i drove by on my way to work the other day and saw your car up on jacks...
i'm hoping that is because you were bolting up your exhaust, not because of another problem

as far as my 2 cents on the head lights, for the original bulbs, the bulbs themselves might have just been going bad. they still lit up, but not real bright.
As for your light mod, the bulbs in the fog lights might not put out any more light.
as far as fog lights go, that is pretty much as far as they are supposed to throw light.
what would be ideal is if you got some stock fog lights off of a beamer or something that has fog lights that same basic shape, and got HID bulbs for them and just wired those up.
wiring them so they are on when the car is on isn't that bad of an idea. I leave my lights on all of the time since I've gotten used to driving pam's celica (R.I.P.) its head lights are automatic.