fog vs driving lights

[digglesworth]

So for those of you that have off road lights, what's your opinions on the different beams. I'm looking to upgrade the 2 on my brushguard, add 2 to the roof (forward) and 2 (rear) to the roof. My thought was to use fogs on the brushguard to flood the front of the vehicle, driving lights on the roof for range and possibly fogs on the rear to flood the rear for backing up and such... What setups are you guys using and what combinations work where? Just looking for opinions here...

 

[Ron46]

I have spots on the front of my truck on the brush guard and roof, and I have a set of floods in the back. If you want, you could do a combo led bar for your brush guard so you get the flood and spot in one.

 

[Mb30sdl]

I mounted 2 10" led hid in the middle of roof rack as pencil beam.
2 rigid dully 3030 lum on outside of roof rack with WIDE beam (similar to flood)
2 rigid dully on each side of roof rack DEFUSED as area lighting

And u can get defferent colored covers or these

 

[digglesworth]

I like the idea of LEDs but they're so dang pricey. The rigids are super sweet. Idealy I'd like to use two of those rigids as floods for the rear. I see a ton of rigid knock offs on eBay... Tempting but I'm skeptical...

 

[evldave]

I think it depends on your usage. Do you like to drive fast at night offroad? Pencil beams will give you a lot more reaction time. Do you like to go slower and maybe even crawl in the dark? Floods work better for coverage. A mix like you've described works well for many situations.

From a cost perspective, LED can be expensive, I have a mix of cheap tractor lights from Northern Tool for very close-in light (they work fine since I don't use them at much speed) and a set of Hella Floods if I want to go faster. I've also go a set of pencil beam KCs in my garage when I get around to it - but I don't do a lot of high-speed night driving (deer meet hummer, hummer meet deer ). I used a cheapo $20 flood set for the rear and they work awesome.

Some other things to think about:

Use one size wiring more than you need (or the wiring harness that came with the lights). The size of wire has a significant impact on the brightness of the lights. I use 10ga to all my lights (all at 55W per light).
Check your local laws about using the lights at night on regular roads. Some states allow aux lights, others don't (and those that do generally require they be within a certain distance of the ground, far as I know there are no states that allow use of roof-mounted lights on roads).
Check local laws for light covers. I didn't know they were required and years ago got popped for not having covers (stupid if you ask me).

 

[Mb30sdl]

Good point but LEDs use a lot less energy, my 10" are ANZO lights they have 18ga wires and no relays. Plus they not that expensive, I think I paid $160 per light. As for chinese lights some of them are made in same factory as rigid but optics are what makes all the difference. Anzo doesn't do flood patern.

 

[digglesworth]

I don't want to over-tax my alternator with a bunch of 100w lights all over my truck. I had a liberty renegade with the 4 aux lights on the top, similar to the factory H3 2-light setup above the windshield... They were great for remote back roads in deer season or letting some idiot know he just cut me off. I don't believe we have cover laws where I'm from. I never got any crap for not having the covers on those lights. I do camp a lot so backing in to the site and hittin the rear lights to unload would be great or just being able to shine some light on what I'm about to back into would be nice. I got the cheap set workin this afternoon and they are real cheap. I might just replace those with some KCs for now. I like the idea of 100w lights but don't wanna put the strain on the alternator. The flip side is I don't know if the 55w will put out enough light to justify the time, work and money.

 

[Mb30sdl]

I have some pics with side lights on in my build thread. It's not outside just in dark warehouse. These Rigid are great but pricey and pair runs on 15 amp fuse.

 

[digglesworth]

I'm in the process of putting an aux fuse block in and the one I'm using has 6 slots so that should give me plenty of room to add banks of lights. Now if I could just win the lottery so I can afford my wish list. Lol

 

[evldave]

The stock alternator puts out 160 (or 165?) Amps...more than enough to power even regular halogen lights (if you have 8x100W lights, that's still only 66 amps +/-). Granted the 160A rating is at idle, but there's generally a lot of power left over if you are using them while driving (at idle, if I light up all 8 55W lights at once I can see a little flicker, but if the engine is revving at all there's no noticeable change). LED is certainly the way to go if you can afford it, for both durability & power usage (total brightness is all a matter of how many/how powerful your lights are). As MB30 already said - the components of the lights are all probably made in the same factory, but how they are reflected makes a HUGE difference with LEDs. If you decide to plunk down the $$ for LED, see if you can find someone with a set near you to see how they look - every manufacturer will have a different light pattern (there's a thread here or somewhere else on this topic).

Also, if you are running all your lights off the 6 circuit fuse box, make sure your feeder line for the box is large enough to handle the total power of the lights. I use 6GA wire to my extra fuse panel and that seems to do fine (it's probably overkill). Also, fuse that as close to the main battery as possible (using a larger fuse, like a 80A).

 

[digglesworth]

Thanks for that info Dave. I plan on using 8 gauge to the block... That's the size tap on the Stinger battery terminals I ordered. I didn't think to put an inline fuse in the feed from the battery. I'll def look into that now. I may use a combo of 100s for the forward facing and 55s for the rear facing. Does anyone know how much the H3 draws at idle using just the basics (headlights, taillights, instrument panels, etc)???

 

[Portager]

I have yellow/green HID fog lights and they put out a lot of light. They light up the close in like daylight and provide more light at distance than the my UltraStar high beams. The yellow/green light penetrated fog and dust better than white or blue. What I have found is that you want some lights above your eyeballs, i.e. on the roof, that light up close in to illuminate inside the holes. When all your lights are below your line of sight you get dark shadows in the holes that make them appear deeper than they are. When driving with a group the roof lights reflect off the dust and effectively blind you. Also, you have to be careful of glare off the hood. I believe that the roof lights should be mounted far enough behind the front corner of the roof so that the shadow from the roof shadows the hood to eliminate glare. This should work better with the single row LED lights. The dual row lights will have two shadow lines and would need to be mounted further back, in which case the lower row would be blocked close in.