Anyone know if Euro foglamp bulbs are different than the US

[Mike K]

Thanks!

[Blue Shadow]

same thing, an H3 bulb. pick a power go high enough and break your lens or melt your wiring. Standard is 55 watts.

[Echo]

Yeah, i melted my wiring... Don't go too high over 55... I was at 85 when it all melted and stopped working...

[fastpat]

[QUOTE="Echo"]Yeah, i melted my wiring... Don't go too high over 55... I was at 85 when it all melted and stopped working...[/QUOTE]

There are charts that tell you how much amperage can be sent over a given wire size and length. Most modern cars need larger wiring, or a supplemental system to carry the additional current higher wattage lights require. I've installed this type of system on my HD truck.

[cgraff]

There are charts that tell you how much amperage can be sent over a given wire size and length.

Yes, you can search online for a few websites that go through this. One such link is:
http://www.rbeelectronics.com/wtable.htm

Most modern cars need larger wiring, or a supplemental system to carry the additional current higher wattage lights require.

Not entirely accurate. The reason you *may* need thicker gauge wiring is due to the internal resistence of the wires, and the relationship between length of wire, thickness, internal resistence, and how that effects voltage drop through the lines. You basically may not be putting the voltage needed for the lights to be at 100% output.

A good primer on this are articles by Daniel Stern. He's the guy with the Cibie light conversion to a E24 M.

Here's a link to another one of his articles:

http://users.mrbean.net.au/~rover/headlamps.htm

The wiring gage is 1.0mm (or 16 in AWG size) for the headlight and fog wires, stock E28. As you can see from the wiring sizing chart (given in the first link), it is adequate when installing 100W bulbs in a 12V system most of the time, except when looking at wire lengths exceeding 2.5 meters, and especially exceeding 3 meters.

Now, I've run 100W fog light bulbs, 100W highs, and 100W lows in my car with no problems or melting wires. So long as the wires and connectors are in good shape, you should be OK. What could happen, though, is if you have increased resistance in the wiring (due to poor connectors, rust, etc.), this can cause the wire to heat up excessively, thus melting the wire insulation, and causing mucho problems (aka "melted wiring").

One side note: Remember though, that the euro wiring is different than the US. In US wiring, the high beam filament in the low beam, and the high beam are run through the same "high beam" fuse. This wiring situation can and has caused problems with fuses blowing when you switch on the high beams. The european wiring doesn't use the high filament in the low beam, and runs the "high beam fuse" directly to the high beam, without the high beam relay closing the low beam and fog relay.

-Chris