# HID fog lights?



## Manzerick (Oct 1, 2006)

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!!!


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## Manzerick (Oct 11, 2006)

no takers?


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## frogs3 (Oct 11, 2006)

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.


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## J_Oei (Oct 12, 2006)

CHeck out hella.com

The Rallye 4000 Xenon HIDs are just the ticket.

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


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## Manzerick (Oct 13, 2006)

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.


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## photorob (Oct 13, 2006)

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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## Manzerick (Oct 13, 2006)

Thank you for the pic's!!!

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


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## VF1Jskull1 (Oct 16, 2006)

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...


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## havand (Oct 16, 2006)

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.


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## LED61 (Oct 16, 2006)

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.


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## Orbit (Oct 16, 2006)

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.


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## 2000xlt (Oct 20, 2006)

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


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## mobilehid (Nov 17, 2006)

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


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## XeRay (Nov 17, 2006)

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.
> 
> ...


 
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.


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## D-Dog (Nov 17, 2006)

www.hidfoglights.com


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## mobilehid (Nov 17, 2006)

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


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## XeRay (Nov 17, 2006)

mobilehid said:


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


 
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.


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## mobilehid (Nov 17, 2006)

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


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## benighted (Nov 17, 2006)

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.


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## XeRay (Nov 18, 2006)

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.


 
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?


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## Sway (Nov 18, 2006)

mobilehid said:


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



Please read the very excellent information and advice posted by XeRay and Orbit. From looking at your HID set up it would be useless in heavy fog. Your * Looks great! * comment only applies to the picture of your car not the useful aspect of automotive lighting. 

With fog lamps the light needs to be controlled and properly placed, low as possible with little back scatter if not you will only blind yourself.

Hope I never meet you on the road at night.

Later
Kelly


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## mobilehid (Nov 18, 2006)

ok ok ok ok...

Please allow me to clear a few things up. I'm used to explaining the difference of my HID kits to people since they have a poor reputation from all the terribly constructed kits on the market.

1) The $250 price includes 2 ballasts, 2 HID bulbs, 1 wiring harness with a fuse and relay wired inline, mounting hardware, 1 pack of zip ties, and of course - instructions for installation. Honestly, the price doesn't matter, the construction is what really counts. They work, they're reliable, they do their job and I've installed a half dozen so far in various vehicles.

2) The fog light photo is very over exposed. They certainly do not point up like they appear in the photo. I assure you that they are not as blinding as they appear in the photo. I bought a philips HID conversion kit with philips bulbs and philips ballasts and they produced a lot of glare due to the length of the light source in the bulb not being exactly like the halogens they produced. This is EXACTLY why the DOT disapproved HID kits in the first place. If you get properly spec'd bulbs, the cutoff of the beam could pass as factory. Also, I live in Phoenix, Arizona - there is zero fog here and I run my fog lights just to have more light out there on the ground. If I needed them for fog, I'd use 3500k (yellow) bulbs. 

3) As far as replacement parts are concerned, I can purchase and can sell replacement parts for ANY piece of the HID conversion kits I sell. I don't know why you think you have the authority to talk about the kits that I SELL. I certainly don't try to pass judgement about your products XeRay. I certainly agree that most HID kits out there blind the living day lights (haha- pun not intended but it works out nice) out of me and that is exactly why I have chosen to sell this particular kit. Because I believe in it. I have 5 different kits from 5 different manufacturers in my garage and have done extensive testing on each. 

In fact, here's a photo of the height of the light source from the mounting point. The heights of the filament location and the gas capsule of the HID bulb match. Thus- accurate cutoff in the headlight.








4) Why are all of you so quick to disregard anyone you don't understand or don't know anything about? Is this forum THAT closed minded?? 

5) I've been very patient and understanding up to this point. XeRay, what is your deal?  

I guess I would be equally pissed off if I had a site that looked like yours. It's impossible to purchase anything on it, the images are all over the place, the color scheme looks like a blind man picked it out, your e-mail address is an aol address instead of "[email protected]", and the map to your location on the site is barely legible... Yeah- that's really professional. I even asked you to tell me more about one of your products and you just focused on berating my HID kits. Great salesmanship. Spend a little less time on here and go learn Dreamweaver.


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## BlueGerbil (Nov 18, 2006)

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.


 
I´ve got them on my trail rig, they are worth every damn penny!


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## BlueGerbil (Nov 18, 2006)

Manzerick said:


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


 
I remember PIAA making a set of fog lights, named 999 I think - but they were very expensive. Haven´t them seen around for a while.


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## XeRay (Nov 18, 2006)

mobilehid said:


> Please allow me to clear a few things up. I'm used to explaining the difference of my HID kits to people since they have a poor reputation from all the terribly constructed kits on the market.


 

What you do and sell or import is *illegal*, end of story. Your burners are not made by Philips, Osram or GE. 8,000 to 12,000 K is a JOKE.

Why don't you try www.hidplanet.com forums see how far you get there.

BTW thanks for the complements. The engineers from Cessna Aircraft told us just last week that our website was one of the best THEY had ever seen. We do not market our products to joe consumer, our customer base is a little more sophisticated than that.

The map is an airport view, not a street map.

This will be my last post on this worn out subject.


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## LuxLuthor (Nov 18, 2006)

Very good information to read from XeRay's posts. I want to get some nice fog lights for my Honda Accord, and his information was factual, specific, and rational.

In contrast the guy selling illegal kits was emotional, did not include photos of the kit he has, and resorted to attacking XeRay's website design as if that had anything to do with the discussion. 

That told me everything about avoiding mobilehid's comments and "$250 sales pitch" who only has 6 posts to date, and somehow managed to appear in this one thread all of a sudden.


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## Whitelitee (Nov 18, 2006)

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.
> 
> ...


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## AndyTiedye (Nov 18, 2006)

The way people tailgate around here, I have often wanted HID TAIL lights.


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## benighted (Nov 18, 2006)

The "illegal" kits are OK if you aren't using them for your main headlights at night. The cutoff of the stock fog light housings is very low, so low that you couldn't see the beam without getting out of the car before I upgraded to HID so the glare is the same or less than the headlights (stock HID 4200k). I still only use them during the daytime just in case.
I have been thinking about changing the 8000k to 3000k for more usability in fog but the 8000k do their job as DRL's here in the gloomy Northwest.

Also, I bought the entire kit for around $150 on ebay. I've had them for nearly a year and have had no reliability problems, they even fire up just as quickly as my stock HID's.


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## Ra (Nov 18, 2006)

Whitelitee said:


> Just looking at that picture I can tell the glare would blind me....



AND... The picture doesn't seem to be over-exposured: the streetlights look pretty much the way I remember them from my walks at night...So indeed they are very, very illegal blinding foglights. 


Maybe the streetlights on that picture have about 100 lumens output ???...

Oh.. I forgot: Blinding the way they appear on the picture, they propably will create a very blinding wall of fog in front of that car !!! SO MUCH FOR FOGLIGHTS...

Foglights should not spill even a few cp's higher than they are mounted !!


Regards,

Ra.


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## cmacclel (Nov 18, 2006)

Point is there is no LEGAL retrofit kits offered anywhere. If the car originally was equiped with halogen lamps then it completely ILLEGAL to install an HID system of any sort. 

Some people retrofit Projectors into the Halogen light assemblies and even with this proper install and correct cut off it's still illegal.

The only DOT APPROVED aftermarket fog lights that I know of is the X1010 by Osram. The last time I checked they where on sale for $280 from Osram directly but they have removed them from the their "Performance Shop" section.

SUV Lights still has them

http://www.suvlights.com/product_info.php?products_id=46


Mac


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## twentysixtwo (Nov 18, 2006)

Although Rayleighs law doesn't work with large fog droplets (e.g. mist), I assume it would work at some point with straight water vapor like steam.

I would think that any time you approach the vapor pressure of a liquid you start to precipitate liquid. It would therefore be reasonable to assume that there would be a distribution in the size of water droplets, some being on the molecular level.

If this is the case, the wouldn't rayleighs law still indicate some benefit to yellow lights (over blueish lights)?


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## rycen (Nov 19, 2006)

cmacclel said:


> Point is there is no LEGAL retrofit kits offered anywhere. If the car originally was equiped with halogen lamps then it completely ILLEGAL to install an HID system of any sort.
> 
> Mac



What about these?

http://www.stylinconcepts.com/part.aspx?partid=520751&key_word=80644300


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## XeRay (Nov 19, 2006)

rycen said:


> What about these?
> 
> http://www.stylinconcepts.com/part.aspx?partid=520751&key_word=80644300


 
Don't quote me on this, I believe that is legal since you are replacing the old halogen system with a whole new DOT approved Headlamp / housing assembly. This is not a Halogen to HID bulb replacement like the illegal "kits". This assembly also *most likely* uses high quality OEM ballast and bulb components which are DOT approved.


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## LED61 (Nov 22, 2006)

I see XeRay is getting a lot of undue heat in this thread that is completely unjustified. Guys, he is only telling it like it is!!! This is not subjective. For all the unbelievers, go here

http://faqlight.carpassion.info/

Whenever you hear about 8000K 10000K 12000K and the like, it is all hype and asian cheap stuff like XeRay says. Philips makes the 4200K bulb for all OEM applications, and makes another capsule--the ULTINON bulb--that is 6000K. That is as high as it gets from the good companies. The only other OEM manufacturers and good ones at that are GE and Osram-Sylvania. Because any high color temperature makes much less lumens, and capsules are most likely coated. They also have lousy lamp life. And they are sure illegal. Check out the Automotive lighting forum and see what Mr. 108 has to say. A while back there was a big crackdown on stores selling illegal HID kits.


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