Fog lights

Quote from Bigdog

For the past 50 years fog lights have been yellow. I just talked to a guy yesterday that installed white LED “fog” lights on his van and he said they do not cut through the fog and they actually make it worse...

So when did fog lights become white?

And do they actually make yellow LED fog lights that work?

The factory “fog” lights on my truck are white and under the bumper? I never noticed a difference in the fog with them on or off.

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I have never heard of fog lights ever being white. You should never use highbeam lights in the night fog. The white light reflects more off the fog instead of penetrating through the fog like yellow fog lights do which allow you to see better in the fog being yellow lights. It’s just like yellow sunglasses are better for bright sun and bright lights at night. The yellow sunglasses cut the glare of the bright lights at night

Sent from my iPhone using Polaris Slingshot Forum mobile app

Quote from Bigdog

exactly...now do a search for “fog” lights and for every one yellow light you find 25 white ones are advertised...WHY?

Marketing seems to have won out with the shift to white fog lights.
This kit should let you use the fog light wiring - Fog Light Relay Kit for the Polaris Slingshot.
Back before Polaris issued the headlight fix, I rewired my outer auxiliary headlights to run off the fog light circuit controlled by a switch so I'd have a backup headlight source in the event of failure.

I think the change to white lights is more 'fashion' than function. Everyone calls the low-mounted lights generically fog lights, when they are really daylight running lights.

my 2 cents

Here's some other frog lights you might consider:

Good (and legal) fog lamps may produce white or Selective Yellow light—it is the beam pattern, not the light colour, that defines a fog lamp—and most of them use tungsten-halogen bulbs though there are some legitimate (and a lot of illegitimate) LED fog lamps beginning to appear.

Fog Lamps - Daniel Stern Lighting

Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply

Saurabh Gupta, An introvert...
Answered Jan 14, 2015
Originally Answered: Why are the fog lights of vehicles yellow and not red?
Scientifically speaking, there is no good reason why fog lights are yellow and not red. Here is an excellent explanation provided by Professor Craig Bohren of Penn State University:

"First I'll give you the wrong explanation, which you can find here and there. It goes something like this. As everyone knows, scattering (by anything!) is always greater at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum than at the long wavelength end. Lord Rayleigh showed this, didn't he? Thus to obtain the greatest penetration of light through fog, you should use the longest wavelength possible. Red is obviously unsuitable because it is used for stop lights. So you compromise and use yellow instead.

This explanation is flawed for more than one reason. Fog droplets are, on average, smaller than cloud droplets, but they still are huge compared with the wavelengths of visible light. Thus scattering of such light by fog is essentially wavelength independent. Unfortunately, many people learn (without caveats) Rayleigh's scattering law and then assume that it applies to everything. They did not learn that this law is limited to scatterers small compared with the wavelength and at wavelengths far from strong absorption.

The second flaw is that in order to get yellow light in the first place you need a filter. Note that yellow fog lights were in use when the only available headlights were incandescent lamps. If you place a filter over a white headlight, you get less transmitted light, and there goes your increased penetration down the drain.

There are two possible explanations for yellow fog lights. One is that the first designers of such lights were mislead because they did not understand the limitations of Rayleigh's scattering law and did not know the size distribution of fog droplets. The other explanation is that someone deemed it desirable to make fog lights yellow as a way of signalling to other drivers that visibility is poor and thus caution is in order.
Designers of headlights have known for a long time that there is no magic color that gives great penetration.

Quote from Bigdog

so I think I came up with a fog light idea...give some input about whether it will work or not...

First I have a question about the factory fog light wiring? Were the fog lights connected to one of the on/off switches currently installed on the dash board?

Now for my idea....

I found these fog light LEDs...

And after watching this light conversion installation video and accessory light package available from our friends at slingmods

You can see I have simulated having a real yellow fog light installed without too much hassle. If it works...

Installation video link...
Polaris Slingshot Canadian Headlight Conversion Kit (2015-2016)

So now will it work?

I want to put them on a switch in the dash..

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I do not think this will work well - fog lights need to be mounted down low so they can shine out under the fog which normally floats a bit off the ground - regardless of color if you mount them high and then aim them low they will reflect off the fog instead of going under it

Quote from Bigdog

I’m thinking that if they are angled down about 25 feet out it won’t reflect directly back toward me. It still might be better than none.

wouldn't it be easier and work better if you got some fog lights and mounted them down on the bumper where Polaris left the plugs?

They put the plugs down there for a reason - use them

Quote from edwardaneal

wouldn't it be easier and work better if you got some fog lights and mounted them down on the bumper where Polaris left the plugs?
They put the plugs down there for a reason - use them

Generally speaking, fog lights should indeed be mounted low to the ground, but in Polaris' case, I'd imagine they just felt it would look better down there.

Quote from BKL

Generally speaking, fog lights should indeed be mounted low to the ground, but in Polaris' case, I'd imagine they just felt it would look better down there.

apparently not good enough to actually sell any, seriously are they even a factory option?

Quote from Bigdog

I plan on using the factory plugs... I’ve been searching and I haven’t seen any yellow “fog”
Lights that would work and look good on our front end.

Has anyone ever seen the elusive factory fog lights? Or even a picture?

you mean like this? not sure if you can see but if you look at my lower bumper, i have a DRL LED that i put yellow tiny vinyl on top. This is day time when I took the photo, but you can kinda see it. I can take another night picture and show how bright it is.

Here is another solution if you are looking for yellow/amber lighting mounted down low on the SS. (I have lot of lighting going on in the front (and rear) to make sure the SS is highly visible).

A pair of these Kawell 18W Amber LED light bars may not provide a lot of help with driving in actual Foggy Road conditions, but they do make me more noticeable, so I run them full time (using the SS fog light harness wiring)

I don't think it would be that hard to mount some fog-lights inside the lower front wing in the corners below the upper wing.