Pilot? Train driver? :confused:

Nice to see someone's switched on (excuse pun), it's the latter.

Side Lights and fogs, I didnt think that was possible? I thought you had to turn the switch to the main beams posistion before it would pull out to let you have the front fogs on?

someone in the german OII forum sells a complete set of those lamps complete with the wiring.

Side Lights and fogs, I didnt think that was possible? I thought you had to turn the switch to the main beams posistion before it would pull out to let you have the front fogs on?

I would have agreed with you on that one but then I remembered killing the headlamps so as to drive with foglights only in some really thick fog.

According to the manual the fog lights can be activated with the sidelights and the dipped headlamps.

Xenon headlamps are shocking in the fog thanks to the shorter wavelength of the light :thumbdwn:

I wonder if we'll ever see adaptive LED headlights that switch to a longer wavelength colour (yellow) if driving in fog? That would be nice

Just to reply to the side + fogs comments.

Yes you look a tw4t if you do it when it isn't foggy, but doing lots of forest driving over the years there is often very thick fog near the rivers and lower areas.

When the fog is that thick, there are a lot of the local drivers that have fogs (front+rear) and sidelights on and they are perfectly obvious to anyone driving towards them.

IMHO when the fog is that thick it's actually safer for other drivers, because the headlights reflect back at you and you can't see properly, but they also white up the whole area of fog so other drivers can't see properly.

The sort of fog I'm talking about is where you can't see a few yards in front of the car and you're driving slowly due to the conditions.

In terms of the switch, yes the Octy I and II can do sidelights and front + rear fogs, or sidelights + front fogs.

I would never condone this for daytime or night time driving, or driving in heavy rain or spray. Equally if the fog isn't too bad then headlights are fine.

It's really annoying actually as these days it's almost impossible to get hold of 30% brighter all weather yellowed headlight bulbs in H7.

While really white light or blue light might be trendy, it's pretty useless in fog, very fine rain, heavy spray or very heavy rain because it comes right back at you much more than the yellowish light from halogens or the dedicated all weather bulbs.

Ever tried driving by Satnav in the fog? It's spookily accurate and a good warning for upcoming bends on unfarmiliar roads but not really a substitute for actually seeing the road ahead.

I had some projector fogs on my previous car for a while and found them only superior to dips in real peasoupers which are comparitively rare now.

It just occurred to me that factory fitted front fogs will probably be configured only to work with main beams switched on. I used my fogs with sidelights only until I could see oncoming headlights, then switched on my dips.

Edited 22 October, 200916 yr by icarusi@hotmail

One of the Jetta owners at VWwc had OEM foglights fitted by his dealer & they couldn't get it right (how the lights switched on in concert with the headlights & parkers). In the end I believe that they admitted the fogs had to be a factory fitment. VW Aus washed their hands and refused to talk to the dealer or the customer.

The standard switch in all UK Mk II Octavias , and IIRC MK I Octavias too, allows front only or front and rear fog lights to come on with the sidelights.

The standard switch in all UK Mk II Octavias , and IIRC MK I Octavias too, allows front only or front and rear fog lights to come on with the sidelights.

Which is the exact same switch in the Jetta! (illumination aside of course)

if it is just the case of the car looking better with fog lights fitted,just fit the lights and don,t bother wiring them up.

alternatively get an compitant person to wire them up.

this would be quiet simple.

add your own wires and switch

A car or so ago I bought a brand new Peugeot 307 (it's just for this post - don't need a discussion on this).

The front fogs were a £100 option on the model I was looking at, and I was going to go for it.

However in the end we were tempted to buy their "Display Model" due to some really good discounts, only problem was no front fogs.

I asked about having them fitted once I'd bought the car - £1000.

I coughed and showed the £100 factory option.

Reply quite simply was "Really we don't want to do it, you will require lots of new parts, if you really want them don't have the display model and order a new one".

So in the end I did without.

As will most retro-fitting it's just cost prohibitive.

To correctly retro-install a HID system to a car is cost prohibitive - once you've somehow fitted washers and the auto-levelling system.