Date:         Sat, 22 Jan 2000 13:49:04 -0500
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@IBM.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@IBM.NET>
Subject:      Re: Vanagon grilles and lights
Comments: To: Kent Christensen <lkchris@USWEST.NET>
In-Reply-To:  <3889F282.B56FBEFD@pop.albq.uswest.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 11:10 AM 1/22/00 -0700, Kent Christensen wrote:
>My experience with true foglights used in actual fog (or falling
>snow), despite my age, is quite limited since I live in New Mexico and
>we hardly ever have any.  Basically, I think fog lights are a waste of
>time since--given their stated purpose of controlling the light beam
>downward and outward so as to not cause glare back into the driver's
>eyes  from light reflected by the fog or snow--they hardly do this
>anyway and you still have to slow down and using foglights can't get
>you more than 2 or 3 mph extra speed in these conditions anyway.

Proper foglights have a pattern that is about an inch high (exaggerating)
and approaching 90 degrees wide.  They are meant to be mounted as low as
possible, ideally almost touching the road, to give grazing illumination
that is well below the driver's line of sight.  Trust me, the do the job
beautifully when your low beams are just throwing a blinding white cloud in
your face.  You get to drive at 15 mph instead of 0.  But that's all
they're really good for.  They do fill in the sides of a poor low-beam
pattern, but only in a very narrow vertical band.  If bad low-beams is the
problem, the auxiliary low-beam installation (hella?) is the ticket, with
fog lights a poor second.

david
David Beierl - Providence, RI
  http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"