Which Lights are Right for My vehicle?
At AutoAnything, we have a vast selection of lights to boost your visibility and jumpstart your vehicle's style. With all these options, you might feel a tad in the dark about which ones are right for you. Thankfully, we're here to shed some light on the subject. Ask yourself these enlightening questions:
While no one truly trusts the weather man to give accurate predictions, there are certain regions with weather that you can set your watch to. The fog's always rolling into San Francisco, monsoon season never ends in Seattle, and St. Paul is always struggling through nasty blizzards. Your local weather dictates the type of lights you should have on your vehicle.
- If you live along the coast and get a lot of fog, check out a pair of fog lights. Look to Hella, PIAA and KC HiLites for a quality set of fog lights.
- If you live in the Pacific Northwest or the Deep South where the rain is constantly falling, we also recommend fog lights to increase your foul weather visibility.
- If you happen to live in the desert region of the Southwest where the nighttime skies are clear, look into a set of long-range driving lights to see farther ahead. A number of top brands build brilliant driving lights, including Street Scene, Hella, PIAA and KC HiLites.
- If you live in the Midwest or Northeast where the snow storms are cold enough to send shivers through Nanook of the North's bones, fog lights would improve your visibility in white-out conditions.
- Or, if you're like most people and live in an area that sees a blend of stormy and clear weather, it's a good idea to mount both fog lights and driving lights, so that you're prepared for anything.
You don't drive the same way on a curvy mountain road as you do on a straight highway. Different roads require distinctive driving styles and lights to match.
- If you live in an area where the roads hardly ever curve, then some long-range driving lights are right for you.
- If you spend a lot of time on winding roads, check out a pair of cornering driving lights, or even the intelligent lighting system.
- If you're a city slicker who hardly ever pulls off of the urban streets, you can always modernize your vehicle's style with new OEM replacement lights, including headlights, tail lights, corner lights, bumper lights, side markers and parking lights.
While we might argue that auto manufacturers don't make cars like they used to, it is undeniable that the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Besides the addition of computer-controlled suspensions, GPS navigation systems and satellite radios, automobile lighting has also greatly improved over the years. Unlike a suspension, though, new lighting technology is easy to install.
- If you cruise around in a classic or just can't bear to part with your first set of wheels, a quality pair of conversion headlights can greatly improve your visibility. IPCW and RDX both make choice conversion headlights.
- If you just bought your dream car but did not get the total lighting package, you can easily add a set of fog lights, driving lights or both.
- If the lights on your vintage automobile have started to show their age, you can swap them out with some new factory-fitting replacement lights.
You might be thinking that light is light, but there are very real differences between the glow of one bulb and the glow of another. Automotive lighting has made a lot of progress since the early days, and now there are two types duking it out for the number one spot.
A halogen bulb is like a regular incandescent light bulb on steroids–it works on the same principle but produces a great deal more light. The halogen bulb's tungsten filament is contained inside an atmospheric vacuum, so it burns at a much higher temperature and generates a brighter, whiter light. Plus, bromine and iodine are floating around inside the bulb to strengthen the filament, which makes them last much longer. Halogen bulbs perform at a higher, consistent output throughout their lives.
HID is short for High-Intensity Discharge, and it is the wave of the automotive lighting future. These lights use a short electrical arc to superheat a ball of xenon gas, which glows incredibly bright and very white. One of the most striking advantages of HID xenon lighting is the brightness and the way that it nearly matches the color and look of daylight. Plus, they generate all this light while still consuming considerably less power than conventional halogen bulbs. Hella specializes in building HID lights.