Hella fogs, can I remove the yellow?

I recently picked up a NIB set of Hella "Comet 550" fog lights on an impulse at a garage sale. Seemed they would be useful for something someday. They would be even more useful if they were a plain white fog light. Even if they turn out to be subpar fogs, they might be useful as work lights.

It looks to my untrained eye that the reflectors might be tinted yellow rather than the lenses. If that's true, might there be a way to wash off the yellow, say with acetone?

Thanks,
Mike

merwin said:

I recently picked up a NIB set of Hella "Comet 550" fog lights on an impulse at a garage sale. Seemed they would be useful for something someday. They would be even more useful if they were a plain white fog light. Even if they turn out to be subpar fogs, they might be useful as work lights.

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Between any two fog lamps that generate an identical (and *correct*) fog lamp pattern, selective yellow fog lamps will actually perform better. This has nothing to do with "penetrating fog" and everything to do with how the human optical system works.

It looks to my untrained eye that the reflectors might be tinted yellow rather than the lenses. If that's true, might there be a way to wash off the yellow, say with acetone?

Click to expand...

Coloring the reflector is one of the ways to reliably produce selective yellow light from a lamp assembly. Anything that will remove this coloring will remove the protection the reflective surface has, or the reflective surface itself-- absolutely ruining the lamp in the process.

As they are, they should work well as fog lamps, but it's not as if fog lamps are extremely necessary, especially in the face of modern headlamp design. See this thread here.

Selective yellow fog lights are the way you want to go in inclement weather...white is almost useless from my experience.

I am glad I asked and thank you for your prompt replies. These will stay as is.
The might find use on the 4x4. Even then, they will probably have the covers on 360+ days a year.

The beam pattern is the most important aspect of how well a fog lamp works. Whether the light is white or selective yellow is not anywhere near as influential, though all other factors being equal, there's evidence selective yellow ones do work somewhat better. There's also a great deal of mythology around the matter, in numerous different directions. Everything from "White fog lamps are useless, they have to be selective yellow or they're no good" (wrong) to "Selective yellow fog lamps are stupid because you lose a ton of light due to filtration losses" (also wrong). Good page on the subject of white vs. selective yellow, with links to research, here. Fact is, fog lamps (white or yellow) are of very little use most of the time to most drivers; read up on that here (sounds like you're already aware of the limited utility of fog lamps, though).

To answer your question directly: no, the yellow reflector coating can't be removed without ruining the reflector.