Daytime Driving Lights
As I have mentioned to a few people in the past, I have been driving Chevette's around since October 2000. I have never had people pull out in front of me as has happened since then. The other night, a particularly close call has prompted me to take elaborate actions to try to correct this situation.
As most of you probably know, GM has installed daytime driving lights for years now, and those cars are unmistakable coming down the road at you. ( At least to those of us with brains, and who pay attention ). After careful consideration for a week, I decided to install some amber "fog" lights behind the grille of my Chevette's to see if that helps. I decided against the popular "blue" lights because frankly, I not only find them annoying ( actually, the reason it took me a week to decide against them was NOT because of that, I WANTED annoying lights ), but when I have been in cars with blue headlights, I thought the illumination was quite poor. I prefer brilliant white light for seeing personally. I had previously installed bright headlights, but after the incident of the other night, I have installed GE High Output Halogen headlights with 55W low beams in rig1, and am testing regular GE Halogen and Wagner Brite Lite beams in rig2. Frankly, I see little difference, although the higher cost beams seem to have better side illumination. Back to amber "fog" light selection: I decided on Pilot 55W amber beams because they are "different". The extremely bright "yellowish" light coming down the road just might be the attention getter I'm looking for.
And boy are they bright ! From the pictures below, you will notice that even in the bright afternoon sun, they are blinding. It is impossible to look directly at them. Even the camera had trouble focusing because it was confused with the lights. I may have gone overkill with the 55W Halogen Pilot "Fog" lights, but we'll see. They do of course draw a lot of amperage ( which is why I think I could have gone with the 35W versions and have been fine ), and I'm a little concerned with the somewhat fragile ( and expensive, if you can find one ! ) Hitachi alternator. Rig2 has an alternator that is not as strong as rig1, and even with just the new super bright halogen headlights, you can tell the lights are on. I need to give that some attention.
To give the alternator a slightly diminished load, I connected the lights directly to the ( 1100 AMP ) battery, going through a relay. This allows me to run a single 16 ga wire from inside the car to turn the lights on and off by a toggle switch that I installed in the dash next to the headlight switch, but full 12 ga wire to power the hungry lights. The switch inside the car triggers the relay, which then puts current to the lights. For further "dead battery" protection, I selected a terminal on the fuse box which is only on when the key is on. That way I can't leave the lights on when I turn the car off and leave it.
The next problem was where to put the lights. I hate auxiliary lighting, unless it is "built in". Lights hanging off of a car look silly to me. So I had to "hide" the lights. But where ? Some cars have cut-outs in the bumper, and that is a great place to put lights. I even considered cutting holes, but decided against it. I considered replacing the actual headlight buckets with something exotic, and replacing the whole system. Finally, I considered my last choice, behind the grille. This was actually one of my first choices, but I thought that the light would be somewhat hampered by the grille. This turned out to not be a problem.
I shopped for lights for a week, deciding on the Pilot 55W amber
"fog" lights because they were cheap, $20, and of a size that I liked. I didn't
want some tiny lights, I wanted some reflector area, but of course not too big because
they HAD to go behind the grille. I also used a $4 headlight relay from AutoZone.
Wire, toggle switch ( the rocker switch that came with the lights was too cheap ), and
other stuff I had.
Right side
Left side
Mounting of right side light, and positioning of headlight relay. Although it
appears that the relay is out in the open, it is actually somewhat behind the headlight
bezel, and a solid portion of the grille. Note the heavy duty 12 ga wire. This is what
actually powers the lights. The little 16 ga white wire is what triggers the relay.
As you can see, the lights behind the grille are not very noticeable, until you turn 'em on........
The camera had a little trouble focusing because of the lights I guess.
So I backed off a bit, and as you can tell, they still have a "twinkle"
that hopefully will be noticed !
If anyone ever claims that they can't see this coming, they shouldn't be driving.
As you can tell from the background, this is a bright sunny day. Image having this come at
you at night !
Can you find the hidden rig2 in the back yard ? It's still banished until it gets
better illumination.