Wax will help some, especially if there's enough watery crap getting kicked up or slush hitting the lights and then melting. More of the dirt will run off with the liquid and the remaining film should be thinner.
Wax will help some, especially if there's enough watery crap getting kicked up or slush hitting the lights and then melting. More of the dirt will run off with the liquid and the remaining film should be thinner.
fidelity101 wrote:Hal wrote:first off, awesome picture. Second off - its unfortunate due to regulations that when you use your high beams your fogs turn off, this would solve your problem but you may run your own switch to the fogs and nobody would notice :)
With the D2's I don't need to use the high beams, so the fogs stay on.
I haven't really checked on the Subaru yet, but on my 2001 Focus there was an easy solution to get the fogs on with the high beams. There was a relay powered by the high beams that cut power to the fog lights. Remove the relay and replace it with a 2" piece of #10 wire with spade connectors on each end. Then you had fogs any time the fog light switch was on.
Running fogs with high beams or when going fast makes you see worse not better. It's too much light up close, so your pupils constrict and your eyes will want to focus closer and you can't see what's further down the road where you need to look at higher speeds.
Keith Tanner wrote: Easy: every time you stop for gas and clean your windshield, give your lights a swipe. If you're really being hard on the windshield squirters, pull over and grab a handful of snow. It's also a good motivation not to follow too close
If there's enough traffic that the car in front of you is slushing the nose if your car, your headlights are for other peoples' convenience and you don't need them to see where you're going.
It's on empty roads, with no lighting, where you notice that you have to constantly pull off because the falling snow is turning your headlights into Sno-Cones. Mainly seems to happen in the early spring when the snow is falling thick and wet.
rslifkin wrote: In reply to freetors: Ideal aim for low beams is to have the cutoff slope down slightly. Generally, 2 - 3 inches down at 25 feet away is about right. The lower the headlights are mounted, the less they need to slope down.
I know what the specs are. I also know from experience that I can see a lot better if I do it my way.
freetors wrote:rslifkin wrote: In reply to freetors: Ideal aim for low beams is to have the cutoff slope down slightly. Generally, 2 - 3 inches down at 25 feet away is about right. The lower the headlights are mounted, the less they need to slope down.I know what the specs are. I also know from experience that I can see a lot better if I do it my way.
And by aiming them higher than the specs, you're being an shiny happy person to other traffic. Low beams have 1 purpose: light up what you can WITHOUT BLINDING OTHER DRIVERS.
By aiming them too high, they blind other drivers and you might as well just have your high beams on all the time...
Crown Vics are notorious for poor low beams, the Aerobodies more so. I'd love it if I was legally allowed to bake open my housings and retrofit a nice set of H1 bixenon projectors with 35w ballasts, but the only legal choices are to continue with 25 feet of total throw on low beam, or put some cheap LED bulbs from Amazon in my reflector housings. 
In reply to G_Body_Man:
What requirements do your headlights have to meet?
I gotta say, I really loved the old "4 square/round headlight" setup. You could adjust the low beams to be useful, and not give two E36 M3s what the berkeley they did on high beam, then adjust the high beams to be useful.
That was good.
rslifkin wrote: In reply to G_Body_Man: What requirements do your headlights have to meet?
OE or OE-equivalent housings and reflectors. If projectors weren't offered on the car, they're technically illegal.
To answer the original question, new cars are test driven and sold almost exclusively during the day, so it's not a priority.
G_Body_Man wrote:rslifkin wrote: In reply to G_Body_Man: What requirements do your headlights have to meet?OE or OE-equivalent housings and reflectors. If projectors weren't offered on the car, they're technically illegal.
Hmm... I can't remember, did they sell Crown Vics in Europe? I think ECE headlights are legal in at least some of Canada, so lights from a right side traffic European Crown Vic would be a good upgrade if they exist.
G_Body_Man wrote:rslifkin wrote: In reply to G_Body_Man: What requirements do your headlights have to meet?OE or OE-equivalent housings and reflectors. If projectors weren't offered on the car, they're technically illegal.
Is there an inspection that would actually catch this? I have no issues with "technically" illegal of it improves safety....
java230 wrote: I have no issues with "technically" illegal of it improves safety....
I'm generally the same way. When it comes to lighting and stuff like that, I tend to follow the spirit of the law (make sure low beams aren't blinding, etc.) but I don't necessarily follow the letter of the law when it comes to how I achieve that requirement.
In reply to rslifkin:
Exactly, do it properly and so it's safe for other drivers and I have zero issues. I'm very happy with my projector retrofit, I have yet to be flashed. But they are not 'dot' lights
snailmont5oh wrote: I gotta say, I really loved the old "4 square/round headlight" setup. You could adjust the low beams to be useful, and not give two E36 M3s what the berkeley they did on high beam, then adjust the high beams to be useful. That was good.
^^^^^ This . I have yet to drive a car that has better lighting than I could get with 4 Hella,Bosch,or Cibie halogens back in the 70s and 80s. They were glass, so they didn't go foggy like current plastic lenses do. You could aim them very precisely because the cutoff was a distinct line. They threw enough heat to melt the snow and ice off (I lived NW of Montreal). The only real downside was they were susceptible to breakage, especially on our heavily sanded roads, and they weren't cheap.
when I drove commercial, one of our trucks was a smallish 26 foot boxtruck from GMC, really an Isuzu, it had the 4 headlight system you mention.
I removed the highbeams completely and installed 2 sets of lows. This gave me all the light I could want when going down the road and it bothered nobody. Living in NJ, I can probably count the number of minutes I have used the "high beams" on one hand for the total of my driving career, spanning some 30 years now
rslifkin wrote:freetors wrote:And by aiming them higher than the specs, you're being an shiny happy person to other traffic. Low beams have 1 purpose: light up what you can WITHOUT BLINDING OTHER DRIVERS. By aiming them too high, they blind other drivers and you might as well just have your high beams on all the time...rslifkin wrote: In reply to freetors: Ideal aim for low beams is to have the cutoff slope down slightly. Generally, 2 - 3 inches down at 25 feet away is about right. The lower the headlights are mounted, the less they need to slope down.I know what the specs are. I also know from experience that I can see a lot better if I do it my way.
Also keep in mind that if you blind oncoming traffic, you now have about two tons of unguided metal coming at you with a triple digit closing speed.
java230 wrote:G_Body_Man wrote:Is there an inspection that would actually catch this? I have no issues with "technically" illegal of it improves safety....rslifkin wrote: In reply to G_Body_Man: What requirements do your headlights have to meet?OE or OE-equivalent housings and reflectors. If projectors weren't offered on the car, they're technically illegal.
Friends of mine have been pulled over at end of month ticket season and been fined for stupid things. One such friend was fined because the OE horn on his Impreza was too weak. Another friend was fined because the OEM exhaust on his Abarth was too loud. When you own something that fits the "boy racer" profile in Interior BC, you sometimes do face these challenges.
Nobody has flashed me yet...
DeadSkunk wrote:snailmont5oh wrote: I gotta say, I really loved the old "4 square/round headlight" setup. You could adjust the low beams to be useful, and not give two E36 M3s what the berkeley they did on high beam, then adjust the high beams to be useful. That was good.^^^^^ This . I have yet to drive a car that has better lighting than I could get with 4 Hella,Bosch,or Cibie halogens back in the 70s and 80s. They were glass, so they didn't go foggy like current plastic lenses do. You could aim them very precisely because the cutoff was a distinct line. They threw enough heat to melt the snow and ice off (I lived NW of Montreal). The only real downside was they were susceptible to breakage, especially on our heavily sanded roads, and they weren't cheap.
Even 4 GEs in there was good. I drove a car with 4 Hellas once, but the owner was so on top of things that he actually had the low beams in upside down.
My '88 Accord had conventional sealed beams in the pop ups. I swapped in some GE Super Blue lights and it was fantastic. I pulled those out when it went away and saved them if I ever get something that uses those again.
Neon #1 had APC blue bulbs and was fine when I was 21. Neon #2 I had to refinish the lenses and swap in Improved bulbs(sylvania xtera vision?) and it was marginal.
The civic has separate high and low bulbs. With standard bulbs the highs are good and the lows are ok.
I have a thing about vision in general when I'm driving, whether it's the cleanliness of my windshield during the day, effectiveness of wipers in the rain, or lighting at night.
My Mazda 3 came with factory halogen projectors with separate non-projector high beams and fog lights. The fog lights were fairly useless, and the stock projector bulbs were better than my old WRX but still not great. I retrofitted some H9 bulbs for a while, which are a higher wattage, non-shielded version of the H11 meant for high beams. They worked well, and with proper adjustment, they don't blind anyone. The downside is that they burn out faster and one of my harnesses got a bit melty.
Last fall, I tried out some cheap retrofit HID's when one of the H9's burned out, considering they were actually cheaper than a pair of H9's. Agan, with some re-aiming, they work better than the stock bulbs. They have a wider beam pattern and sharper cutoff than the H9's, but they suck in the rain. I think most lights do, though.
The factory fog light bulbs just died after 5+ years, so I replaced those with GE Nighthawk H11's. They work better than they ever did, but are still largely useless.
As bad as these lights are, they are a million times better than my 1997 Dakota. I have GE Nighthawks in there, and while they work a lot better than the conventional bulbs, they are terrible. The high beams do nothing to make them brighter, either. I could drive around with them always on and no one would be able to tell. And yes, I've polished the lenses a number of times.
My next car, whatever it is, is going to have OEM HID's.
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