Scary. Wet objects don't absorb light

[jorton]

Don't get much rain at all but Monday morning it rained so the lights didn't light anything on dark country roads during the morning commute to work.

Scary.

The old Mercury Tracer Wagon needs new headlights anyway. What budget set up works better in the wet at night?

 

[Klutch9]

It's not that wet objects don't absorb light. Rather, water refracts light, and in the case of roads, normally makes it very hard to see. I've found over the years that no matter how good my headlight setup is, I still can't see well in the rain (especially on new, jet-black asphalt).

 

[Colt45ws]

Relay those headlights. Night/day difference.

 

[HTSS_TR]

You need to clean the plastic headlight cover, I used 3M headlight restoration kit and the plastic headlight is much clearer, it seems the light is more than 50% brighter after it was done.

 

[Ken2]

This is one of the places where so-called fog lights is a help if the fog lights are at all efficient. The lower location of the fog lights helps increase the shadow effect and bring up the contrast of items on the wet road. As others have said, bring your headlights up to spec with clear lenses and maybe brighter bulbs. The higher output standard wattage bulbs like the Xtreme Power and Nightbreaker bulbs don't create more heat inside the lamp but do have a shorter life. Do not buy any blue-tinted bulb. The glare will be harmful to improved vision.

 

[crinkles]

Slow down!

 

[jorton]

Yes I did slow down. I clean the lens' regularly with paste wax which works well, but I am considering getting new lights.

Also interested in "relay those lights". Please provide parts list and wiring diagram. Thanks!

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: jorton
Please provide parts list and wiring diagram. Thanks!


Google Daniel Stern Lighting. That site has all the information you'll need, and then some.

 

[eljefino]

Also that wagon takes 9004 dual filament bulbs. A curse if there ever was one.

 

[zyxelenator]

That is a reason I got euro style headlights and installed 6000k HID kit. Stock light on 4 gen Camry are [censored]. Even brand new ones with new halogen bulbs. I drive around 7am and 7 pm. So it is always dark during winter. Driving in rain+fog= almost blind.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: zyxelenator
That is a reason I got euro style headlights and installed 6000k HID kit. Stock light on 4 gen Camry are [censored]. Even brand new ones with new halogen bulbs. I drive around 7am and 7 pm. So it is always dark during winter. Driving in rain+fog= almost blind.


I hope your "euro style" headlights are also projectors. If not,

driving toward you + your 6000K HIDs = almost blind

 

[zyxelenator]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: zyxelenator
That is a reason I got euro style headlights and installed 6000k HID kit. Stock light on 4 gen Camry are [censored]. Even brand new ones with new halogen bulbs. I drive around 7am and 7 pm. So it is always dark during winter. Driving in rain+fog= almost blind.


I hope your "euro style" headlights are also projectors. If not,

driving toward you + your 6000K HIDs = almost blind

Why everybody keep saying it? I spend 2 night setting them up with my father ( walking and driving towards it) to make sure it is not blinding anyone. Not everyone who has them is 16 year old ricer. They are normal daylight color,not blue or purple. No they are not projector style. Nobody makes any other headlights for 99 camry exept stock plastic [censored]. I did long research and found only 1 brand, and one special order projector lights which are $700+.
Many modern cars have HIDs and not projector, for example 03 Altima I had. Just saying.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: zyxelenator
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: zyxelenator
That is a reason I got euro style headlights and installed 6000k HID kit. Stock light on 4 gen Camry are [censored]. Even brand new ones with new halogen bulbs. I drive around 7am and 7 pm. So it is always dark during winter. Driving in rain+fog= almost blind.


I hope your "euro style" headlights are also projectors. If not,

driving toward you + your 6000K HIDs = almost blind

Why everybody keep saying it? I spend 2 night setting them up with my father ( walking and driving towards it) to make sure it is not blinding anyone. Not everyone who has them is 16 year old ricer. They are normal daylight color,not blue or purple. No they are not projector style. Nobody makes any other headlights for 99 camry exept stock plastic [censored]. I did long research and found only 1 brand, and one special order projector lights which are $700+.
Many modern cars have HIDs and not projector, for example 03 Altima I had. Just saying.


Because an HID bulb is meant to be installed in a housing designed for it.

 

[Hokiefyd]

A number of cars have reflector housings with HID lights, but the optics of the housing are designed to handle the HID light output. Not only is the light output from an HID source much brighter than a halogen source, but the placement spatially in the housing is different. So you have light coming from a point in space within that housing that it wasn't designed to come from, and on top of that, it's SUPER BRIGHT light. The result is uncontrolled glare.

You can demonstrate the effectiveness of your housings by taking a picture of them against a wall. Here's one of my cars for example:

Notice that nearly all of the light is concentrated below a rather sharp upper cut-off, and there is very little stray light above it. And below the cut-off, the highest intensity of light is centered on the road, and the intensity bleeds off gradually as you move away from the center. They're well-designed reflector lights.

If you post a similar picture of your Camry's lights against a wall, we can see how effective the housings are at controlling the light.

 

[Vikas]

I don't think we will be able to see the similar picture from the Camry

 

[chevrofreak]

This is something that was learned when LED flashlights started getting popular. Guys were taking them into caves, and on the wet cave floors they couldn't really see much contrast, so they couldn't see the dangers that lay ahead.

It has something to do with light spectrum and the way light refracts off wet surfaces from what I understand. They found that more red light (white LED's tend to be mostly blue and yellow) allowed more contrast to be seen in the wet surface of the rock.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: chevrofreak
This is something that was learned when LED flashlights started getting popular. Guys were taking them into caves, and on the wet cave floors they couldn't really see much contrast, so they couldn't see the dangers that lay ahead.

It has something to do with light spectrum and the way light refracts off wet surfaces from what I understand. They found that more red light (white LED's tend to be mostly blue and yellow) allowed more contrast to be seen in the wet surface of the rock.


I actually prefer halogen head lamps for this reason. I've driven with a number of HID lamps and the color contrast is far inferior to halogen. It's called the Color Rendering Index. Halogen bulbs are 100, which is the best on the scale. Zero is the worst, and the CRI of sodium-vapor lamps (street lamps) is zero. Objects appear monochromatic under that type of light. Daniel Stern's website claims the CRI of automotive HIDs is somewhere around 70.

They are bright, but my eyes fatigue when driving with them, for two reasons. First is the CRI problem. Everything IN the beam seems monochromatic, with little contrast. Secondly, you have so much bright foreground light and so little light far away that your eyes tend to focus more on the foreground light, which makes seeing things at a distance more difficult.

I have always preferred a very bright halogen light source to an HID one, and will probably continue to do so until they can improve HID's CRI.

 

[sciphi]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd


I have always preferred a very bright halogen light source to an HID one, and will probably continue to do so until they can improve HID's CRI.

Agreed! The halogen headlights in my current and previous car have both been bright enough after better bulbs, aiming, and a relay harness to satisfy my needs for light.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
I have always preferred a very bright halogen light source to an HID one, and will probably continue to do so until they can improve HID's CRI.


I always tell people who rave about gimmicky bulbs, rather than OEM type halogens, that it's not how "bright" everything appears, but what you can actually see. If I can see a deer in the ditch half a mile away on halogens, that's what counts, not that everything is lit up monochromatically like a street light.

 

[LoneRanger]

I never thought about this. I was actually considering converting my Forester to a 4300K HID projector setup. This makes me think twice. Especially considering how much $$ the projector conversion costs.