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Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 8:48 pm
by brorabongo
One of my original fogs had a damaged lens, so replaced both with new driving lamps ( £14.99 ) as seen below.....
Image
Bongo needs cleaned I think. :-k :lol:


Any ideas where the lights should be pointing?

Here is where they are pointing to just now.......
Image


Cheers.

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 10:09 pm
by scanner
All depends what you want them to illuminate I guess.

Do you want to light up each verge or light up the road way ahead to
pick out sheep, deer, rabbits, hedgehogs, moose, reindeer, grizzly bears - whatever.

PS they look awful dim compared to the headlights................. :?

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 10:57 pm
by brorabongo
scanner wrote:All depends what you want them to illuminate I guess.

Do you want to light up each verge or light up the road way ahead to
pick out sheep, deer, rabbits, hedgehogs, moose, reindeer, grizzly bears - whatever.

PS they look awful dim compared to the headlights................. :?
Road well ahead, due to the numbers of grizzlies we have here. :lol:


The fogs are standard H3 55w that came with the fittings, headlights are Halford's Super Brilliance.

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:32 pm
by scanner
brorabongo wrote:
scanner wrote:All depends what you want them to illuminate I guess.

Do you want to light up each verge or light up the road way ahead to
pick out sheep, deer, rabbits, hedgehogs, moose, reindeer, grizzly bears - whatever.

PS they look awful dim compared to the headlights................. :?
Road well ahead, due to the numbers of grizzlies we have here. :lol:


The fogs are standard H3 55w that came with the fittings, headlights are Halford's Super Brilliance.
In that case because they are mounted much lower than the main lights (parallax or whatever and all that) you'll need to be further back from a wall to get some reasonable indication of where each pair of beams are aimed.

If you can - park up facing toward a wall at the right distance for the dipped beams to only just shine on the very bottom of the wall. Then adjust the driving lamps to light up the area just above each dipped beam.

That should give you extra illumination right in the centre of the existing light spread from the main beams. And as they are mounted so low the beams should shine right along the road surface with any light spread being upwards.
Then give them a try and fine tune as required to get the light where you want it.
As they are ATM, it looks like they'll shine straight into the road.

As they are driving lights, not fogs, I'm assuming you'll be using them with main beams, not dipped?

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:34 pm
by scanner
Just looked again and it's the red bit at the bottom of the wall that makes them look dim

PS either your offside dip is high or your nearside dip is low - the flat top to the beams should generally be level with each other.

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:42 pm
by brorabongo
scanner wrote:As they are driving lights, not fogs, I'm assuming you'll be using them with main beams, not dipped?
Cheers Scanner.

They are replacing fogs, and will only be used as fogs. (I'm still using the existing electrics. )
I did wonder about my headlight being different. :? The drive wont be square, but it's not that much out!!!

The mot was just last Feburary, is that not checked?

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:58 pm
by scanner
If using them as fogs they need to be lower than the dipped beams, so adjust them to shine below the flat bit of the dipped beam, not above it.

Try and be as square to the wall as possible or it gives a misleading idea of where the beams will shine. That could account for the dipped beams looking wonky.

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 2:19 pm
by bigdaddycain
Hi Brora...They are the driving light version, not the foglight version mate... The beam impression on your wall should be spread out, not a focused pencil beam as you have there mate... The foglight version has a "busier" lens, as a generalization, the plainer the lens, the more chance of them being driving lights/spots.

Here's a piccy of how spread the beam should appear with just the fogs switched on...

See how it's spread wide?

Image

And with fogs AND dipped headlamps....

Image

(i have "all weather" bulbs fitted, hence the yellowish hue).

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 2:41 pm
by scanner
I think he know's they are driving lamps BDC as he said that in his first post and why I thought he wanted to use them with the main beams.

But it seems like Brora wants to use them as "long range" dipped beams.

Re: Fog light alignment

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 2:46 pm
by bigdaddycain
Ah, yes... Sorry i'd "focused" on the thread title heading, and missed the driving lights bit... #-o