2005 Chevy cobalt hid fogs!
- Thread starter waloshin
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AnAppleSnail
Flashlight Enthusiast
If you use them off-road, it'll be legal. But with fog lighting, you want a perfect beam pattern, as anything not following the sharply-cutoff pattern will make it hard to see. If you're using it for auxiliary lighting, go nuts. The beam pattern probably won't be nearly the same, though.
No. First off, the fog lamps should almost never be turned on. Even good fog lamps, which are quite rare, are of very little legitimate use to most drivers and should be turned off most of the time. They are for use in fog/rain/snow to help the driver see the edges of the road close to the car so he can creep along through the bad weather at very low speeds. That is all good fog lamps are able to do, and most of the ones available as factory or optional equipment or in the aftermarket aren't even capable of doing that. Leaving the fog lamps on at all times does not really or meaningfully improve seeing or safety, though many people do so out of baseless belief that they can see better this way at normal road speeds in dry weather. See this page for more information, and this thread on here for data and explanation (starting at post #4).
If you were to make your fog lamps put out 4x their normal amount of light by whatever means, it would not make them better fog lamps. In fact, technically and legally they'd no longer even be fog lamps. They wouldn't be "auxiliary" lamps, they wouldn't be driving lamps...they wouldn't be anything-lamps; they'd just produce completely dangerous levels of glare for other road users (regardless of their aim) and they'd completely destroy your distance vision by flooding the foreground with light. If you're going to use your fog lamps in conditions that warrant it, make sure they're equipped with only the bulbs for which they were designed. "HID kits" are not an upgrade. In halogen-bulb lamps (any kit, any headlamp or fog or driving lamp, any vehicle) they do not work safely or effectively, which is why they are illegal. See here for details. Also make sure they're aimed correctly and equip them with good quality clear-glass bulbs.
As for "3000K", marketers make up all kinds of numbers (such as "2500K" and "3000K") to hawk various kinds of yellow lights, but fact is that color temperature is a descriptor of white light only. There is no valid color temperature for light that is not white.
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fyrstormer
Banned
I use my foglamps for finding potholes on crappy roads. It works well for that purpose, because foglamps don't aim very far ahead. They light-up the space between the normal headlights and the bumper. I don't understand exactly why they work well as pothole-finders, but I'm generally able to dodge them much more easily with the foglamps on.
Anyway, you can't retrofit HIDs into normal projectors and expect them to work right, because normal projectors don't compensate for the curve of the HID arc -- they are adjusted to work with solid filaments instead. You will blind people no matter how much you pinky-swear you don't mean to.
Just get a good set of PIAA yellow foglamp bulbs and be glad you have them on the rare occasion you have a good reason to use them.
Anyway, you can't retrofit HIDs into normal projectors and expect them to work right, because normal projectors don't compensate for the curve of the HID arc -- they are adjusted to work with solid filaments instead. You will blind people no matter how much you pinky-swear you don't mean to.
Just get a good set of PIAA yellow foglamp bulbs and be glad you have them on the rare occasion you have a good reason to use them.
LukeA
Flashlight Enthusiast
Alaric Darconville
Flashlight Enthusiast
If you didn't see them within your headlight beam, they're not potholes, or your lights aren't aimed properly. If you only see them when they're that close to the car that the fogs pick them up, you're not looking far enough ahead anyway. Look well ahead of the car, not immediately in front of the bumper.
No such thing as *good* PIAA anything. If there is, it's pretty darn rare. PIAA isn't a brand any more than it's a marketing company, anyway. It's like the "Always Save" of automotive lighting.
fyrstormer
Banned
The car is brand-new and recently passed inspection. The headlights are fine.
I think what's happening is the headlight beam cuts off a little too far out, so the depth of the pothole isn't visible until the pothole is no longer in the bright part of the headlight beam. And yes, they are most definitely potholes, I know because I hit a few of them before I discovered my foglights could help me see them.
After twelve years of driving, the worst thing I've ever done is tap the corner of someone's bumper in a parking lot, and that was three months after I got my license. Thanks for your concern about my driving style, but I've got it under control.
I have PIAA bulbs in my other car, and my dad's cars as well. They also make kickass silicone-rubber wiper blades (or at least, they picked good ones to put their name on) which I liked so much I bought sets and spare blades for all 6 cars in my family.
Got any more under-informed opinions you want to share with us?
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No, fyrstormer, he's right. PIAA's stuff is mostly junk when examined objectively. And all of it's grossly overpriced. And the fact your car is brand new doesn't mean the lamps are aimed correctly, nor does the fact it passed inspection. Believe it or not, there's no Federal regulation requiring lamps to be aimed correctly before the vehicle is first sold, and even those few states that bother checking lamp aim any more (and even those very few inspectors in those states who do it according to the book) use such a ridiculously lax standard -- 4" up to 4" down passes -- that the lamp inspection is meaningless at best.
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Alaric Darconville
Flashlight Enthusiast
I was test driving cars once and noticed a couple was driving off in their brand-new car. As they were driving off, they braked while turning in the lot, and I saw that one of the brake lights was not lighting. Brand new doesn't mean fully functional.
My '65 Dart passed inspection once even though the parking brake didn't work -- I told the "inspector" that the parking brake only became required equipment in 1968, and so the '65 was exempt from the requirement. The "inspector" (some 19 year old kid) swallowed that hook, line, and sinker. "Passed inspection" doesn't mean much.
If it's the same road you drive on all the time, you should probably have learned where most of them are by now (and to slow down on crappy roads). If you can see the ediges of the pothole, then you can probably safely assume that it's a pothole you don't want to hit anyway, regardless of depth.
If it's safe to do so, take some pictures of the potholes and email them to the mayor (and cc: the local newspaper or TV station). They might fix those potholes before you know it!
You'll get it more under control when you slow down on pothole riddled roads.
It's a lot easier to objectively rate the performance of a wiper blade than a car headlight. Glad they make/sell at least ONE decent product.
Got any more under-informed opinions you want to share with us?
I'll leave the sharing of under-informed opinions up to my 11 year old nephew and my Fox-News-watching stepfather in law.
