WaarrEagle

iTrader: (1)

My dad ordered fog lights for his 97 Maxima and they came today. He was looking at them and thought they would be yellow. He has a Lexus ES300 a few years ago and his fog lights on that car were yellow. He really liked them so he wanted some for the Maxima. What is the difference between them? Does one color work better than the other?

Matrix

YELLOW is supposed to be the best at cutting through fog. Hence you see a lot of yellow on older cars with Fog lights and SUVs and trucks etc... Nowadays you see more and more "aesthetic" fog lights, which are there to make the car look nice. They are more to improve lower visibility than anything else. But yes, if you can upgrade your fog lights to a different type, it would help you out.

I'm not sure about the exaxt sizes and wattages, but if you search the archives, it's there, for sure.

clee130

The fog lights on the Maxima are sorta a fog light/driving light combo. Yeah, they light up the road a little more, but don't cut through the rain/snow/fog.

Don't know the physics of it all (I'm sure Albertt or Shing will explain it later) but yellow light cuts through rain/snow/fog better than white light.

You could always just change the bulbs in the fogs to some Hella Yellowstars or some other yellow bulbed H3 (is it?).

nismomaxse97

iTrader: (4)

Yellow disperses less when passing through water molecules. Anything toward white and blue disperses badly.

WaarrEagle

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the replies. I haven't even installed them yet so I will just see how these work.

Albertt

Because yellow light has a lower frequency, it's wavelength is longer and is not as easily dispersed compared to blue light. If you remember from HS physics, ROYGBIV...the colors that form the visible light spectrum, you'll notice that red is the color with the longest wavelength, violet the shortest.

Enduro

Thougth I read somewhere that even though yellow light has a longer wavelength it couldn't possibly cut through water since even fog molecules are too big which would cause diffraction of the light. An example of this would be color of the blue sky caused by the ability of tiny molecules in the upper atmosphere to change the angle of incoming light. And since these molecules are much smaller than what's found in water/fog it wouldn't be possible to have yellow light CUT through it. I think the original study of longer light wavelength's ability to cut through was with much much smaller particles compared to fog. The only reason i could think of that yellow is psychologically better than blue/white is the intensity and how our eyes are used to interpret yellow light better at Night time...example reflect back to the time before the light bulb.

Albertt

But, I think that you are discussion refraction of light. When it comes to driving in fog, a driver's problem is reflection. Yellow light tends not to be reflected as easily. That is why the reflective material that companies like 3M have produced for use in road marking paint and signs reacts (by reflecting light back at the driver) better when dealing with white/blue light.

Thinkof it this way, infrared radiation, which sits lower on the spectrum than RED light, is used to see through fog...in night vision goggles.

Enduro

...have a very good point in that a driver's problem is reflection and white/blue light reflects much better than yellow light off signs, probably due to certain chemical mixture in the paint that's geared for the formal light...still not too sure about reflection off water droplets.

I'm not too sure if infrared light/radiation is better at all in cutting through fogs. Reason being we cannot see infrared light and the instruments that allow us to see the projected green imagery do so from magnifying the Heat that's generated from this infrared light.

I still Do think that yellow light is probably a better choice Only in poor weather. One of the reasons being its output intensity versus white light....for example have you ever observe how everything is pretty much washed out when shining too bright of a light onto an object?

IMO probably the best setup for fog light would be something that'd have sharp cut off angle from above so you wont see things that you don't want, fog, and be not too overly bright to defeat the purpose.

dsmercado

Does anyone know of any H3 fog light bulbs you can put in the OEM fog lights that will shine through with a pure yellow?

I have the PIAA Ion Crystal bulbs...they're supposed to shine yellow but since the way the lens is shaped it's more of a yellow/rainbow effect that comes through.

Thanks!

clee130

Could try some Hella Yellowstars.

Can get them here: http://www.rallylights.com/

98BlaximaSE

I found out why Lexus's have that really yellow light. Inside the lenses of the Lexus fog lamps, there is a yellow piece of glass. Some people said that they've been able to replicate this same effect with yellow contact paper. Anyone try this with good resualts?

dsmercado

Will the yellow hella stars emit a pure yellow color? Does anyone have them on their car now?

I'm just afraid it will be the same as the PIAA's where the lens "distorts" the color.

98BlaximaSE

Do a search. We had this discussion litterally last week. I forgot who, but someone was kind enough to post pics of how the lights look, and the kind of light they emit. I think the topic was "problem changing fog light color on a 95" or something like that.

dsmercado

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried searching for that, but I didn't find anything. Do you know in which forum it was in or who started the thread?

Thanks!

Albertt

The fact that we see colors is due to reflection. Since blueish light is more readily relfected, it'll show up as the blue haze when projected into fog. Yellow light will tend to penetrate the fog, therefore allowing the driver to see clearer by reflecting of the next object in line...the road.

Correct, infrared light does show the differentials of heat pattern. Seeing the gradients is what allows the user to "see" an image through fog. This is because the infrared radiation is able to penetrate fog and reflect off of the targets with varying intensity, due to the different temperature gradients. Looking at the spectrum, you can see that infrared is lower than visible red on the scale. The same thing can be said for ultraviolet...which is slightly ABOVE visible violet on the scale.

I agree that white light is better in fair weather...if it sounded as if I disagreed...I apologize. And for your final point, you are correct also...any good foglamp system will have a cutoff. Foglamps are not meant to be driving lamps...and the units on 4th and 5th Gen Maximas are foglamps.

Enduro

Oh no need to apologize...you actually gave out some pointers that I never thought of. I like these kind of friendly argument/info exchange to find out whether what i'm thinking is right or totally off the wall and seeing things at different angle.