Off-Road Lighting Ideas

[Trailmaker]

Good to hear you’re happy with it!

I wrote about it on an another thread and will again when I write my build thread soon.
This is my 2nd truck with it. Best wired choice for the money.

 

[Scotts26]

Alright folks tell me what you think of my light bar grill mounting solution that I put together with a little southern engineering lol. Apologies for no lit pic but I’m still waiting on my switches.

I saw a guy on Instagram had one mounted in this location and after looking at my truck figured it couldn’t be that hard.

Basically slightly shaped the mounts that come with Baja Designs S8 on a bench grinder to give me a little clearance then made some really simple backing plates with some metal I had laying around and bolted it together with some common hardware.Gave all the brackets and hardware a few coats of flat black after a test fit.

Hardest part of the job was removing the grill assembly but even that’s not too bad just a lot of fasteners lol. I could possibly do a write up on the install/grill removal If anyone is interested.

 

[MTRamFan]

I like it! I'd appreciate learning how you tackled the grille removal.

 

[Trailmaker]

Got the bar in. Waiting on the lights now.

 

[Tpettit]

I put the Randy Ellis Design light bar on my 18 PW. Didn't want to go with a full bumper replacement in order to be able to mount full sized Aux lighting. Pleasantly surprised at how stout this light bar is! I put 2 6" dia KC Highlite slimline halogens on the 2 inside brackets, and 2 3"x4" Rough Country wide angle LED's on the outside brackets. Lights up the night enough for me! Sidebar: If you live in an area with snow, freezing rain ect.. halogens will melt the frozen stuff off your lights, LED.. not so much.

 

[Scotts26]

Got the bar in. Waiting on the lights now.

View attachment 208351

View attachment 208352

View attachment 208353

View attachment 208354

Cool! Curious to see what lights you went with.

 

[Nick_rp]

Not mine but ive always loved the roll cage light bar. Something about it just seems so aggressive and i love it

 

[MTRamFan]

Cool! Curious to see what lights you went with.

#metoo

 

[MTRamFan]

Trailmaker, how difficult was the install?

Reviews on the previous generation allude to the bolts being too short.

The price on the previous generation was $199 and this one looks like $349 according to the pre-order link. Is that correct?

 

[Mace Peveler]

#metoo

Wrong movement...

 

[Trailmaker]

Cool! Curious to see what lights you went with.

#metoo

busy work week for me but I have both vision X and Ridge to mount and test before I’m certain. Function is priority. I will check back in with pictures and details in a few days.

 

[Elkman]

The higher the lights the less bounce back and glare you will have but you also need to check the state regs on lights. Best to have lights on separate control switches so you can make adjustments in the field.

I like have a "driving light" that is a super bright bumper level light with 3-4 time the brightness of my headlights. Being low it can cut through fog and haze and I do not need to have it light the width of the road, only my lane or section of a trail.

I have used standard lights on cab mounted bars but today I would investigate LED ones and be careful to check the light pattern and intensity provided. With current 1500 class trucks the headlights are much worse than with older larger headlights and they can use help when offroad or in rural areas.

 

[Trailmaker]

Trailmaker, how difficult was the install?

Reviews on the previous generation allude to the bolts being too short.


The price on the previous generation was $199 and this one looks like $349 according to the pre-order link. Is that correct?

You have to take out 3 bolts on each side. 2 for the tow hooks/winch and one for the winch. The instructions that come with it are good but is not for a PW because if you pull out all 6 bolts at the same time the winch will fall out. So do the tow hooks first, put the bar in place then the hooks back in. Put the back bolt in then you can pull the smaller bolt that holds the winch. Then there is a plate that will go in place and the 2 bolts back on each side. Pretty simple. Only problem I found was the tow hooks were torque past the ability of my 3/4 drive. I had to use a 1” ratchet to break loose the bolts.

 

[kurek]

Can't really tell anything about how a light illuminates the road ahead of you by taking a picture of the light itself that's like trying to judge how good dinner tastes by how many calories it has.

 

[Scotts26]

Can't really tell anything about how a light illuminates the road ahead of you by taking a picture of the light itself that's like trying to judge how good dinner tastes by how many calories it has.

In my experience It’s hard to get an accurate representation of the light fields and intensity of these lights with regular pics. I like when they do overhead drone footage comparisons.

 

[kurek]

I like when they do overhead drone footage comparisons.

Yeah those seem to be about the best representation I've seen so far, takes a lot of subjectivity out of the demonstration. Hard to do with a camera in any case; for example if I set my mirrorless camera in full manual mode, white balance it, then try to video lights from the driver's seat (or from next to the vehicle parallel to the driver's seat looking forward) - the recorded footage still looks absolutely nothing like what I saw in person and it's pretty much useless.

That makes shopping tough too. You can see a set of lights that claim they have a kajillion lumens but until you've pulled an all nighter driving with them it's hard to tell if they're going to give you a headache from the color or have you squinting past dust on your windshield, etc.

 

[sbarron]

Yeah those seem to be about the best representation I've seen so far, takes a lot of subjectivity out of the demonstration. Hard to do with a camera in any case; for example if I set my mirrorless camera in full manual mode, white balance it, then try to video lights from the driver's seat (or from next to the vehicle parallel to the driver's seat looking forward) - the recorded footage still looks absolutely nothing like what I saw in person and it's pretty much useless.

That makes shopping tough too. You can see a set of lights that claim they have a kajillion lumens but until you've pulled an all nighter driving with them it's hard to tell if they're going to give you a headache from the color or have you squinting past dust on your windshield, etc.

I've driven many dark nights with my kajillion lumens and I have to say, I wouldn't want a kajjllion-and-one because if the road sighs were any brighter, it would be an issue.
View media item 25139