recommendation powerful fog lights for car?

[picard]

what is a good & powerful fog light model for car or SUV? heavy rains tend to reduce visibility at night significantly. Would it be legal & wise to add more fog lights to the car?

Would the car need extra battery for these lights?

[spock]

picard, i have had several types of fog lights over the years. piaa, hella, and cibie make good ones. don't buy the ones sold by major retailers. a good fog light has a wide beam(like a piece of pie)with a severe upper cut off. the beam should not go above your knee. my cibies went from full bright to dark in about one inch on a garage door. the color does not matter. i prefer white. fog lights actually don't penetrate very far in fog. their wide beam allows you to use more of your peripherial vision to process more information. with more information, you see better. peripherial vision i think is better at night because of the way your eye is made. the fog lights that come on new vehicles are for the most part cosmetic. your battery and alternator should handle the load. don't run the hot wire from the battery to a switch in your dash, too much current drop, and a bad switch can blow your bulbs. use a relay so that the power goes from your battery to the relay to the lights. use an inline fuse of at least 20 amps. from the battery to the lights, use 12ga wire and solder all connections. if you put them on your bumper, run a heavy ground wire to the engine block. the wire from the relay to the switch(off/on)can be 18ga. you can use 12 volts from most anywhere to power the switch as current draw is low. automatic option: find a wire going to a low beam light. tap into it and run it back to power the switch(off/on) that controls the relay. thus, when the switch is turned ON, your foglights will come on automatically when you dim, and off when you go to bright beams. off is off. hopes this helps some.

[scott.cr]

I agree with everything Spock says, but would like to add something too. A lot of people attach their fog lights directly to the positive and negative poles of their battery, instead of hotwire to positive and negative to ground.

If you wire directly to the battery, be sure to fuse the negative wire also. The reason behind this is if the main chassis ground wire is disconnected (on purpose or on accident), the new ground lead will be your fog light wire, grounding everything through the lights.

So if you disconnect your negative battery post one day to service your alternator, and the negative lead on your lights is still attached, there is still a chance you can hurt yourself if a wrench bridges chassis to anything still attached to B+.

[markus_i]

Hi Picard,

regarding your questions above,
- whether it's legal or not (and if it's legal in general, what is legal specifically etc.) will depend on where you live and want to drive. But I suppose starfleet command could get away with anything ;-)
- practical? Definitely. You'll be able to see more - but don't expect to be able to see enough to drive as fast as without fog/rain/snow... If you use front fog lights, think about (but see above) a rear fog lamp also. Just do me a favor and turn it off when there's no real need to use it (in Germany, it's legally required to do so if visibility is above 50 meters - and indirectly from this follows that you're no allowed to drive faster than 50 kph with the rear fog lamp on...). The front lights shouldn't shine high enough to blind other people on the road - the rear light does.
- while I agree with spock's suggestion to use a relay, I'd add two more things: use a fuse (inline if there's no more place in the fuse box - but the old cars I used to work on always had a space in the fuse box which either was foreseen for additional fog lights or could be used for such things). You definitely don't want a short on something that is designed to run high currents. The second thing is: don't ever solder any high current line in your car. There are some very good reasons why the industry is using crimp connectors, three of them are
- the solder connection together with a little salt and water will turn into a very nice local element that will eat away the conductor
- the end of the solder connection towards the wire is mechanically unstable, over time the vibrations in the car will manage to break the wire there
- the solder blob itself is mechanically unstable - if you screw or crimp on a soldered wire, the solder will slowly give way and the connection will become loose
All three of the above will result in an increased resistance at the connection (slowly, over time). If you're lucky, that will manifest only as an unsure connection (sometimes the lights will work, sometimes they won't). If you're unlucky, the 10 or so Amps flowing through the connection will heat it up. Sufficiently to melt the isolation and start more trouble.

HTH
Bye
Markus

[Orbit]

the hella micro de fog light is the best fog light on the market.

[Bogie]

Hella,IPF,Piaa,Warn all make verry good lights go with a style you like & that fits the vechile your installing them on. Color choice is up to you I run Hella rallies on my Jeep & Lightforce in my Truck I use diffrent filters depending on conditions as recomonded. Absolutely use a relay I set mine up so the fused + feeds both the load & the switched coil then allow the control switch to control the coil ground this way if the switch ever fails all I need to do it ground the control wire to activate whatever is on that circuit.

[picard]

thanks for all the tips guys. I will search for Hella lights. I will let the electrician connect the wires for the lights. I am not electrically inclined person. I don't want to electrocute myself doing it.

[Diesel_Bomber]

+1 on the Hella Micro DE's.

Good auto lighting is like good flashlights. You'll never be able to go back to being blind again.