HID fog lights?

Hey Folks,


Has anyone seen HID foglights for a car? Just wondering as they would be more functional than my stock "fashion" fog lights.


Many thanks!!!

no takers?

Dear Manzerick,

Look at the XeVision website http://www.xevision.com/ and you will find a variety of HID lights for automotive applications, both round and rectangular. They offer pencil beams, driving lights and fog patterns. After you have decided on a model, give them a call to define your individual needs:

Dan Blumel Sales (801) 622-7000 [email protected]

I hope this has been of some value. I don't know if there are other companies in this line of work, but the XeVision portable lights are very popular on this Forum, and Dan has been most informative about the engineering of their products.

I am looking at their HID lights for my car right now. I just need to find a place to mount a pair of driving lamps, as they are more efficient than incandescent bulbs of similar power consumption.

Enjoy,

Harvey K.

CHeck out hella.com

The Rallye 4000 Xenon HIDs are just the ticket.

But at >$500 each they are a bit pricey.

That is expensive. I may just end up upgrading my stock "for looks" fog lights with a Piaa kit..


How do you like the Rallye?

J_Oei said:

CHeck out hella.com

The Rallye 4000 Xenon HIDs are just the ticket.

But at >$500 each they are a bit pricey.

Click to expand...

Try the xenarc x1010 auxiliary Hid fogs. I purchased a pair about 3 years ago and they are still running strong. I think at the time they were $300. Easiest installation ever. Absolutely plug and play. All you have to do is mount the lights find a place to stick the ballasts and connect it to the battery. They come with a remote just like a car alarm. I've always loved these thing. They definitely make some heads turn to.

Here are a few links for you:
http://www.superhonda.com/forum/showthread.php?t=135055
http://www.sylvania.com/ConsumerProducts/AutomotiveLighting/HighPerformance/Xenarc/XenarcKits.htm
http://www.suvlights.com/product_info.php?products_id=46
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/68389


Here is some pics of my car from back in the day. I have such random pics on archive.

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Thank you for the pic's!!!

They look exactly like what I wanted. Many i'll save some lumen doallars for them!!!

white light such as those emitted by xenon hid's will not help much in dense fog... they moreso will hinder your ability to see certain things that yellow foglights are able to show.... just my 2cent humble opinion...

If you're doing HID fogs, you want to get as yellow as possible..unless it is for looks. They do make 3000k HID bulbs..I would use those. I learned a lot about HID lighting over at bimmerforums.com and also a hid site...can't remember the name of it though hid-planet.com or something like that. I ended up ordering a cheapo chinese kit off ebay and so far they seem to work really well. My lights arn't designed for HID so the beampatter is pretty ugly, but b/c i have 9006 lights (one of the best stock to HID conversions with stock reflectors), they're useable.

Foglights should be used with the 3000K bulbs mentioned above if at all. They are mounted low on the car and are designed to illuminate a short distance ahead and wide. The yellowish color will cut better through fog. But, the beam pattern from a gas discharge capsule is never ideal. For example, look at the H3 bulb halogen filament horizontal position used in such lamps. You will see it differs a lot from the H1 longitudinal filament. A gas discharge capsule will never be able to match those requirements for acceptable foglight beampattern.

Well guys i think you might want to rethink your opinions as far as your recomendations to colour goes.
Also think in this....typical halogen fog lights are 30-55watt. If you put a 35watt HID as a fog light you will have too much light.... resulting in enormous problems in back scatter.

Hope i can answer your query.

Question: Why are fog lights yellow? Does it help that they are? Does it matter if you are driving in city or countryside?


Answer: My understanding is that it is important for fog lights to be one color
(rather than white, which is all colors) because the different
wavelengths(colors) of visible light scatter off the fog droplets
differently. This phenomenon is known as "dispersion," because the
different colors of light in an image will separate from each other,
causing the image to "disperse." If you illuminate the road with only one
wavelength (color) of light, the images of the objects you see will still
become somewhat blurry because of the scattering of light by the fog, but
at least you won't have extra problems from dispersion. So, if we want to
use just one wavelength of light, which wavelength should we use? It turns
out that light with short wavelengths scatters more than light with long
wavelengths (short to long: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange,
red). So, a long wavelength light will be best. There's another thing to
consider, too: our eyes are not equally sensitive to all colors. It turns
out that we are most sensitive to yellow and green light. So, our best
compromise between sensitivity for our eyes and a long wavelength for least
scattering is yellow light.
A consideration used in street lighting is cost and efficiency. You
may have seen some yellow street lighting in some places; this is
"low-pressure sodium vapor" lighting. The special thing about this light
is that it is almost entirely one (actually two very close together)
wavelength of yellow light, and that it gives the most illumination for the
amount of electricity. A big problem with this light, though, is that it
throws off color perception. Under sodium vapor light, something blue
looks gray. This makes it hard to, say, recognize your car in a parking
lot.

There was teh theory, now here is the reality.

There is no good reason why fog lights are yellow

"First I'll give you the wrong explanation, which you can find here and
there. It goes something like this. As everyone knows, scattering (by
anything!) is always greater at the shortwavelength end of the visible
spectrum than at the longwavelength end. Lord Rayleigh showed this, didn't
he? Thus to obtain the greatest penentration of light through fog, you
should use the longest wavelength possible. Red is obviously unsuitable
because it is used for stop lights. So you compromise and use yellow
instead.


This explanation is flawed for more than one reason. Fog droplets are, on
average, smaller than cloud droplets, but they still are huge compared with
the wavelengths of visible light. Thus scattering of such light by fog is
essentially wavelength independent. Unfortunately, many people learn
(without caveats) Rayleigh's scattering law and then assume that it applies
to everything. They did not learn that this law is limited to scatterers
small compared with the wavelength and at wavelengths far from strong
absorption.


The second flaw is that in order to get yellow light in the first place you
need a filter. Note that yellow fog lights were in use when the only
available headlights were incandescent lamps. If you place a filter over a
white headlight, you get less transmitted light, and there goes your
increased penetration down the drain.


There are two possible explanations for yellow fog lights. One is that the
first designers of such lights were mislead because they did not understand
the limitations of Rayleigh's scattering law and did not know the size
distribution of fog droplets. The other explanation is that someone deemed
it desirable to make fog lights yellow as a way of signalling to other
drivers that visibility is poor and thus caution is in order.


Designers of headlights have known for a long time that there is no magic
color that gives great penetration. I have an article from the Journal of
Scientific Instruments published in October 1938 (Vol. XV, pp. 317-322).
The article is by J. H. Nelson and is entitled "Optics of headlights". The
penultimate section in this paper is on "fog lamps". Nelson notes that
"there is almost complete agreement among designers of fog lamps, and this
agreement is in most cases extended to the colour of the light to be used.
Although there are still many lamps on the road using yellow light, it
seems to be becoming recognized that there is no filter, which, when placed
in front of a lamp, will improve the penetration power of that lamp."


This was written 61 years ago. Its author uses a few words ("seem",
"becoming recognized") indicating that perhaps at one time lamp designers
thought that yellow lights had greater penetrating power. And it may be
that because of this the first fog lamps were yellow. Once the practice of
making such lamps yellow began it just continued because of custom."


Also, take a look at the following web site:
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF5/593.html


http://www.lightingresearch.org/programs/transportation/pdf/SAE/2001-01-0320.pdf



I can give you more infomation if you are intrested but this is simplified and easy to understand.
Let me know if you want any more info.

good thread i was thinking about converting my fog lights to HID

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=2550628

I also might just swap out the bulbs to silverstars they are suposed to be pretty white

Just get the proper HID conversion kit for your existing fog lights.

That's what I did. I have a Lexus GS and outfitted it with fogs for both headlamps and fog lights.

Pictures:






These photos show 4300k on top and 6000k on bottom. I swapped out the fogs and now have a white 4300k all around.

Looks great!

Lemme know if you're interested in HID conversion kits - I can ship them nationwide for $250

mobilehid said:

Just get the proper HID conversion kit for your existing fog lights.

That's what I did. I have a Lexus GS and outfitted it with fogs for both headlamps and fog lights.

These photos show 4300k on top and 6000k on bottom. I swapped out the fogs and now have a white 4300k all around.

Lemme know if you're interested in HID conversion kits - I can ship them nationwide for $250

Click to expand...

It is illegal to replace stock halogen with HID. Only HID aux lights can be legally added in some states. The automotive conversion kits Halogen to HID are "all" cheap Asian made bulbs and ballasts. This stuff is mostly junk. The Feds are fixing to do another big crackdown on these illegally imported products.

Obvously, HID is legal in newer cars manufactured with it. Most are using projectors rather than just reflectors.

www.hidfoglights.com

wow - someone's bitter about HID fog lights.

all cheap asian junk huh? hrm- Philips actually makes a kit too ya know.

i checked out your site xevision - what's the weight of that magnetic suction tripod? dimensions? I might need something like that.

Thanks.

Clifford

mobilehid said:

wow - someone's bitter about HID fog lights. All cheap asian junk huh? hrm- Philips actually makes a kit too ya know.

Click to expand...

Philips does NOT make HID kits. I buy from Philips and am an OEM buyer. We had to sign a contract to say we would not make or sell any conversion kits in order to get OEM status from Philips. DOT (Feds) got Philips and Osram to work with them to help stop people from using their stuff to make kits. Overseas, some buy Philips Ballasts (actually Hella) to modify for kits. NO kit is made by Philips. They only offer D2S/D2R, D4S/D4R and D1S/D1R and soon D3S/D3R bulbs. They do not make any halogen based (rebased) HID bulbs to match halogen bulb bases. I did say "all" in quotes. For $250 for a pair with bulbs, yours is NOT Philips, Hella or any other reputable brand. A new pair of Philips/Hella ballasts would cost YOU more than what you SELL your whole kit for. Most likely your kit is made in China. Post a photo of the kit components.

99% of the kit stuff being sold is Junk and is illegally being imported to the USA. Much of it comes through Canada from China hidden in "commuters" cars. Washington state, Michigan or Niagra Falls.

Wow dude, you need to chill out. What about the specs on that magnetic suction tripod?

Why pay $250 for just the ballast if you can get the whole kit for less than that and it works? I have 8000k HID foglights on my Prius (see my Avatar) but I mostly only use them during the day as Daytime Running Lights.

benighted said:

Why pay $250 for just the ballast if you can get the whole kit for less than that and it works? I have 8000k HID foglights on my Prius (see my Avatar) but I mostly only use them during the day as Daytime Running Lights.

Click to expand...

Because you wont be able to get replacement parts for it. Most of those cheap kits, you will be lucky if they last a year. They are a waste of money. Throw away HID. "8000K is designer hid" you only get about 2000 lumens of blue/purple light. 4200K is the best and 6000K is the most that makes any sense. A good quality 35 watt ballast is about $125.00 to $180.00 each retail.

The problem I have is with all the abuses of illegal HID conversion kits. They have given HID a "black eye" with the general public. Plus the glare coming from them is blinding from the light going in all the wrong directions and places. Have you ever been on the receiving end of the blinding kits?