Re: Hella Optilux bulbs illegal?
I meant to mention earlier: I bought and examined a pair of the Osram Fog Breaker HB4 yellow bulbs.
Daniel Stern mentioned those in an email to a friend of mine, as well as the HB3 version. And a Putco (
"Where the Putz Goes!") bulb of a type I'm afraid to mention directly because
NO!
I imagine the yellow coating will burn off in short order (the box apparently said "Bulbs made in Korea, coated in USA by Putco"), and the lack of the blacktop makes them a non-starter in pretty much any fog lamp I can think of. If they are at least decent, then I could see them going into my friend's RX300, which has Koito-branded factory projector fog lamps which seem to produce less light in the glare zone than my LS430's Stanley-branded factory reflector fog lamps.
Right now, my friend's RX300 has those yellow "Optilux" bulbs, despite advice from Daniel Stern to not install them. I did have an opportunity to experience them in real fog that by our estimation only gave about 90 feet of seeing distance (as far as the road markings went), but that was done by observing when the close edge of a center lane stripe was visible, then counting "one Mississippi, two Mississippi" until the stripe reached the bumper, and then estimating 30 feet per second since we were going about 20mph. The fog lamps on just made the stripes *slightly* easier to spot maybe another couple of feet out, if that much, or maybe (probably!) it was wishful thinking.
At the speed we were going, and the speed OTHERS were going, we sorely wished for a rear fog lamp! Several times we were approached from the rear by idiots who would get right on our bumper (too close for comfort) then passed us whether the lane markings and/or sanity permitted it or not. Their taillamps would disappear in maybe five or six seconds, lost to the mist...