Veil impact factory coating?

[xjohnx]

I drive a Subaru Impreza WRX STi. It has fog lights from the japanese domestic market STi's installed on it. These fog lights have a coating on the lens that looks blue at some angles, yellow at other angles. When the lights are on, the beam output is yellow.

I have two questions.

1) Will veil impat the color of my beam output?

2) If i were to remove veil, will it harm the factory coating on the fog lamps?

gruppe-s .com/Clearance/ion-jdm-fogs.jpg (You'll need to remove the spaces..)

Sorry i can't post it as a link. not sure why that rule exists...

[Stealth Stalker]

not sure why that rule exists...

Internet much?

It's to prevent SPAM.

[xjohnx]

not sure why that rule exists...

Internet much?

It's to prevent SPAM.

Fair enough, however in my experience in running a number of highly visited message boards, spam is much easier to stop at the registration phase (i.e., captchas, registration confirmation/activation emails, banning of all .ru email addresses). Just a thought.

Back to the original question. Does anyone have any experience as to what effect Veil will have on this factory coating?

[snoopyc4]

I drive a Subaru Impreza WRX STi. It has fog lights from the japanese domestic market STi's installed on it. These fog lights have a coating on the lens that looks blue at some angles, yellow at other angles. When the lights are on, the beam output is yellow.

I have two questions.

1) Will veil impat the color of my beam output?

2) If i were to remove veil, will it harm the factory coating on the fog lamps?

gruppe-s .com/Clearance/ion-jdm-fogs.jpg (You'll need to remove the spaces..)

Sorry i can't post it as a link. not sure why that rule exists...

to answer ur questions, VEIL G4 will not NOTICEABLY reduce light output and will not harm the factory coating. To remove VEIL, just use household ammonia

[TSi+WRX]

^ Don't we all wish.

Unfortunately, that's not true at all.

Actually, it is UNDENIABLE that VEIL, even in current G4 format, WILL decrease light output, as well as alter light-output pattern to an extent.

With one very, very thin coat, such differences will be barely noticeable in real-world applications, however, it WILL be present.

On my BL-Legacy, one very, very thin coating of G4 has reduced the lighting output of my 65W-aftermarket solution (+65 Osram Hyper, at the recommendation of Daniel Stern) to the standard 55W H7 low-beam to that of somewhere between the two. And yes, the cut-off, generally noted by vehicle lighting enthusiasts to be very well controlled for standard incandescent-halogen units, has blurred a bit.

If you think I'm saying the above to belittle VEIL, snoopc, then please do some searches here. I'm among VEIL's most vocal proponents, anywhere and everywhere I go.

You'll see that not only do I have one can of G2 still left in my garage, but I've got two cans of G4, too. And as our newcomer Scooby owner, xjohnx can verify for you, if you're not familiar with the Scooby world snoopc, my on-line handles, both TSi+WRX as well as LGT+WRX, present consistent postings throughout the Scooby enthusiast Forums (LegacyGT.com and NASIOC, to name just two) which show that I have been a LONG TIME proponent of The VEIL Guy's work.

I was also among the first to post here, as well as elsewhere, of my G4 application, which, in case you didn't know, I never used G2 consistently on my own vehicles (only on rental road-trip vehicles) specifically due to lighting/safety concerns - but that I do use G4, and have no qualms about its safety impact.

xjohnx, to put this more in-perspective, you can also take the following into account:

- My CCFL DDEs no longer produce nearly the same amount of light as they used to, prior to my one thin coat of G4 application. Although still easily discernable in all situations, at night, coming down my driveway, I no longer feel comfortable dropping my forward lighting to only these rings, to serve as low-speed "nav lights," as I used to. This low-level lighting comparison shows how much the G4 has snuffed light output.

- Conversely, my HIR-1/9011 high-beams are not noticeably affected, at all, by the G4 application. This shows how higher output levels can effectively "burn through" a single pass of G4.

These extremes, combined with the difference visualized with my 65-Watt to 55-Watt low-beam comparisons, should give you a good idea of what to expect.



[ Note: further/additional "layering" of VEIL G4 on such lighting units will even more drastically affect both lighting output/color as well as the sharpness of the beam cutoff. Both of these are not only logical, when one thinks about it, but also have been reported by our fellow VEIL users/proponents as well as have been cited even by The VEIL Guy himself.

However, also note that the goal of VEIL is not to make for an opaque shield, so to say (even though it can definitely be used that way, and is very effective as-such, GTRstikya's Infiniti demonstrated this kind of extreme application very well) - rather, as The VEIL Guy has repeatedly said, it's that first coat that, properly applied, will offer the biggest performance difference between coated and un-protected. ]

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xjohnx, unfortunately, to answer your other question, straight-up, I'm afraid that I just don't know.

The dichroic coating on those rather pricy JDM pieces that you have are not often seen here - and even moreso, there currently has yet to be *extended* data on whether, or on what type of lens material, G4 may or may not "stain" or otherwise leave a residual.

We've seen past posts from very trustworthy individuals in our community (i.e. thestaton and [stealthJamal or sethy, I honestly can't remember , but it's an episode where the vehicle's headlamp application went completely wrong] - anyone who has been in this community long enough should well know their names) to say that G2 did cause such long-term issues on various polymer-composite headlamp "lenses," but G4 has been on the market for only a fraction of the time of G2, and viewed objectively, it's just impossible to make that call, particularly given that there have already been a handful of reports of even "new" applications of G4 being somewhat resistant to being removed.

[ Note also, in wrapping back to the first half of this post, that these same individuals also were among the first to notice that even with the much improved optical clarity of G4, it still did negatively impact their vehicle's lighting output. ]

In all honesty, given the rarity and expense of your setup (OK, so this comes from me, a guy who modified his JDM BL tail-light units to not only be of a different illumination pattern [from standard-JDM to Blitzen pattern], but also to incorporate a non-standard rear-fog setup ), I would really be very hesitant to apply VEIL to those fogs - if I understand it correctly, it's the lenses of these units that produce the dichroic "ion" effect. If that's the case, then the use of VEIL to dress the lenses would, I would imagine, most likely obliterate or otherwise alter such an effect, which, in-turn, given the optics of this setup, *if a clear lamp was used as the light source*, also more drastically affect light output color.

If the light color was produced as a combination of the dichroic lens as well as a dichroic/"ion"-finish or otherwise colored bulb, the impact to lighting color may be less severe, particularly if you stuck with only one thin coating of G4. Again taking from my personal example, G4, in one thin coat, did not much affect the color of my Osram Hypers, nor even that of my turn-signals/side-markers.

I honestly can't say that I'd know what to do, if I were in your shoes, xjohnx.

Given the unfavorable LIDAR profile of the previous-generation Imprezas, I'd very much recommend the use of VEIL on the front lighting units. With the STi, the factory HIDs will easily "burn through" one coating of G4 on the headlamps, and you won't likely even notice *any* lighting degradation. Furthermore, with most body-colors, the slightly bluish hue of G4 would even well compliment the STis of that vintage, as it would pick up on the suede of the factory seats WRB inserts, regardless of your vehicle's external color.

Those enlarged fogs, placed so low and so wide, will definitely add to the vehicle's LIDAR reflectivity profile..... unfavorably, at that.

But with your specific setup? ouch - those are some darned expensive units (given the total cost as well as the trouble you had to go through to get these parts, IIRC, it also requires a replacement front bumper beam setup, correct?) to be messing with!

[snoopyc4]

the only difference i notice when i apply the VEIL is that the light color changes from yellow to blue. Makes the lights look like LED lights

[TSi+WRX]

^ That's *very* strange.

On my setup, which is a single, and *very* light coat at that ( http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...pressions.html , you can see the reactions of some other dedicated VEIL users, there ), the lighting color is barely affected, if at all - this is from a distinctly "warm" Osram Hyper, 65-Watt, standard halogen incandescent bulb.

One of my concerns with VEIL was how much it shifted the light towards the blue/violet spectrum, and the response from The VEIL Guy, at that time, was that particular effect was much more pronounced with G2 than it would be with G4, which has borne out to be true.

Similarly, when questioned as to the effect to light transmission - both in terms of "brightness" as well as beam pattern, [b]The VEIL Guy[b]'s response was similar: that both areas were something specifically targeted in the improvement process from G2 to G4, and that although G4 makes great strides, there still would be some compromise to be had.

With what you report, snoopc, I would imagine that you would have a much heavier coat of VEIL on than I do, but you stated that you did *not* see any significant impact in terms of the output/"brightness" of your headlamps, which I don't think is possible, given even one very light coating does make a noticeable impact to lighting performance (as I noted above), which is an observation that's near universal:

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...tion-veil.html

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...-pictures.html

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...ht-output.html

[snoopyc4]

With what you report, snoopc, I would imagine that you would have a much heavier coat of VEIL on than I do, but you stated that you did *not* see any significant impact in terms of the output/"brightness" of your headlamps, which I don't think is possible, given even one very light coating does make a noticeable impact to lighting performance (as I noted above), which is an observation that's near universal:

i do have a heavy coat, about three or four layers; its necessary since the headlights are huge and highly reflective. But no NOTICEABLE reduction of light output. Wats important is that putting the VEIL on and taking it off wont hurt the light

[TSi+WRX]

i do have a heavy coat, about three or four layers; its necessary since the headlights are huge and highly reflective. But no NOTICEABLE reduction of light output.

^ That's very weird -

Almost everyone documents output degradation of some extent, based largely on the "heaviness" with which the coatings have been applied.

Are you using an aftermarket, higher-wattage, bulb to compensate?

There is a difference in how different light housings/optics "take" to VEIL, as well, with some setups returning with much less performance degradation than others - but frankly, with your setup, I am quite surprised to see that you're seeing such good results - I would have expected the reflector setup to return with less control of light spill (i.e. "worse" cutoff/patterning)....perhaps your deep-set reflector bowl is compensating?

That's very interesting, to say the least.

GTRsitkya's setup (http://www.radardetector.net/forums/439726-post25.html) is with 6 coats, IIRC - and he readily admits that it compromises, without a doubt, lighting effectiveness. With 3 to 4 coats of VEIL, I cannot imagine that you're not seeing some form of lighting alteration, at the very least, if not outright degradation.

thestaton, perhaps one of the best-recognized enthusiast "authorities" on VEIL, even cited in his G4 preview/GOL "mini-test" thread (http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...plication.html) that with just the very light applications of G4 on his test-vehicle, it really negatively affected lighting capabilities.



To say that your data is an outlier is, I think, an understatement, and I wonder if it may not be some specifics of that specific vehicle's headlamp design that may make it so.

Wats important is that putting the VEIL on and taking it off wont hurt the light

This cannot be a sure-shot statement.

We already know that claim does not hold true of G2, particularly as the vehicle ages or if the initial application is made on an "aged" lens surface:

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...eadlights.html

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...eadlights.html

And even the more recent postings of the G4 also suggests that such a sweeping claim cannot be made:

http://www.radardetector.net/forums/...move-veil.html

Given the huge variability of such episodes, and the potential of needing to physically remove material from the lens (i.e. wetsanding) in order to restore it to original, pre-VEIL condition (with no trace of any stains, etc.) - combined with the very, very specialized (and unknown construction) nature of the JDM fog-lamp assembly that xjohnx is intending to apply VEIL to.....

I simply do not think that such sweeping generalizations can be made.

[TSi+WRX]

Oh, and again, I want to highlight -

I'm not saying any of this "against" VEIL.

Everyone who knows me here - or anywhere - knows that I'm not only a believer of the product (both G2 and G4), but I'm also a true user of it ( http://www.radardetector.net/forums/436455-post43.html ). I'm *very* vocal in my support of VEIL as a "comprehensive package countermeasure," too, again as anyone who knows me can well attest to.

I've also, many times, quoted The VEIL Guy's countermeasures/road-tactics philosophy - which is very, very similar to my own.

To say that I like VEIL is, I think, an understatement.

I'm only trying to paint (no pun intended ) I true picture for xjohnx, our new member, here.

Those JDM fogs that he has are rather special - they cost dearly, and weren't just a "pop in" install, either.

I just don't want to see them ruined, first of all, and second, I don't want him to have any illusions of what VEIL may do to the light output.