My car has the option of installing “Fog Lamps” in the bumper. It’s a passenger car, low to the ground anyways. Will fog lamps help my car out any? Should I wire them into the headlights or on their own switch? And is Amber or Clear better to use, if foglamps work at all?
If you use them, install them such that they can be used independently of the headlights. The idea behind them is that their muted illumination, when compared to your headlights, reduces the glare of light reflected off the fog and thus allows better appreciation of the road ahead in foggy conditions.
If you rarely encounter fog, I wouldn’t bother with them. My car has them, but I’ve never used them.
Of course, some folks just like to have lots of lights on their cars.
Whenever I’ve installed fog lamps, I take a tap from the parking light circuit and feed that through a switch at the dashboard and use that low draw feeder to control a small relay to actually shunt power to the lamps.
That way, when the main headlight/parking light switch is off, so are the fog lights. Additionally, that arrangement puts no large additional load on the main light switch contacts.
The last set of Bosch fogs I put on came with the harness, relay, and everything in one box.
As for color, it’s probably a personal preference, but I like amber.
In some jurisdictions it violates the safety code to have auxiliary lights that can be on if your headlights are not also on. I couldn’t tell you exactly which ones or whether it’s enforced.
I think the spread and aiming of fog lights is also part of how they work; they have a wide spread and should be aimed towards the pavement to get under the fog and allow you to see the road surface. I have never seen fog lights that, as Ringo suggests, have muted illumination.
Once I installed aftermarket amber fog lights, and for the twice a year that I drove in fog at night they helped slightly but mostly just looked cool. I wouldn’t bother using them again. You seem to be looking at integrated lights designed specifically for your car, which might work better.
I would, however, consider driving lights, which have a narrow spread up high to augment your high beams in desolate areas without lighting. But most people that have these gratuitously use them all the time to the annoyance of oncoming traffic. Sorry, a bit of a tangent to your question.
Another tangent–once I rented a car in Italy and encountered fierce fog, so I turned on the switch for fog lights and couldn’t see any difference. It turned out that in Europe, the concept of fog light means a brighter tail light on the left so trailing traffic can see you better. Sort of highlights the cultural differences between the “me” attitude in the US vs. elsewhere.
You might want to check out Daniel Stern’s page. He seems to really, really know his stuff. He is also selling automotive lighting, but nonetheless, his technical writings seem great.
Fog lights in Europe can most certainly be front and rear. Rear fogs are virtually standard equipment, but they still consider front fogs to be fog lights (what else would they call them?) It would seem you rented a car not equipped with front fog lights. And I’ll bet that the switch you activated had the fog light symbol pointing the wrong way. Convention dictates that the beam to the right is rearward, beam to the left is front. Here’s a European headlamp switch from a VW that very nicely depicts both fog light indicators.
One of my cars has a rear fog light. I use it in poor visibility, high-speed conditions. Like thunderstorms at dusk on the interstate, when I’m kicking up spray that makes my normal taillights even harder to see than usual. It’s as bright as a brake light, but always illuminated and only on the driver’s side, so that it’s easy to distinguish from actual brake lights.
It seems to confuse the hell out of most other drivers, and I’ve had many occasions where people who have been following me have informed me that I have a tail/brake light out. Gee, thanks. :rolleyes:
Just don’t drive around with them on costantly. And please aim them down. I have been blinded by more than one idiot who doesn’t seem to realize that fog lights are not just a second set of headlights.