Brightest NON HID Fog lights

Im reading how to install hids into my fogs and being a noob it sounds to difficult for me, i did my headlights(hids) 8k, so im wondering what the closets halogen bulb would be? Any ideas?

 

[Anime]

You're better off leaving the fog lights as real halogen bulbs with the stock ~4300K light "temperature" so you can use them in rain and foul weather when those "8000K HIDs" scatter light everywhere and become useless.

Otherwise you could try Sylvania Silverstars in the fogs, or any of the cheap bulbs on ebay that claim to match your HIDs.

But all coated bulbs will put out less light than the regular bulbs, just like the cheap HIDs.

 

[Oxygen]

i really like the nokya hyper yellows for the fog lights, i have a pair of hardly used H1's hyper yellows that i just took out of my 00 XLS today ..

i also have a pair of PIAA H1 xtreme force super white bulbs, they are really nice too if you want that more white look.. let me know if your interested

 

[kyleb617]

Has anyone used Luminitcs? Im looking into those to match HIDs even though they dont have much output, just want them to match light color such as 6k, i will be switching my 8ks for 6ks soon

 

[Oxygen]

how about just buy my PIAA H1's.. =)

you want a pic of them on my truck?

 

[kyleb617]

yeah let me see

 

[Oxygen]

in the pic im running 6k HIDs.. the PIAA bulbs are VERY white, pics don't do justice.. they are really really nice...

the bulbs are in mint condition, never touched, dropped etc.. only a few hours on them... i'll take a pic of the box and the bulbs themselves later for ya ..

they are the PIAA xtreme xforce series, rated at 4700k.. check em out on ebay if ya want too ..

 

[kyleb617]

Idk if its the pics or not but the look stockish to me as in that stock halogen colorp

 

[BrianDye]

Fitting an HID into the foglight isnt all that hard, it just takes patience. With having 8000k headlights, your fogs are gonna need some serious output because your gonna be blind in the rain.

I would go for a really low temerature HID. (4300k or so) in the fogs. Right now im running 6000k in my projectors, and a 10,000k (Which I really think is mislabeled and is an 8000k) in my fogs. The fogs are great by themselves on a clear night, but when theres any rain, or bad weather, theyre useless. I just got bored and found this old kit in my shed so I fitted them in the fog housings.

Now my 6000k HIDs in the lowbeams, I can see those on during the DAY. Im now getting ready to order a real kit (Not the cheap eBay chit I have in my lowbeams), and im gonna go with a 5000k kit. Driving at night with the 6000k is insane, so I cant wait to get the 5000k.

 

[kyleb617]

Whats brighter ? 5k or 6k ? i know obivously 5k but im reading 6k is the way to go for some reason, whats the real difference between output?

 

[Joe Dirt]

Copied from an interesting read at Flashtech USA:

http://www.flashtechusa.com/

Many people believe that the higher the color temperature the brighter the lamp. This is totally wrong. The color temperature is purely a scale to measure the color of the light output. It is a reference purely for color and could equally be called White, Green or Blue. The reality is the higher up the scale, the less bright they become. 4300K lamps are approx 10% brighter (measured in Lumens, not degrees K) than the 6000K. With this being said the reason many people choose to move up to a higher Kelvin rating is because even the highest temperature ratings are still much brighter then a factory halogen setup.

What is Kelvin Temperature and what determines the brightness of a HID bulb?

Degrees Kelvin = ONLY COLOR
Lumen= BRIGHT

Definitions Candela (cd)
The international unit (SI) of luminous intensity. The term has been in use since the early days of lighting when a standard candle of a fixed size and composition was used as a basis for evaluating the intensity of other light sources. This unit is used in measuring headlight output; basically the higher the number is, the brighter the light is.

Lumen (lm)
The international unit (SI) of luminous flux (quality of lights). For example, a dinner candle produces about 12 lumens and a standard 60-watt incandescent bulb produces 830 lumens. The higher the number is, the brighter the light is

Kelvin (K) A basic unit of thermodynamic temperature (color temperature) used to measure the whiteness of the light output. The higher the number is, the whiter the light is. When over 5000K the light begins to turn to blue as daylight.

Please note:
Even though I often compare the difference between Halogen light to HID light an excerpt from the Philips website notes "It should be noted that halogen technology is not comparable to the Xenon discharge technology, fitted as original equipment to more and more of the world's finest cars." – Philips. The comparison is solely used as a base guideline as the property of each is completely different

An Explanation of the differences between the most common HID color temperatures.
Most customers have a common misconception that the higher the K (Kelvin temperature) the brighter it gets, but in fact, it is the opposite. The K rating is inversely proportional to the light output, therefore the lower the K the brighter the light output. Also Xenon runs cooler and than your traditional halogen, therefore it will not melt your housing as this is another misconception with Kelvin rating.

Color Temperature: 3000K (fog light use)
3000K has an approximately 3200lm output, which is more than 3x the light output of the traditional halogen light. 3000K emits GOLDEN YELLOW color and offers superior penetration power during adverse weather epically in dense fog. The applications of the 3000K kit aim more towards secondary lighting apparatus such as high beam and fog lights. This is the color temperature that will catch all the attention on the road.

Color Temperature: 4300K
4300K has an approximately 3200lm output, which is more than 3x the light output of the traditional halogen light and is the color temperature with the most output. The light appears fairly white, and has light yellowish hue when reflected off the road identical to the OEM HID equipped vehicles. This color is for the customer who is looking for pure performance white improving the looks of their headlight. It is ideal for customers who does a lot of back road or canyon driving and need the optimal visibility. This is the color temperature that will put the absolute most light on the road

Color Temperature: 6000K
6000K has an approximately 2800lm output, which is 3x the light output of the traditional halogen light and slightly less light output compared to the 4300K. Although it has a bit lesser light output, it emits pure whiter light with very slight and barely noticeable tint of blue and purple.

Color Temperature: 8000K
8000K has an approximately 2550lm output, which is about 3x the light output of the traditional halogen light and slightly less light output compared to the 6000K. While it has a bit lesser light output, it emits bluer light than the 6000K.

Color Temperature: 10000K
10000K has an approximately 2200lm output, which is more than 2x the light output of the traditional halogen light. 10000K produces a deep blue light output approaching violet and the blue is noticeably deeper than the 8000K.

Color Temperature: 12000K
12000K has an approximately 2100lm output, which is more than 2x the light output of the traditional halogen light. This color temperature puts out a deep bluish violet light and is deeper colored than the 10000K. It is for customer who is looking for the most extreme and most exotic looking light output.

Conclusion:
The majority of customers who are looking to upgrade their lighting often choose to do so based upon two common distinctions. Will this make my headlight brighter and what color will they now be? Especially in reference to HID lighting the confusion has become overwhelming. The above guide will serve to help each and everyone make an informed decision based upon their individual needs. I often get asked why would someone opt to purchase a set in the 10000-12000k range? As I have installed many hundreds of HID kits I wanted to make it known that even though less light is put on the road as the spectrum increases, to the average person’s eye the improvement of even a 12000k HID is far and beyond what their factory halogen bulbs were able to produce. With this being said I often recommend headlights kit between 4300 and 8000k as this will ensure the most amount of light will make it on the road.

I know absolutely nothing about HID's, but I was curious about the Kelvin ratings vs. Lumens since it never seemed that the blue/purple lights were as bright...

 

[FIND]

Copied from an interesting read at Flashtech USA:

http://www.flashtechusa.com/

I know absolutely nothing about HID's, but I was curious about the Kelvin ratings vs. Lumens since it never seemed that the blue/purple lights were as bright...

Their definition of Kelvin is not accurate as it relates to color temperature.

Kelvin, when measuring color, is a measure of black body radiation. Basically, you heat a black body radiator, and the color of light it emits at a specific temperature is the color temperature. They are in no way a measure of "whiteness of the light output". Some color temperatures appear white because of the fullness of the color spectrum they are emitting, but yeah....

Now HIDs don't produce full spectrum light, they produce light only at certain points in the spectrum due to the properties of the arc. The combination of these limited spectrums creates an illusion of full spectrum light. Basically anything with a cooler temperature is creating more light in the red end of the spectrum, while anything with a hot temperature is creating more light in the blue end of the spectrum.

Anyways, just a digression... not really that important, just looking for a little more accuracy.

As for other inaccurate parts, a candela is a unit for measuring light emitted in a particular direction. You measure Candelas using vectors. Yes, the higher the number, the brighter the light, but it is an absolutely useless number for light emitted from a headlight for the most part, just taken by itself. You could make a light that emits a bazillion candela, but if it only emits it in one direction, that is useless in a headlight. Headlights are designed to create a spread of light in different direction, so you have basically infinitely many measurements of candela. You can measure chunks and average to bring it down to reasonable numbers of measurements, but yeah.... still, candela.... not that useful a unit unless you are trying to control the amount of light projected in specific directions or measuring something that makes even amounts of light in a specific direction, like an LED or laser.

Lumens are a measurement of luminous flux, which means the power of light as perceived by the human eye. Lumens are basically measurements of omnidirectional light output.

Still, both of those measurements are semi useless, since you a dealing with headlights, which use complex reflectors and lenses to control lux, and the light output of a headlight is determined by the placement of the light emitter inside the headlight as well as the design of the headlight. This is why you can never put an aftermarket HID into a halogen designed housing and get a GOOD light pattern. Best you can hope for is a pattern that doesn't blind EVERYONE on the road and puts most of the light where you need it to be. Granted, a normal HID is producing more than 3 times the light output, so chances are, you are gonna be lucky and it is gonna be putting quite a bit of light in the places you need it to be.

The conclusion is also semi-inaccurate, as the average 8000k bulb in the average headlight housing is producing less light in usable chunks of the spectrum in the areas we need it (because of the low CRI of HIDs and the reduced lumen output that, while still greater than the halogen counterpart, is not being properly directed by the housing), it is just an optical trick where our brain fools us into thinking there is more light.... but I am tired of this digression anyways, and I don't want to invite arguments by HID fan boys telling me their 10,000k HID bulbs are night and day compared to their old halogens. Plus, in a properly designed emitter, 8000k and 10,000k even are making more usable light than a factory halogen in a factory housing, though the CRI is worthless above 8000k. I personally would never us an HID bulb that produces greater than 5000k light output.

/long post

 

[Joe Dirt]

^ that all is why I use halogen bulbs ^

 

[BrianDye]

Whats brighter ? 5k or 6k ? i know obivously 5k but im reading 6k is the way to go for some reason, whats the real difference between output?

5000k is your best bet. Its a real crisp bright white, and cuts through the darkness like you've never experienced before

Summing up the above posts, the higher the "K" the less bright.

 

[kyleb617]

Awesome thanks, anyway to judge a good hid kit from a bad one? I got mine on ebay sofar no problems , i did pay about 60$ , would you recommend just buying bulbs or a whole new kit from ddm? Also i have a bramd new pair of h1 bulbs and h3 bulbs and ballast if anyones intested, havent been used, ill sell all of it for 40$ if anyones interested

 

[BrianDye]

Stay away from eBay, and Xentec. I personally have been recommended the retro-solutions kit, it's about 150$ but I hear nothing but amazing customer satisfaction. I was considering a kit from DDM Tuning, but the retro kits have better ratings.

You get what you pay for when it comes to HIDs.

 

[LessThan8]

Xtreme Power

In response to the original Question, without going into higher wattage or different technologies (HIR, HID etc.) the brightest in Coil Luminance and position, would be the Phillips Xtreme power. On Candlepowerforums.com they are the most referred to bulb when talking about the best halogen. And if you want contrast from your top HID's, get some yellow vinyl cling and apply that to the glass of your fogs. It makes it a good fog light and looks cool as well.

http://store.candlepower.com/bfcopotphxtp1.html

DO NOT buy Silverstars, they burn out early, are expensive, and produce less light.

 

[BrianDye]

Silverstars are the most referred to bulb on this site. I bought a set of those Xtreme Visions for my Grand Am and they were terrible, well not terrible but not at all worth the money, and nothing like what was shown on the box.

 

[celly]

In response to the original Question, without going into higher wattage or different technologies (HIR, HID etc.) the brightest in Coil Luminance and position, would be the Phillips Xtreme power. On Candlepowerforums.com they are the most referred to bulb when talking about the best halogen. And if you want contrast from your top HID's, get some yellow vinyl cling and apply that to the glass of your fogs. It makes it a good fog light and looks cool as well.

http://store.candlepower.com/bfcopotphxtp1.html

DO NOT buy Silverstars, they burn out early, are expensive, and produce less light.

I've got a set in the garage. Haven't installed them yet. I heard the same great things about them. Waiting for my Luminics yellows to burn out first (going on 4 years).

 

[Joe Dirt]

I'm considering some Luminic H3's for yellow fog/driving lights later next week...