Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Learn me up on aux. driving lights?

I want add-on driving lights for my '11 F250 to come on in conjunction with my high beams.

My highs add more light than the regular headlights, but doesn't throw much farther.

I think I want a pencil beam, but not too 'pencilly'. I often see trucks with 4 lights mounted, and am guessing the strategy is 2 floods and 2 pencils?

Also, Halogen or LED?

Is this for highway or just off road? You need to learn up on AK vehicle codes. Every state is different. In Idaho, for street legal you can't have more than 4 headlight beams. If your low and high beams are on at the same time, you can't use driving lights. Many newer ones have only the lows or highs on so you can use driving lights with those. 2 floods plus 2 pencils? Not street legal here. Also, none of the lights can emit more than 300 CP.

There are alternatives to getting more light other than adding aux lights.

With some vehicles you can modify the headlights to have both the high and low beams come on at the same time.

You can also upgrade the bulbs. I installed Sylvania Silverstar bulbs (not the ultra) on my truck and it made a substantial difference. I also polished the lenses and adjusted the headlights to optimize the light.

I was having problems seeing at night and especially on remote highways where there's critters. I couldn't see far enough with just the low beams to feel comfortable going 75 miles an hour. Not any more though. Sylvania says that you'll see a ~ 30% increase in distance and that's about the improvement I noticed.

I replaced just the low beam bulbs. My high beams work very good but if I did more night driving I'd replace the high beams too.

If you choose to upgrade the bulbs go with something other than Sylvania. I did some research after I bought the Sylvania bulbs and found out they have a reputation for only lasting a year or two. Not good.

I'd go LED Mike, I've got an LED light bar on my Rhino and man is that thing bright. I'm considering doing the same thing to my F250, driving in the dark heading north can be treacherous with all the moose wandering near the Parks highway.

I put silverstar bulbs in my wife's van and was disappointed with the lack of longevity.

Bulb change won't do what I want to do. I want to light up out in front when driving at night at highway speed (55 mph).

LED seems to be the future. I just don't know much about them other than they can be really bright.
Do they get the throw by focus or do you need mega-lumens to reach?

How many lumens?

I also don't want to go broke and don't need baja-off-road lighting.

I've been looking into the same thing, mounting some extra lights mostly for seeing deer.

My friend mounted some pretty small LEDs on his jeep on either side of the wind shield. They are unbelievable for lighting up the side of the road including the barrow pit.

He said he doesn't think they are legal for on road use. But for where we live and drive in Wyoming it isn't really that big of deal. On our road, where my wife likes to hit deer, there aren't many cars in the daytime let alone at night. And the fuzz is hardly ever out there.

He turns them off, much like you would your brights, whenever he sees some other car's lights approaching.

I've got a 20" lightbar with double row Cree led's, the outer 4 lights on each end are flood and the rest are spot. They are 120W and 8800 Lumens, color temp is 6k and are bright as hell.

If you've got someplace to mount them, like a brush bar or something then that would probably work pretty well but mounting them on the bumper or underneath it they might get damaged.

They make them were they are curved now and follow the lines of your vehicle. A guy I work with has a set on a brush bar on his Yota and they look nice and work well.

That's what I'm thinking of doing with my truck. Those early morning drives out to Petersville to go sledding can be treacherous, especially when there's a lot of snow. Something like this brush guard with a 30" light bar mounted on that middle bar would probably be killer.

9200 lumens each on the big ones. ARB Intensity LED's. The smaller ones are PIAA 570 LED's, not nearly as bright but good for general suburban roads. Both sets come on only with the high beams, and I have cut off switches for each pair so I can run high beams without them.

'Bender, I don't have much aux lighting experience, but do remember my dad buying a pair of 130W ProComp halogens back in about '92. He had them wired so they'd come on with his high beams or could be turned off altogether. The reflector and lens design was perfect-----------great long distance AND fill at the same time. They weren't street legal, but in ultra-rural parts of the state he ran 'em on the pavement. It was amazing how many animals were visible with those lights that would never have been seen without them.

It's hard to believe those lights are still available, but here they are: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/EXP-9130
They even come with hard covers. If/when I need some lights I'll buy the same ones just because I know how well they work. The new LED technology is impressive, but I know nothing about it yet, and these ProComps are very inexpensive in comparison for the huge light they throw.

222R

Nice badger. I bet those are good moose lights!

What is that, about $2200 in lights?

Power consumption is one reason for LEDs. Those 130w lights use around 10A each!

Close. About $1850 or so

Definitely a completely different class of lighting. I had 3 Hella Rallye 4000 pencil beams with 50W HID's on my previous truck and they too were superb, but I think these are better. Distance is on par, but better spread and no shadows.

Is that bad? All I know about electricity is it's invisible, potentially painful, and MY project require an electrician.

The pair my dad ran were on the front of a '79 Rabbit. That was the last year of the round headlights, and it actually had a cool rally car look with those 8" ProComps on the bumper. I don't know how big the alternators were on Rabbits, but I'm guessing somewhere below what's installed on today's pickups. With heavy gauge wire and a dedicated fuse I don't see the problem.

LED's are all good...except for the price. They use a fraction of the power, last much longer, and the newer ones are very bright. The prices are coming down fast, though. In a few more years, they should drop quite a bit more as technology improves.

A few years ago the meanest LED on the market was bright enough for a button on your TV or keyboard. Now they're using them to light up neighborhoods.

It's not bad 222, just high consumption compared to LEDs is all.

I had the same problem with my Jeep Wrangler. The headlights were just dim. After a little research I converted mine to accept projector style headlights. The difference was amazing. The distance probably doubled and while the light has a hotspot right where you want it, it also has a very wide beam to go with it. I'm very happy with the results.

Mike, if it were me, I'd consider doing a test drive.

Pick a set of lights from here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=LED+spot+beam

Wire them up and run them for a bit. I'd start with 2 spot beams and see how you like them.

I don't have experience with the high-end ARB and Rigid leds, and I'm sure they are awesome. But for $150 you can get an awful lot of light output, and I have been impressed with the durability of cheapo LEDs.

I ran a set on the 4-runner that were flood beams, and they were great (more reach than the stock headlights even in a flood beam). Sold them with the 4-runner. I bought another set for the skid steer and they are rather ridiculous.... but they sure are nice for plowing snow - not sure the neighbors like them though.

One thing to keep in mind - make sure your mounting is solid. Any bounce/shake/vibration in the mounting and your beams will be all over the place. A spot beam that reaches way out there is way worse. It almost looks like a flicker, and takes all the "fun" out of driving at night. Mounting brackets are one of the places a cheap light will skimp.

I'd also recommend not doing the wiring/mounting outside at -10.

ironbender;
Good afternoon to you my cyber friend, hopefully this finds you and your fine family doing well.

While I've not gone as far as Badger in auxiliary lights - very cool lights by the way sir... - I have been installing aftermarket lights on every vehicle I've ever owned, so since '77 or so.

Over that time I've used Bosch, Cibie, Hella, some made in England whose name escapes me - Wipac - and way back in the day aircraft landing lights mounted in tractor/ag type units.

Lately we've been leaning toward Hella products - I'm running Hella FF 500 driving lights on the front bumper of our pickup, with FF 75 driving lights mounted on the front of the cargo rack that are only used off road.



I really wanted to try out some LED units, but up here the prices are about triple what halogen units are and I couldn't justify that much of a difference.

The stock brights on the Dodge aren't all that bad, but the Hella's really make a huge difference to my 52 year old eyes, especially on rainy nights.

We stuck some fog 550's on the front of her '87 Cherokee and she's been very happy with them too.


Anyway sir, that's the direction we went at our place. Hopefully that was useful information to you or someone out there. Good luck with your auxiliary lights whichever way you decide and all the best to you and yours in 2015.

Dwayne

Took out a pretty good buck with my old truck on the way to the hunt camp on opening weekend many years ago. About $5k to repair it. I didn't even see it until it was in front of me, and I was towing a trailer at the time. Not much chance to slow down. My light fetish started at that time. I believe they've paid for themselves many times over since then. The last close one was about a month ago. I was able to miss a doe that was running wide open through a cotton field and into the road in front of me. She was close enough that I lost sight of her in front of the truck while braking as hard as I could. I fully expected to be wiping hair and poop off the bumper but I missed her