[blackout07]

Can't be a trailblazer by getting in line. I hope you figure it out.

[darkfox1]

Well, right now I've got an answer for "plan C."

 

Turns out my truck does not come with the power inverter in the cab. I.. kinda hoped it did, but tbh I'd never use it, so I'm thinking.. this is the perfect spot for my switch. It even has a spot for an LED light.

 

I just took the thing apart. (the pics blurry as all get out, I can't seem to take good pics. A photographer I am NOT. )

 

 

To recap "plan C" here's the general idea:

momentary normally off switch somewhere in the cabin, runs through the "flip flop" module I mentioned earlier in the thread, 12v accessory sourced. (I just read that the cig. lighter in the dash is always on. I've never used it tbh.. can someone confirm this?)

 

Out through the firewall to a relay that pulls 12v from the battery, fused at 15a (I already have a fuse, fuse holder, relay and relay holder.. er... somewhere around here.) then down to the factory fog lamp harness which is already in the bumper, wired up and ready to go.

 

The only items I need to buy to make that work is some wire, a fuse, and the switch itself.

[darkfox1]

cig lighter in dash is always on.

 

Need to find another source for the RAP. There's a junction box by the e-brake that has it, but I've been trying to avoid that cos its so daggum small and hard to get to/get the cover off of.

 

Been thinking I could cannibalize that big forward lamp harness I bought. I hate to do that but.. it's got the bumper harness connector already on it with the pins in it, and enough wire (of the right color even) to do this thing. It also has a ground strap that I'd need.

 

Right now I'm gonna focus on the console install and come back to this. Since the truck doesn't have the power inverter though.. I'm gonna have to do something.. because having a non-working plug in my truck is gonna bother me. (non-working fogs already does. )

[darkfox1]

So, after thinking, reading, and some folks on here saying the dealer that can authorize the bcm reprogram is smoking the wacky.. I think we've come up with a suitable alternative.

 

First, the flip flop unit I purchased does not need to be fed a voltage, only read a ground for a NO switch. (in fact, it can read from NO and NC MO switches.) So I did some looking on the gmupfitter manual and found BLU/GRY is the fog light signal wire on connector X1 on the BCM. This wire, along with the black wire on the switch creates the "fog light switch" operation.

 

 

Looking at the top row in this picture, if we assume the left most pin is pin 1, then the 2 pins we need to make a connection with to get the flip-flop relay to work on would be + (pin 3) and - (pin 5.)

 

I took the fog light switch back out of the truck, put my multi meter on continuity and put the pins on the pins shown in this photo.

 

 

Blue is +, yellow is - in this case. You're looking at the upper most pins in the ovals. Sorry.. sloppy on my part.

 

When the button wasn't pressed there was no continuity but as soon as I mashed the fog light button the multimeter would sound for continuity.

 

Therefore.. we have found our momentary normally open switch for the flip-flop circuit.

 

I will be tapping these 2 wires in the harness in the dash and running them to the flip-flop.

 

I've got some materials to get together first, so maybe in a few weeks I'll have more info. Currently the plan is just to make the fogs completely independent of anything. You hit the button, they turn on. There is a concern of battery rundown in that, and I may wind up going with the RAP fuse via a fuse tap (or tapping the line behind the fuse in the in dash fuse panel) but, not sure on that yet.

 

When ya think about it the headlights are 100% independent of the ignition, so it'd be nice if the fogs were too, but.. you don't always see these little lights and if left on during the day could leave you in a bad spot..

 

So comments on that is certainly welcome..

[darkfox1]

I've never seen such a ridiculous roller coaster of a project.

 

I've been getting my parts ready for my install the last day or 2 and things have went very well! I made a small weather proof box and wired in my flip-flop and my relay to work on 12v from the battery with a pull in signal from the stock foglight switch.

 

Everything was going great until I pinged the switch leads on the flip-flop relay with my multimeter and found that it's feeding a 12v signal to whatever switch you wire in.

 

So now I'm kind of chewing on how to fix this.

 

If you look at the pinouts on the X1 module on the BCM, that is, where the blu/gry wire and black wire come from for this switch, you also note a "5v reference" pinout. More than likely.. the stock switch is a 5v switch, not 12v. So if I feed it a 12v feed, even if its very low amperage.. it could fry it.

 

So I'm trying to figure out what to do. Now I'm no electrician (you should see my solder work.. it'd make you vomit) but I'm wondering if I could somehow put a resistor in line to drop the signal to 5v.. but then I wonder.. will the switch still work for the flip-flop circuit at 5v? Or do I just move my problem? I discussed the idea of CUTTING the blu/gry feed so that we don't inadvertently inject 12v into the BCM, but the ground is most likely a common ground for all of the switch functions on the headlight switch.. and grounding 12v through it.. well that may not be a good idea either. As of right now pushing the fog light button does nothing. It completes a mechanical circuit inside the switch, which sends the BCM 5v.. I assume.. which it ignores.

 

If anyones an "electricial guru" or some such thing and has any insight, I'd much appreciate it. At this point if we can't use the factory switch we're back to trying to source an MO switch or blow away the flip-flop circuit for a rocker switch. Neither of which I really WANT to do.. simply for the fact that it will scream "this vehicle is modified."

[GTPprix]

Dude just ship me your bcm lol way too much drama here for something I can fix in a day for you ;)

[darkfox1]

That doesn't work for a number of reasons.

 

The forward lamp harness is not in the truck, even with the BCM reprogram (which would take weeks and cost hundreds of dollars, leaving me with no vehicle) I would also have to do my front end tear down again AND drop the battery, air box, "skid plate" and probably curse/scrape my hands quite a bit to get the forward lamp harness in place to even do it the factory way.

[GTPprix]

Weeks? It takes one day and we send it back.

[darkfox1]

Na.. regrettably that won't be happening. I have other methods in mind at this point.

 

I will keep you in mind however if something else comes up!

 

I've been tooling around on the site and looked up vleds for the 880s.

 

A stock 880 puts out ~550 lumens.

 

http://www.vleds.com/shop-bulb-numbers/880-h27/880-lmz.html

 

This... and.. correct me if I'm reading this right.. puts out 3000 lumens. So I'd be going from ~1100 lm total to 3000!

I wonder if that'd melt my ebay fogs..

 

I also imagine I could NEVER drive with these on in traffic.

 

This would be a suitable replacement for someone who wants light bar level light without having to put a light bar behind the bumper too..

 

Just.. I dunno how much heat those put out.

 

We'll see how the stockers look when I get em wired up. If the intent is for looks I've accomplished that working or not.. but the added benefit of ligths that actually WORK... well they could be far more utilitarian with something like that in em.

[yamr6rider]

GTPrix, am I correct in thinking that most updates that I would have to take the truck to the dealership for will not affect the BCM? you mentioned you could turn it around in a day, but you didn't mention is what it would cost to do the reprogram?

[yamr6rider]

Also, couldn't you just jump across the BCM by going from BU/GY of 192 and adding a 12 volt flip-flop somewhere in the middle? I'm very interested in this thread. not exactly planning to add factory fog lights like you did, but was thinking about using this to drive one or more light bars. the only difference I could see is the dash may not indicate your fog lights are on if you jump the BCM.

FWIW