Need some real world suggestions on lighting options.

[Autism Family Travels]

I think you are spot on with the 500s. if you want awesome long range lights, get the 500 driving beams (NOT FF), install a set of 55w 4300k (the color temp that is nice and provides the MOST LIGHT, not crappy blue color with less lumens), and enjoy a light that was not super bucks to buy, but will punch a HUGE HOLE in the night. Do not go above 55w as the reflected light from road signs will be to much...speaking from experience btw. Just two of the 500s on the front of my jeep was everything I needed for safe night driving in highly populated moose country. It's common to see 20 or more on a 2 hr drive to the airport...These two lights out powered a 50inch rigid bar my friend had on his jeep at the time to where you could only see the rigid light in areas that light is not needed like the tops of trees and way way way off to the sides of the vehicle, where you don't need light.

I am ditching all my LED garbage and going back to halogen and HID. LED is ok for signal lights and close range but it does not have good color or power for long range lighting.

 

[MMc]

I love 5k LEDs all my lights are slaved to my hi-beams. Where I drive we deal with free range horses and cows that hang on the road at night . I understand the HID and Halogen lights and their color, I find a quality LED with colonnaded reflector with a cover is better for changing color.
Blue light travels father than yellow and reds, think of the ocean and the last color that gets filtered out. The first to go is red than down through the spectrum to violet of visible light.

 

[Cpol]

Buy once with great warranty.. rigid industries

 

[64Trvlr]

I posted this somewhere on here before I think.

I've been running these Grote lights for about 30 years. The 2 forward facing ones are 250K CP spot beams for reaching down the road, the 2 pointing at about 45* are 35K cp wide beams for picking up objects and eyes on the sides of the road . In the back I have these 2 in my bumper to help me when I'm backing up or working behind my Jeep.

 

[LostWoods]

Buy once with great warranty.. rigid industries View attachment 180894

I did the same but with BD... Rigid always looked slightly too blue to me and I prefer the 5k color temps. Though I will say, those Adapt bars made it a real hard choice because those are just flat out awesome.

 

[bgenlvtex]

LED can be had in any color temperature you want, any throw configuration you want, are more durable, and lower electrical load than halogen or HID, LED is superior in every way.

Good LED however is not cheap, which seems to be the rubbing point for most people. "Lights are lights and these on Amazon for $200, are the same thing!", is the farthest thing from the truth.

Need low output, inexpensive LED strip lighting? Amaxon/Ebay is your only needed stop because no matter how much money you throw at it the outcome will be roughly the same.

Need proper driving/trail lights? Then buy once and cry once. KC, Baja Designs, Rigid, Diode Dynamics all provide quality, dependable lighting products that are vastly superior to any halogen on the market.

Lighting is for me critical, I'm getting older, nighttime vision is fading, I have light colored eyes. As a result I have spent the good money where it is indicated, and where I could have economize as much as possible.

As with everything there are no absolutes, but accept the fact that good, dependable lighting won't be cheap, determine what you really need, and do it right the first time

 

[smritte]

I hate not seeing well at night. I know the OP asked about adding light's. The best light improvement I have done to date is convert my headlights to Morimoto HID projectors. Next was to fill in the gaps with a Rigid bar mounted on my grill. The LED bar didn't give me much more other than a little distance. The headlights on the other hand light have a great cutoff, focusing the light where I need it. I almost get 90 degrees out the sides on high so no need for ditch lights. I can see very well for about 30 to 40 yards and light the road reflectors up as far as I can see. The light bar does a better job of lighting up a large object more than 30 yard's but doesn't really add to what I need which is within 30 yards. If I run just the bar, I have more dark shadows close to me (ruts and holes).

My advice is, work with what you have first. Get your headlights up to par and fill in what else you need with add on lights. Most vehicles come with poor factory lights. Learn about cutoff and color. Everything I have always run is no higher than 5k.
Remember its not about watts or lumens, its about LUX. Usable light. 10 million lumens does you no good if it just scatters.

 

[BlueTinCan]

For all you northern folks, has anyone had any issues with LED’s not generating enough heat and icing up in bad weather?

 

[MOAK]

For all you northern folks, has anyone had any issues with LED’s not generating enough heat and icing up in bad weather?

In short - no. I learned long ago that a defroster will ice up the windshield in a heavy snow. Just heating the cabin down low, and nothing on defrost and no icing up will occur. Since LEDs don’t heat up, then nothing would melt, hence, no icing up.

 

[Andy G]

Ended up getting some Hella 700’s to start with. I always had good luck and performance with the 500’s and the 700’s fit my big a$$ van better!

 

[LostWoods]

For all you northern folks, has anyone had any issues with LED’s not generating enough heat and icing up in bad weather?

Aftermarket LEDs tend to be pretty warm so I don't think icing is an issue. Maybe with KC since it's more a reflector housing but I haven't heard anyone mention it as an issue with Rigid or BD style lights.

 

[J0ng_wick]

I have bd and rigid, love them both but prefer bd. Looking to maybe try diode dynamics

 

[Autism Family Travels]

I had both converted stock JK headlights with LED and Truck Lites. Both lced up and could not melt snow. I took them out and went to Hella ECE's with HID and they never iced up once. So, Yes, LED does not melt snow.

 

[SnookSniper]

I enjoy night driving. The woods are far less crowded, and I consider it safer on narrow trails. You can always see the other guy coming way in advance - unless he was irresponsible enough not to upgrade his lighting. As with many things, it's better to have and not need than need and not have.

My previous Silverado (2007.5 NNBS crew cab 4x4 LTZ G80, 6.5" lift, 35s, etc) needed a serious light upgrade. The first time I wound up in the woods at night, I really couldn't see anything. The factory lights - even on an LTZ with fogs - were almost completely useless. Having experimented with a lot of LED headlight upgrades, the only ones I've had good luck with have been from SuperBrightLEDs. I can't tell you how many times I had to disassemble the whole front end of that truck to get at the stupid inaccessible headlights. I wound up upgrading the low beams, high beams, and fogs with SBL LEDs, and it made a world of difference. Pretty bright with decent cutoffs. Also, they stopped burning out. I don't recommend cheap LED headlights in general, and certainly not in difficult-to-access headlights. Good LED headlights can be very good and last much longer than the junk they sell at auto parts stores, but you have to be mindful of your cutoffs and not blinding drivers. No one likes that guy. Especially if you leveled or lifted your vehicle, you need to adjust your headlights afterwards. In this picture you can see some little Nilight LED pods I wired up to the reverse lights. They could have been brighter, especially with Florida tint, but they still had zero moisture when I sold the truck.



The single biggest upgrade I did, though, was to add a cheapie 32" double-row LED bar to the top of the front grill. Ran a jumper from the remote to the high beams, wired up to the battery, and never even had to go through the firewall. My guess is this single mod would solve 90% of people's aux lighting needs - when it was on, the world in front of the truck turned into daylight out to 150 yards or so. Maybe not the best throw in the world, but plenty for most people doing 10mph down the trail. This can be done to virtually any vehicle, given a bit of creativity. The LED bar is way down below the hood line, so you have zero issues with glare.



I recently put a single-row LED bar behind the grill of my Forester. It's an SBL bar, but it's not putting out all that much useful light back there. I still need to fine-tune the aim, but I suspect that it's just losing a bunch of light back behind the bumper - something to consider before hiding the LED bar behind your grill. Yes, it looks cool.

If you step up from Nilight and AuxBeam, you get to SuperBrightLEDs. SBL stuff is probably the exact same lights you get from the other manufacturers, but they seem to do their own in-house quality control. Their failure rate has been zero in my experience, and I've had their stuff on 3-4 cars now. From there, you can step it up to Rigid or Baja Designs. I went with Rigid D-Series Pros for my ditch lights.

Diode Dynamics is another name to consider. I'm running their SS3 Pro fog lights, and they're pretty amazing. Razor-sharp cutoffs and incredible brightness. If you're looking for top of the line on-road stuff, I think DD is the move. Their TIR system seems to put the most light in the boxes needed to keep them DOT legal. For offroad stuff... I'll have to try out one of their LED bars; I can't comment for now. The driving pattern on their LED bars seems very useful for rally car type things; someday I may upgrade my SBL bar to a DD bar.

No affiliation with any of these companies, btw.

 

[Autism Family Travels]

I enjoy night driving. The woods are far less crowded, and I consider it safer on narrow trails. You can always see the other guy coming way in advance - unless he was irresponsible enough not to upgrade his lighting. As with many things, it's better to have and not need than need and not have.

My previous Silverado (2007.5 NNBS crew cab 4x4 LTZ G80, 6.5" lift, 35s, etc) needed a serious light upgrade. The first time I wound up in the woods at night, I really couldn't see anything. The factory lights - even on an LTZ with fogs - were almost completely useless. Having experimented with a lot of LED headlight upgrades, the only ones I've had good luck with have been from SuperBrightLEDs. I can't tell you how many times I had to disassemble the whole front end of that truck to get at the stupid inaccessible headlights. I wound up upgrading the low beams, high beams, and fogs with SBL LEDs, and it made a world of difference. Pretty bright with decent cutoffs. Also, they stopped burning out. I don't recommend cheap LED headlights in general, and certainly not in difficult-to-access headlights. Good LED headlights can be very good and last much longer than the junk they sell at auto parts stores, but you have to be mindful of your cutoffs and not blinding drivers. No one likes that guy. Especially if you leveled or lifted your vehicle, you need to adjust your headlights afterwards. In this picture you can see some little Nilight LED pods I wired up to the reverse lights. They could have been brighter, especially with Florida tint, but they still had zero moisture when I sold the truck.

View attachment 203592

The single biggest upgrade I did, though, was to add a cheapie 32" double-row LED bar to the top of the front grill. Ran a jumper from the remote to the high beams, wired up to the battery, and never even had to go through the firewall. My guess is this single mod would solve 90% of people's aux lighting needs - when it was on, the world in front of the truck turned into daylight out to 150 yards or so. Maybe not the best throw in the world, but plenty for most people doing 10mph down the trail. This can be done to virtually any vehicle, given a bit of creativity. The LED bar is way down below the hood line, so you have zero issues with glare.

View attachment 203595

I recently put a single-row LED bar behind the grill of my Forester. It's an SBL bar, but it's not putting out all that much useful light back there. I still need to fine-tune the aim, but I suspect that it's just losing a bunch of light back behind the bumper - something to consider before hiding the LED bar behind your grill. Yes, it looks cool.

If you step up from Nilight and AuxBeam, you get to SuperBrightLEDs. SBL stuff is probably the exact same lights you get from the other manufacturers, but they seem to do their own in-house quality control. Their failure rate has been zero in my experience, and I've had their stuff on 3-4 cars now. From there, you can step it up to Rigid or Baja Designs. I went with Rigid D-Series Pros for my ditch lights.

Diode Dynamics is another name to consider. I'm running their SS3 Pro fog lights, and they're pretty amazing. Razor-sharp cutoffs and incredible brightness. If you're looking for top of the line on-road stuff, I think DD is the move. Their TIR system seems to put the most light in the boxes needed to keep them DOT legal. For offroad stuff... I'll have to try out one of their LED bars; I can't comment for now. The driving pattern on their LED bars seems very useful for rally car type things; someday I may upgrade my SBL bar to a DD bar.

No affiliation with any of these companies, btw.

View attachment 203594

I think you are getting whats going to come from a cheaper light bar. Rigid, vision X and Baja Designs are really the only LED lights I would even use. The rest just don't have the punch.