Pro Pickup

December 2012

Propickup Digital Magazine

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BUYER'SGUIDE By Peter D. DuPre SOCKED IN! When fog, snow, rain or dust causes visibility problems behind the wheel, O ne truth about both the landscaping and contracting businesses is owners are fi ring up their pick- ups in the pre-dawn hours to go to work and often arriving back home well after sunset. We accept the long hours as the nature of the business. But unfortunately those pre-dawn and late-evening commutes often mean dealing with hazards such as rain, snow, dust or fog. Dealing with adverse driving conditions like these at any time is a hassle, but light levels at their worst add an element of danger most of us could do without. So what do you do when Mother Nature is trying her hard- est to make driving miserable? The typical driver switches on the factory fog lights – if their pickup is so equipped – thinking they will provide proper illumina- tion for safe driving. But as anyone who has fl ipped on those fog lights knows, most simply aren't up to the job; PROPICKUP DIGITAL they are more ornamental than functional. (Apparently pickup designers often think more about style and cost cutting than they do about safety and practicality.) Aftermarket fog lights are a diff erent story. LIGHT TYPES Aftermarket (AM) fog lights are available in a variety of sizes, with diff erent lens designs, bulb types and housings. One typically gets what they pay for when it comes to functionality and durability. The cheapest of these are often packaged in thin metal buckets or plastic housings and use a sealed-beam fi lament headlamp bulb for illumination. They'll last about 200 hours, or so, of con- tinuous use. If your pickup is your rolling offi ce or primary work truck, don't waste the time or money on them. Such old-style lights just don't deliver adequate beam spread or brightness for serious use. Further up the fog-light performance (and cost) ladder are those with quartz-halogen bulbs, which are usually pack- aged in ABS plastic or Lexan-type housings. Halogen lights deliver a quality beam pattern with suffi - cient brightness for fog-light use. While these deliver a much hotter and brighter light than that of a standard fi lament bulb and last up to 400 hours or so of continuous use, they are prone to fi lament breakage from vibra- tion. Continued use in rough terrain or over rock and gravel roads can shorten that bulb life considerably. Near the top of fog-light per- formance for both longevity and light output are the high-intensi- ty-discharge (HID) lights. Unlike fi lament bulbs, HID lights do not have a fi lament. Instead, an internal or external ballast builds up the power to create light when an arc jumps between two electrodes, stimu- lating a special mixture of Xenon turn on those fog lights to ease the drive gases to produce a brilliant, almost blue-white light that's about three times brighter than a halogen bulb emits. Because there is no fi lament, HID lights are less prone to vibration damage and last much longer (about 4,000 hours of continuous use) than standard or halogen bulbs. One pays 2 to 3 times more for these bulbs. HIGH-TECH LED The most recent technology, though, revolves around LED fog lights. Although the LED (light emit- ting diode) was invented in 1927 and fi rst used commercially in 1969 (mostly for calculators and wrist watches), it has only been over the past few years that they have fi nally come into their own for use in automotive lighting. A few years ago such lights were prohibitively expensive. Now the marketability of these long-lasting, brighter and cooler burning lights has resulted in

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