James W. '01 1.8T

what's a good fog light bulb to match "whiteness" of xenons? thx

BOOSTD

I haven't bought them yet, I'm waiting for someone to post if they do match stock xenons well or not.

plug1

I plan to leave mine in the fogs when i upgrade to xenons. If anything they are waaay better than the stock color.

Gorobei

The factory fogs are, IMHO, poor candidates for upgrading to bluish bulbs. Reason being: a fog light uses yellow for a very good reason. Yellow is a "stronger" light wave than blue, and therefore penetrates fog/snow/rain etc. much better than a blue Xenon-knockoff bulb. When those fogs are switched to a blue bulb, you are going to end up with more of the light reflecting back at you in the car than light penetrating the gloom and illuminating the road like a proper foglight. This means that by making them closer to a Xenon WITHOUT making them true HID xenon, you are making them more cosmetic and less functional. So, you say, you don't drive in fog very much, and you just want them as driving lights? Well, just keep in mind that the factory fogs are aimed very low, almost like a "cornering fog light" so they aren't going to illuminate out in the distance like a true driving light would. The bottom line is that any blueness (again, true HID Xenon excluded) that you add to your lighting system is going to be less effective than a quality halogen bulb in adverse weather conditions. No offense at all to those in here who've upgraded their fogs to blueish or hyperwhite bulbs, but the physics of it all don't lie: For crappy weather, yellow is better. Xenons are the exception due to the fact that they a)are in a projector housing (for Audis, anyways) and b)Have an intensity far greater than a normal bulb. The projector housings keep the light reflecting back at you to a minimum. I don't kow why Audi won't give us projector fogs. My mom's P-car has them and even without yellow bulbs they are a lot more effective than our fogs. And, I live in Seattle part of the year, so TRUST me, I've used 'em in the appropriate weather .


B

odie

I have eurolite in my fog and Xenonshop in low, but Eurolite is too blue now.

odie

Oops, forget to say that I'll vote for Jahn (as I'm using in high beam now)

plug1

I seem to think the bulbs i am currently using to replace the factory bulbs, are a LOT better in any weather condition. Both the fogs and the lows. You have seen them at least once or twice at night, don't you agree with me?

Gorobei

Hah, this is really funny since we're on MSN right now, but for the sake of keeping continuity here...

In clear weather, which is the only times I've seen your bulbs (if you were female that could sound pretty bad ) those Eurolites are A LOT brighter than my factory bulbs. And, if you've driven in snow with them and you feel/felt like they provided a better lighting solution than the factory bulbs, well, I can't argue with that. If I had to guess (and that's all I can do at this point) I would say it was because they are maybe a higher wattage (are they?) than the factory fogs. First of all, let's get the headlights in general out of the discussion of a moment. Mostly because they are projector and not reflector, so you will get less light back in your face anyways. Strictly speaking of fogs here, it's a possibility that the Eurolite fogs "seemed" better in the snow because they seemed brighter. I would hesitantly attribute this brightness to the fact that more of the light is coming back at you and is not penetrating the snow/fog/etc. When I had my Tahoe, I had it set up for serious back country forays, and part of that setup was *a lot* of lights. Two PIAA pencil beams, two PIAA cornering lights, and the factory lows/highs. On the brush guard I had a set of PIAA projector fogs. When weather got really nasty, it would seem much brighter to have all of the off-road lights on, and for the first 10 feet in front of the car, it was; but after that 10 feet all I got was a wall of white light. After a while, I replaced the low beams in my factory lamps with dichroic yellow bulbs. These combined with the yellow PIAA projector fogs produced nowhere near the light quantity made by the pencils and cornering lights, but the *distance* that was illuminated was at least 4 or 5 times greater than the other lights. With a yellow tinted light, you get a greater distance illuminated at a lower "brightness" whereas with a blue tinted light, you get more brightness in the immediate area with less distance. This is due to the different penetrating characteritics of the light waves, once again. I'm not telling you what you saw, by any means. This is simply a hypothesis based on my limited understanding of light physics. But this is how I would possibly account for the perceived effectiveness of blue-tinged bulbs in adverse weather. Like I said, in clear weather, the Eurolites beat factory hands down. I'd bet dollars to pesos that a true fog bulb in the factory fog housings would produce more useful light than the Eurolites. Hmmm... maybe time for a test on another drive to Breck?

Still blabbering,

B