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987 Fog light switch enable questions

279 views 17 replies 7 participants last post by  Das Borgen  
#1 ·
I noticed that my car does not have a way to turn on my fog lights at all outside of checking if they work via my Foxwell tool. I can't use them in any switch headlight position in normal driving though. My switch looks like this


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But last weekend, I was driving my friend's also 987.2 and he has a different fog light switch that actually turns on those same round lights in the bumper. He has this one

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So I tried to swap his switch into my car and it couldn't activate my own round lights in bumper. Is there a way to not only get this switch but then to also activate the fog light function? Maybe a wire needs to be added or something else to do with coding? I didn't see anything in my Foxwell OBD2 tool in the Front Control Module that would suggest being able to turn on those round lights via coding, unless I missed it.

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#3 ·
You are pulling the switch "out" and not just turning it?
 
#5 ·
weird, both my 06 BS and my 07 base Cayman have both the fog light like your friends .2
Both my cars had Bixenon option like your car. When you had your switch out, did you notice if it had a Porsche part number (like the fcp image)?
 
#7 ·
Your photo of the front bumper is not a 987.2. That said, I'd guess that someone replaced your switch. All 987.2 Caymans came with fogs and should all have them indicated on the dash switch.
 
#9 ·
My 2010 987.2 only has the rear fog light, no fronts. Not sure about cars with standard headlights but pretty certain that's the way all the .2 cars with xenon headlights are.

I have the headlight switch at the very top of this thread. With the headlights on, pulling the switch out turns on the rear fog light. It is only on one side.
 
#10 ·
yea, I know it's a 987.1. It's just for illustration purposes and it's a generic photo of a 987 car, not mine, to show which lights I'm talking about.

@RSchwerer What you're saying about replacing the switch doesn't make sense though because I swapped out my switch for my friend's own 987.2 with halogens.

If it was the case that mine was replaced before my ownership, then a straight putting back in the switch which does have front fog control would have woken back up my fog lights.

That doesn't make sense.

I'd already thought of that and that's why I made this thread
 
#12 ·
@gubi I thought all 987.2 had front fogs. Google AI told me :) Are your 2 fixtures in the grill just dummies?It makes no sense to fit functional fog lights if there's no way to turn them on
BTW, mine has halogen headlights, but I don't understand why xenons would be different. I can't think of anything that would preclude fitting the fogs as standard equipment. Was there an option for fogs w/xenon? If so, and it wasn't opted, maybe the harness to the light switch wasn't wired for it.
 
#13 ·
The wiring to the switch is identical on mine and my friend's 987.2 that has halogens and fogs. My Foxwell even confirmed that when I activated the front fog light function when I swapped his headlight switch assembly into my car that it saw the fog light switch activated.

So my only guess at this point is that the coding in the Front Control Module is different.

I also confirmed that I can independently activate my fog lamps with my Foxwell tool. I also noticed that I can choose if I want my low beams or my fog lights to be used as the "home" function that turns on the lights for 30s after I lock the car.
 
#14 ·
I looked into this a while back and the conclusion I came to for the 987.2, specifically for bi-xenons, is that Porsche decided that the higher end lighting does not need dedicated fog lights. The lower bumper lights are just set up for optional daytime running lights, which you can set on the dash for DRL or not (I have mine on).

I’m pretty sure you can’t trick the system by telling the car you have halogen lights (which do have the fog light option, again presumably due to the lower light output from halogen headlights).

I live in a pretty foggy place and do feel the bi-xenon lights do a good job in foggy conditions due to the sculpted beam pattern minimizing back scatter. Personally I’ve given up the attempt to get those lower lights to act as fog lights.
 
#15 · (Edited)
I looked into this a while back and the conclusion I came to for the 987.2, specifically for bi-xenons, is that Porsche decided that the higher end lighting does not need dedicated fog lights. The lower bumper lights are just set up for optional daytime running lights, which you can set on the dash for DRL or not (I have mine on).
That seems to be the case. The "additional lamp" assembly (as it's called in the parts diagram) is different between the halogen and xenon headlamp 987.2. With halogen headlights it is a halogen lamp that serves as a foglight. With xenon headlights it is an LED assembly that only serves as a DRL (if turned on in the dash display) when the headlights are off.

My expectation is that even if you turn it on as a foglight on the xenon cars the pattern will be completely wrong for a foglight. And the only thing less useful than a set of front foglights is a set of badly-patterned front foglights. I wouldn't mess with it.

Halogen assembly, 98763109301, for cars without xenon option I605
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LED assembly, 98763104503, for cars with xenon option I605

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#16 ·
ok thank you @gubi for that explanation that they're DRLs that can be turned on in the cluster actually on cars with bi xenon.
That's another strange thing I noticed when fiddling with it last night. I enabled that function by ticking that box for DRL in the instrument cluster but the car is not turning on those fog lights as DRLs. What reason could that be?

I do currently have my low beams as the front lights that turn on with the "home" function and I set that a few months ago.

Note: I haven't checked the fuse for them, but again, my Foxwell was able to turn them on last night so I don't think it could be a fuse issue
 
#17 ·
You have the stock xenon headlights? Not sure what to tell you, maybe you messed it up when you re-coded it. Do the low beams come on as DRLs instead when you activate the DRL function?

The other thing I remembered about the LED additional lamp is that it may be used as part of the PDLS with the xenon headlights, like it turns on as a cornering light? But I don't remember for sure.