Fog light bulb recommendations?

[kschmohl]

Hello All,

Well, I have my floor mats and rear cargo mat ordered and shipped, my mudflaps are here and currently being spray painted to match the body color and I have XM waiting to be purchased... NOW, on to some other things...

Fog lights... I have read they stink and are useless for the most part and if this is true at least I would like to make them look better... I was curious if anyone has replaced the bulbs in the fog lights and with what? How are was it to do?

I am thinking PIAA bulbs (crystal yellow ones, for the fog) or maybe some Polrags or Sylvania's...

SO, anyone tell me the bulb type and the difficulty of swapping out?

Thanks,
Kevin

PS> Anyone have a CD-ROM of the prius on how to fix, like a shop manual... I have collected some from my previous vehicles (WRX, Lincoln LS, friends EVO, etc... was wondering if Prius had one.)

[V8Cobrakid]

techinfo.toyota.com you subscribe for 24 hours.. has basicaly everything possible.. or.. i hear. 10 dollars for all the pages you can download. I"ll be buying a day membership sometime soon.

[Whitey]

I was thinking of switching to the yellow bulbs, but wasn't sure if the wattage would be high enough. I'm concerned about bumping up the watts without knowing anything about the wiring, relay, and fuse this is connected to. Also, don't know if the fog light housing can withstand the extra heat. So I am leaving this alone, because of these unknowns and that it will draw extra current from my battery.

[V8Cobrakid]

why should you have to change the wiring when just switching to another 12v light bulb? I'm sure the housing can support any bulb you put in there. Unless you are installing an HID kit.. then yes.. of course you have to change wiring. Othewise that guage wire can hold a lot more than it's currently supplying. I'm sure the fuse should be able to supply any other bulb too.

[kschmohl]

I agree... changing the bulb is not a big deal at all... I mean, people change out their bulbs all the time, I have on my last four cars and NEVER had an issue with the housing or wiring.

So, anyone tell me what kind of bulb is in the fog light housing, how hard it is to get to? Has ANYONE done this?

Kevin

[Areometer]

Changing bulb to the SAME wattage is indeed no big deal, at worst you just burn out the bulb prematurely (that's why PIAA USA warrants their bulbs for only 30 days now). Changing bulb to an over-wattage one like many JDM PIAA models can be a big deal, at worst it can melt the wire harness and may be your whole car (yeah, it happens).

If I am not mistaken, our '04 - 05 Prius factory fogs use 9006 bulbs. If your goal is to achieve a different color tone, just swap the bulb w/ a yellower, whiter or bluer 9006 of the SAME wattage (ie: 55W).

If you also want to increase its output, then you can look into the following ways:

1) Use an over-wattage 9006 bulb (eg: 85W instead of 55W) but upgrade your headlight wire harness as well. Mind you, as the bulb withdraws more power, the performance of our Prius declines as a result. How obvious this is? Probably not but theoretically, performance IS impaired for sure.

2) Use HID conversion kit - this can only be done if space permits. I am seriously thinking of going this route. But this is NOT as simple as swapping a bulb. You need to change the wire harness, install 2 HID ballasts & of course swap the bulb to HID capsules. Conversion kits like this one typically costs around $299 + $75 labor. HID outputs 2 - 3x higher than stock halogen, lasts a few times longer & consumes only 35W instead of 55W. As a result, performance of the Prius should be enhanced.

3) Use HIR bulbs. HIR stands for Halogen Infrared Reflective and it is relatively new. Some engineers at GE found out that if you trap & reflect the iR spectrum of the beam back into the filament, you can make it get hotter & glow brighter. Beauty is that all you need to do is to swap your factory 55W halogen bulb to the 55W HIR bulb, that's it. Output is 2x as much as halogen which means it is approaching the HID territory and without all the trouble & cost, too. But then it operates at 55W instead of HID's 35W and choices are very limited. Luckily, 9006 HIR bulbs are available, and in a few color tones, too.

4) Use HID projector retrofit - I doubt that it will work for long esp. when we have no room for an additional housing to protect the projectors. So, I just include this for the sake of completeness.

If I were you, I will hold off a bit in acquiring any of the above as I would like to arrange something w/ Danny for a group-buy.

When choosing a color tone, people usually look at 2 things:

i) To match the same color tone of their headlight.
ii) To achieve better visibility or better reactive time by getting yellow, amber or even blue bulbs.

So if you have halogen headlights that outputs at 3000 - 3500K, get the same temperature of bulbs for the fogs. If you have HID headlights which outputs at 4100K, do the same thing for the fogs. This way, all lights output uniformly in the same color spectrum which is better-looking.

Many get yellow fogs as they think that yellow penetrate fog, smog, rain & snow the best; which is NOT the case. For all you SCUBA-divers out there, what color do we see most deep down there? Blue, right? Blue spectrum penetrates water the furthest. Fog, rain & snow are water-based. Red & yellow get absorbed prematurely fast by moisture/water. So why do people use yellow fogs for centuries? Firstly, yellow bulb was easier to fabricate in the past. Secondly, yellow bulb does have its use in the driving application. The human eyes react to the yellow spectrum the fastest. So under dry condition, your Prius w/ yellow fog on is being spotted by others the fastest - which translates into safety. Also under dry condition, all the objects being illuminated by the yellow beam catch your attention faster - which also translates into safety. But your eyes get tired easier as a result. As for contast enhancement (which also enhances safety), any monochromic bulb will do, translation: yellow, green, blue, pink, amber bulbs all enhance contrast for you as they contain mostly one portion of spectrum, in opposing to white's multi-color spectrum (ie: more is NOT better when it comes to contrast).

Hope I haven't bored you folks. There are a lot that we can do to supe-up our Prius, when the chance comes, we will discuss those one by one.

Edward

[Areometer]

Another important thing that I left out was: Under the same wattage, the higher the kelvin, the bluer the color, and the lower the output.

So people buy those blue bulbs for looks while compromising on its output. If you want maximum output, buy the whiter bulbs like in the 3000K range. This applies to halogen, HIR & HID.

[kschmohl]

Hey Edward....

You def. gave a lot of good information, thanks!

I will look into the HIR bulbs, since this is something new I have not heard about.... only thing is, if they are hotter than stock will there be issues with the housing getting too hot and possibly melting?

I am DEFINITELY interested in the HID's... where can you get these at??? Also would need to find a "good" installation shop... no freaking monkeys like at Circuit City... - When are you thinking about getting something together on this also???

Last thing... swapping out the fog bulbs, easy to get to and do? My Prius willl not be here until Jan/Feb so I am wondering...

Thanks,
Kevin

[nhluhr]

I don't know how welcome I will be here since I own a car that is pretty much the polar opposite of a Prius in terms of eco-friendliness, but I do a LOT of night driving and I have done a TON of lighting modifications (both successful and unsuccessful) as well as the requisite research. I feel I can offer some insight on lighting.

First of all, using a colored bulb has, in the past, been popular. Lots of people mistakenly fall into the pitfall that "more blue" is necessarily better. This is simply not the case. The reason for this can be found in the human retina. Blue and white light contains a lot of energy and it exposes the rods of your retinas (the brightness sensors) while not containing an aweful lot of other color information to expose the cones on your retinas (the color sensors). Also, since the blue (or purple in the case of Sylvania Silverstars) light has such a high frequency, it tends to scatter very readily, even in the eye. The net result is your iris does not contract as much as it should for the amount of light energy that is entering it and when you combine it with the blue light's inherent scatter, you end up with the phenomenon known as "glare" where you get a slight haze-effect to your vision. A similar (but more extreme) effect can be seen when looking at a BlackLight bulb.

What you end up with when you go to a bulb with a hue more towards the blue end of the spectrum is more night-eye fatigue and a more stressful driving situation (not to mention the fact that your blue lights tend to glare at other drivers more).

The only time a Blue bulb offers better vision is when it is SIGNIFICANTLY brighter (more actual lumens) than the bulb you are replacing and at this point you are severely over-driving the filament and probably overdrawing your wiring harness and relays. You have to remember that blue halogen bulbs are made by coating the glass with a colored filter (it's like a pair of sunglasses) so blue bulbs are ALWAYS less bright than a bulb with the identical filament but clear glass. (Case in point, the Osram Silverstar with clear glass offers superior lighting to the Silvania Silverstar which has a light purple tint on the glass).

The other thing to consider when night driving is color contrast. Think about this: Would you rather have vision that is black and white or would you rather have vision that is full color? When you use a bulb with tinted glass, you are skewing the overall balance to a grayscale-like level (except replace white with the color you're using). Using a bulb that is just plain clear glass ensures that the widest spectrum of its light output reaches the road (and side of road) to light it up in full living color.

I have mentioned blue bulbs and color contrast and now I want to address the "Yellow bulbs for Foglights" mentality. The only time yellow bulbs are claimed to be better is in the snow and in fog where they tend to increase the apparent contrast and also reflect less of the bright white off falling snow and hanging fog. They don't really light up the road better and in the end you aren't getting much more lighting. Are they worth it? Not in my opinion - I'd still rather have a white bulb.

Besides, you really shouldn't be running around with your foglights on anyway for a really good reason. With your foglights on, the light that is up close, right in front of your car is very bright which means the light that your headlights are throwing down the road is now not as relatively bright. What does this do? It makes your iris contract (to compensate for the bright up-close light) and you end up NOT seeing as well at distance. Remember, fog lights are for lighting up the road directly close in front of you Personally, I have never been very fond of foglights - I think they are nearly useless. I much prefer a set of driving lights that come on with my highbeams to augment down-the-road visibility. IMHO, foglights are for closet-ricers who think it looks cool to have another pair of lights on below their headlights. In the fog, foglights don't help you go faster since they project light only very close in front of you so where is the purpose? Perhaps the only application where I would find foglights useful is at night with wet black-asphault roads when regular headlights don't sufficiently illuminate the markers (because all the light is bouncing off the reflective wet surface down the road instead of back to your eyes). And it should be noted that a bright pair of driving lights will also alleviate this wet-road blindness except that you can't use driving lights with oncoming traffic so really, foglights are limited to traffic situations with wet dark-pavement roads at night.

That said, the best possible lighting you can get is not HID. It is very-high wattage incandescent filaments with clear glass. The reason HID is used so much (and typically better than incandescent setups) is because it just puts out so many lumens that it overrides the color balance effects. If you could use 100+W incandescent bulbs, you'd be way happier than any HID system. Also, the larger the reflector in your setup is, the more light you'll throw down-range where you need it instead of allowing it to go stray where you don't need it. This is why motorsport (rally) lights are always 7-9" free-form reflectors instead of small parabolic reflectors - less waste.

With all the above mentioned concepts in mind, what should the Prius owner do with his/her lighting? Leave your HID lowbeams - they are definitely sufficient. Use HIR bulbs wherever possible. A 9005 bulb can be easily retrofitted with a 9011HIR and a 9006 bulb can be easily retrofitted with a 9012HIR (note, both these applications require a small amount of dremel work on the bulb base tab ears).

If anybody wants to get further information on automotive lighting from the pre-eminant industry expert on automotive lighting, his wonderful technical pages can be found on www.danielsternlighting.com --they are written with a nice layman-friendly prose and offer the kind of technical detail that is very useful in filtering out the rice/flitz/geegaw from the actually-useful lighting products.

[nhluhr]

Also, I found this post on the PT Cruiser forums. It is a post by Daniel Stern himself regarding the use of HIR Bulbs. Notice where he mentions that HIR bulbs in foglights are a bad idea. He is referring to the fact that they will throw out a ridiculous amount of glare at other drivers thanks to a foglight's inherently bad focus. This presents something of an ethical conundrum. Being Prius drivers, I would assume you all are somewhat concerned with the environment which means you are at least somewhat worried about the rest of the people in it. . . so although HIR bulbs in your foglights will definitely result in an increase in light output (which is beneficial to you), you will also definitely be annoying other drivers to a greater degree with the excess glare. Now if you guys were driving annoying turbo civics with huge loud mufflers and tires that stick out past the fenders to ensure tossing pebbles in the air behind you, annoying other drivers would seem to be your game, but you are not. You are driving a responsible, worldly car. originially posted by Daniel Stern</span>[/align:4e622bcd91]

*lurk mode OFF*

Hi, Sean. Thanks for the kind words.

Unless I\'ve paid to advertise there, I tend to keep clammed-up when "Which light bulb to buy?" topics come up on web forums I frequent. Doing otherwise is usually against the rules, but if not, it\'s not fair to those who *have* paid to advertise. But, when the conversation veers offtrack from a technical perspective, I do tend to speak up. So:

Your comments are right on target if they\'re directed at all these "Silverstars are an improvement" type comments. Of course they are not, for exactly the reason you say. But I can\'t tell if that\'s what you\'re responding to, or if you\'re raising an eyebrow at the 9011/9012 bulbs.

The engineering does indeed support the increased output of 9011 relative to 9012; it\'s for real. Remember, the watt is a measure of electrical power going in the back of the bulb, not a measure of light coming out the front. The infrared-reflective coating does work as the article PTGrr linked to states it does to increase the efficacy (lumens per watt) of the bulb fairly radically. General Electric devised this technology a number of years ago, but they\'ve put more effort into marketing it in the architectural and stationary lighting field than in the automotive industry -- they had some teething problems with their version of 9011-9012, and pretty much dropped the project. Toshiba picked it up and put together a different design, and it works well. Also, there is no blue tint to 9011/9012.

Remember, even if we disregard the HIR 9011/9012 bulbs, there are a bunch of different 12v, 55w headlight bulbs, all with different levels of output ranging from 980 lumens to 1820 lumens -- that\'s almost a 100% spread in output from bulbs that are conceptually identical (coiled tungsten 12v 55w filament in a quartz or hardglass envelope for use in auto headlamps)! The differences arise from the design details of each specific bulb type. There is no single specific amount of light you get from a 55w bulb. You can verify this for yourself by taking a look at ECE Regulation 37, available from The UNECE website . ECE Regulations don\'t refer to the 9000-series numbers; the bulbs in question are as follows:

9005 = HB3,
9006 = HB4,
9011 = HIR1,
9012 = HIR2.

Moving along: Joem has a good, cautious attitude towards the use of these bulbs in low beam. They work well and don\'t cause glare problems in carefully-aimed headlamps that have a high-gradient (sharp) cutoff, e.g. most European E-code headlamps and some US-spec ones. The US-spec PT\'s headlamp beam is sufficiently well focused that the use of these bulbs in the properly-aimed low beams probably wouldn\'t cause glare problems, though this would bear some experimentation.

They would be most inappropriate for use in the fog lamps -- they\'d cause tremendous glare due to the lamps\' relatively poor optics and small size (= high unit luminance = glare regardless of aim).

Of course, there is no problem using these bulbs in the high beams, since there is no such thing as excessive high beam glare -- if anyone is in front of you to object to your high beams, you should be using your low beams!

Anyhow, that is all.

*lurk mode ON*

DS