Here's a brief summary of this topic from my perspective:
---------------------------------------------------------

Be aware that Hella 500 lights are available in both driving light and fog
beam patterns. These are two very different applications.

Driving lights will not improve the performance of low beam headlights as
they should be wired to only come on with the high beams.

The Hella XL auxilliary lights are designed to supplement the low beam
lights and would be an good economical choice for Vanagons with stock
rectangular lights.

However, for earlier Vanagons with round headlights the best choice would be
to upgrade the stock lights with Hella Vision Plus lights. These lights will
provide excellent low and high beam performance. Many owners (myself
included) of late model Vanagons have changed their headlight configuration
to the early round light setup just to use the Vision Plus lights. This
requires scavenging some parts from a junkyard or getting one of the
imported setups (grill and headlight buckets) from South Africa.

Mark McCulley
Seattle, WA

87 syncro Westfalia w/ SA grill, Hella Vision Plus and Hella 500 fogs.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Wellhouse" <maxjoyce@IPA.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 4:58 AM
Subject: Re: Hella Driving Lights: Was:Bosch fog lights. No, no, no.

> The Hella 500 kit is a driving light kit.  The Hella XL is the kit that
> augments the low beams.  Susquehanna sells them and someone had their web
> addy posated earlier.
>
> MaxAt 04:54 PM 12/4/2002 -0800, Leon Korkin wrote:
> >I never thought about driving lights but this discussion cought my
attention
> >because i was planning to upgrade to H4 lamps. Just learning
> >about driving lights and curious if those can be used instead of H4
upgrades?
> >Will they improve lighting performance of low-beam lamps and are they
used
> >all the time or only in certain conditions?
> >TIA
> >Leon
> >85 Subwagen Cruiseship