According to www.danielsternlighting.com , the H9 bulb will fit where a H11 bulb should go. The H9 bulb is 2100 lumens vs. 1350 lumens for H11. This is comaring 65w H9 to 65w H11. Has anyone tried using H9 instead of H11 for the fog lights? Any thoughts?

 

how much work is it to get to the fogs to change the bulbs?

 

if you put in an H9 which apparantly will put out much more light, will the reflector of the fog light handle it or will the extra lumens just get lost....and will this create more heat which might damage the light assembly's lens??

 

The other question is, if the fog lights are really used for fog, will increasing the lumens or temperature make them less effective in the conditions for which they were made. I know what happens when I try high beams in fog or snow.

 

NO. The fog lights have a wide dispersion pattern, usually like 95 - 110 degrees with a sharp dropoff. They are also supposed to be mounted very low to the ground. More light is always welcome. There is also an argument of whether the fogs should be yellow vice white. Another religious war with advocates on both sides.

If you use your high beam in fog, the distro pattern is Much more focused, maybe 25 degrees and they are aimed high, down the road and are on in addition to the lows. All that does is throw glare back into our face. Your highs are also mounted much higher on the car than the fogs.

 

My thoughts on this are. Why would you want more light from the fog lights, it would just cause more reflection from the fog, snow, or rain that you are using your fogs to see thru. Sounds counter productive to me.

 

Them why have them on at all? By this line of reasoning, it would sound like any level of fog lights would be worse than no fog lights.

 

Ah, the straw man argument. Then by your counter arguement, an infinite amount of light is best. My point is that maybe the engineers at BMW took a good look at power, color, dispersion and placement with the stock setup being optimal. I don't know, I'm just wondering.

 

I dont think so. :smile: Its probably more like they wanted to have integral fogs and placed them where they could put small lens. The lens are very small compared to most aftermarket fogs (although there are some small fogs). Most aftermarket fogs run H3 (1450 lumens) ... the same in the stock MINI driving lights. Much of the effectiveness of the lamp is dependent upon the lens design. There are some pretty huge fogs out there like the PIAA 540s a lot of people have come as fogs as well as driving lights.

I have no idea why MINI chose H11 ... its a strange choice

 

Thanks for the input. H9 bulbs are significantly more expensive than the H11, plus I can't find it in the right color temperature anyways. I guess I'll just stick to H11.

FWIW - Daniel Stern's website did not mention any heat concerns, only a concern about possibly causing glare towards other drivers, depending on the optics on the lamp itself.

 

Has anyone tried the H9s?

I can find H11s in 55 and 80w, as well as the H9s in 65 or 80w for the same price.

From web site photos the mounting looks the same on the H8, H9, H10 and H11 but I have not idea if they are interchangeable.

Does anyone with experience in this sort of thing think the 10w diff between the 65w H9 and 55w H11 would impact the car at all?

 

10-watts difference is not going to harm the frog light or the car at all. The heat issue is mainly determined by the wattage.

I plan to install h-9's in my frog lights when my current 70-watt h-11's burn out, as it is a PIA to remove the bumper to get at the lights.

 

65w is fine. You can also go to 65W in the H7 highs and its fine:smile:

 

kewl, thanks guys!

maybe i can get a group buy together on some fogs (but they are not vendors so i doubt i can post it).

 

Im really sorry to bring back such an old thread, but......

No H9 bulbs will not fit. I had to find out the hard way I read a bunch of these kinds of threads and so I went ahead and bought H9 yellow fog light bulbs.
You CAN use H9 bulbs without ill effects on the car, BUT the bulb itself does NOT fit. the problem is, the wire harness on the car has two sides (each side has it's own port where the metal prongs fits into) The H11 bulb has one tab that slides in between the two receptors, but the H9 bulb has two tabs and one of the tabs gets in the way because the wire harness only has a slot for one tab. Now I havent bought every make of the H9 bulbs, but my assumption is that all are designed the same way, which is why one bulb type can be used on many different cars. I thought this post would be beneficial to those who still havent purchased after market bulbs. hope this helps!

 

How easy would it be to just cut the one tab off the H9 bulb? Daniel Stern seems to think it's possible with "minor modification."

From an RX8 forum:
"I repaced the original forlight H11s with H9s. They are much brighter (they are the same bulbs that are used for the highbeams).

The H9s fit into the fog light housings. However, there is one hitch to the installation, the H9 and H11 bulbs have different contact alignment tab configurations and the foglight wiring connector will not fit onto the H9 bulb. I will not dwell on how long it took me to realize this . The most elegant mod would be to replace the H11 wiring connectors with ones that fit H9s. But I was impatient, so I just modified the bulbs.

The H11 bulbs have a single plactic alignment tab between the contacts. The H9 bulbs have two of these tabs. They are between the contacts also but one on each side. I just removed the alignment tab from the H9 bulb that is not on the H11 bulb. The wiring connector then went right on.

The easest way to remove the tab would be to use a dremel tool, but I did not have one. I used a drill bit and "routed" it out. I secured the bulb base in a vise while I did this. I bent the contacts doing this, but they were easy to straighten."

 

 

yeah that quote is pretty funny. well to answer the question of "cutting" off the tab, it would be very easy, BUT..... The problem I found was that not even a razor would fit into the socket enough to fully cut off the tab, which is what you have to do. another option is to remove the section on the actuall wire harness, but that's big mullah if you mess up. Taking a dremel to a light bulb just doesnt sound like the brightest idea to me, but very plausable. I do wish I could have the brighter fog lights, but thats too much mess for a light bulb, atleast in my opinon, besides, the stock ones are pretty bright for me.