mx5cartalk.com

Hi all

Any recommendations for aftermarket fog / driving lights. Especially from those that drive the Hume Hwy / Goulburn area in the early winter mornings. Is Navra the pick of the brands

They would be mounted on the bullbar so its not for an mx5 but for its tow vehicle.

fog and driving lamps are completely different lamps. Driving lamps are, for most, a near useless item. Many modern cars have very effective high beams and you simply cannot use long range driving lamps where there is the risk of dazzling oncoming drivers. If one is driving on remote B roads in the night they are very effective and probably of some use on divided roads in the wee hours.
Narva lamps are probably pretty good - this co ( Brown and Watson) essentially sources products from various sources whereas Hella in most cases still make their own lamps in Germany ( and supply OE lampware) unless like many others they have found a lower cost producer. Both of these makers/ distributors supply fog lamps as well. Both of these suppliers will be able to give advice to suit ones vehicle and requirement.

Cibie. End of story. Pricey, but you get what you pay for - the best.

There are three main types of lighting. Foglights, with a sharp horizontal cutoff and a short but wide beam; long range driving lights, aka pencil beams, whose beam resembles a (surprise) pencil, and driving lights, which throw a shorter but wider beam than the LRDL.

Fogs need to be mounted low, and aimed accurately (basically horizontal about a metre or less above the ground, the closer the better) to illuminate the road beneath (NOT through) the fog/mist. As they have a wide beam also useful for spotting kangaroos on the roadside.

Driving lights are good, but their throw is probably not much longer than a good headlight - however they provide more light at the outer end. If you drive good distances with your headlights on high now, these would be of value. No good in fog/mist/rain.

Unless you live out the back of Bourke, and cruise at 150kmh or so, long range driving lights are pretty much a waste of money. The roads need to be straight, the speeds high, and traffic low-to-nonexistent or they just end up being decorations.

Hope that helps.

Edit: As an old Goulburn lad, I know exactly what you are talking about. The favoured style in my day was two driving lights mounted normally, and two fogs mounted upside down (with the lenses taken out and mounted upside down so the cutoff was right way up). If you wanted to stand out in the crowd, you mounted the fogs with the beams crossing, in order to get a (slightly) wider spread. Another option was one LRDL and one DL, rather than two DLs, but for the reasons above I would not recommend this today.