[31zook]

After this big LED bar craze, what do people honestly think? Are they as good as a decent set of HIDs?

From what I've seen they don't work especially good over log distances, which is what I would want one for, they just spread the light out really well.

And my $70 spotties on my old LWB threw a heap of distance without much drama.

So what would you choose? LED or HID?

[SierraDan]

Halogen

[shep]

The best thing is a combination of led and hid. Hid for distance and led for spread.

This works awesome on my wife's car.

[HarryHoudini]

What are the latest Regs. regarding adding extra lights on a road registered car?,everybody tells a different story.I was told all the States agreed on standards many years ago but no one seems to know if there in force or not.

[just_cruizin]

Not exactly sure bout they need to symmetrical and I thought they had to be below the front of the bonnet for on road use as far as the light output is concerned. Legally for pedestrian impact you're strictly or allowed to fit anythIng to the outside of the vehicle

[Zook_Fan]

Lots of night wheeling = LED bar
Lots of night highway/street driving = Spotlights, halogen or HID whatever your budget suits
Lots of both = Shep's set up

As has been said the LED's aren't great for distance, not bad though, still a couple of hundred metres but do not match spotlights for getting light down the road when you want it.

[Blakey]

Who says LED's arent good for distance. i have a small torch that can shine thurther then HID spoties anyday of the week. and they are a third of the output.

LED's light is a directional light. its main light is forward in a 120-150 degree scope. reflectors that most things especally thoes LED bars use are using barely any of the LED's light to give them any output. the problem with the LED's bars for distance isnt the LED its the Reflectors they use with them.

if they used lens's as well as the reflectors then the LED's would beat them easily. and it would be simple enought to have the wide beam of them as well just by altering the lens position.

[atari4x4]

unless you can travel faster than the speed of light, i reckon a light bar would do fine, i'm tempted to grab one & not bother bolting the 170 lightforces back on.

after seeing shep's set up in action it was simply amazing, the intense flood of light from up close to 600m+ away would be perfect for the Mach 10 midnight runs.

[buzbox]

Manufacturers saying their lights can light up 1Km down the road, In my opinion is an absolute pointless claim.

When I'm night driving, I usually will be concentrating about 20-50mts ahead, And I don't know about other's but I look more on the sides of the road where the kangawallafox's are more likely to jump out from rather than just concentrating on what's in front of me.

So I've gone and upgraded from my spot / spread, standard globe $80 jobbies, which BTW are just fine but I bought 2 of the 7" HID's in spread beam and I'm wondering whether I should bother with the light bar mainly because I havn't seen how well they work up close. If I do get light bars, I'd get 2 small ones mounted on the roof pointing to the sides of the road to fill in where the spreads don't, and MAYBE some 4" spots for distance.

[bigdogdazza]

Hmmm now I have 4 narva halogen spot/spread combo on my roof for close spread pattern and 2x225 100w HID narva lights on the bullbar in spot/spread combo. I love this setup but if I were to do it again it would be LED lightbar on roof for spread up close and 2 HID in spot only up front for distance. I don't know what type driving you guys do but I travel 320+kms a day at 3am and 8pm so ALL night work. I also drive through massively too populated rural areas on tar and dirt to get to work, I don't tend to concentrate 20-50mtr ahead because at 100-120 your not goin to stop and swerving can be fatal(that's what the bullbar is for!) I have seen Roos at 200+m ahead on side of road thanks to HID and been able to safely navigate around them. I love my spotties and believe if you are doing any rural night driving they are a must along with a solid bullbar.

[Blakey]

bull bars dont really do much for a roo. might stip it bounceing up into your windscreen but its still going to decimate your car no matter if you have a bull bar or not,

[whincup]

buzbox wrote:

Manufacturers saying their lights can light up 1Km down the road, In my opinion is an absolute pointless claim..

definitely disagree with this statement. i have a set of lightforce genesis (210's) with 55w HID, running one spot and one euro beam cover... and whereas i've never actually tested it over a kilometre, i do know for a fact it makes a sign easily readable from 800m (not readable from in the car, for someone next to the sign when the car is 800m away) so IMO a kilometre is not that big of a claim... this, however, is basically in a straight line down a highway. euro beam makes the sides of the road easily visible to at least 300m ahead of the vehicle (not as well as a light bar, but still), which is more than enough unless your doing non-suzuki speeds. 1km is massively excessive, but i wouldnt hesitate to buy HID's again...

as said, best setup is definitely what shep has. btw, what happened to the front plate?

[bigal]

Most LED Bars out there have the 3 Watt leds in them Once you see the bars with 10 WATT CREE leds you wont go back to any other lights.......

Be vary carefull when buying LED LIGHT BARS as at work we have tried several brands and many do not last long .fried circuit boards,leaking lights,blown
leds weve learnt our lesson and have spent that littlte bit more and got some decent ones....

YES good ones are nearly double the price but after a year of testing led light bars of all sizes and on various cars at work im very happy with them.....

i have several of the failed led bars in bits on my bench at work ill try and get some pics up tomorrow...

[buzbox]

So a Kangaroo, emu, sheep whatever is going to stay in the same spot for about the minute (@100kph) it takes for you get there? They are unpredictable which is why I mainly concentrate a few hundred mts in front and always scanning the sides of the road. They might go away, or they might change their mind at the last second and get all kamikaze on ya.

Most of the night driving I would do is winding roads with scrub on the sides of the road so like I said, for me seeing what's 1km in front is a bit pointless. If you live in shep land where most roads are fairly dead straight, understandable.

I havn't tested them out yet, but I'm hoping that the HID Spread beam lights up the same distance as my Halogen spot which for me is far enough.

[whincup]

you're right, a kangaroo isnt going to stay still for the minute it takes to get there... but the earlier you see them the earlier you can slow down to allow extra time to react to it playing chicken in front of you. even with that much light though, i doubt anyone could pick out a kangaroo at that distance... well, i couldnt anyway.

i do quite a bit of night beach driving, and our beaches are fairly straight, and headlights dont really shine really far when its windy and blowing around sand.

[bigdogdazza]

Mmm at 1km away at night using lights any kind of definition is near impossible to see except the faint glow of road markers/signs etc, at 200m yes you can define a grey/brown object against a green/black backdrop. If you notice something like that out of the ordinary, moving or not, and driving in prime rural roo country, would you not slow down? And I DO beg to differ about bullbars, I have hit a roo at around 80kph and after thinking I destroyed my hilux all I suffered was a small dent and broken blinker lense in bullbar, without it things would definitely be nasty, and by bullbar I mean steel decent built one, not aluminium not a nudge bar. And yes in my driving career to date I would have hit more than 20 Roos, some at modest speed others at quite high speed and very scary..all with decent STEEL bullbars and all of my vehicles were still very drivable. I have hit 1 to date in my jimny with my old bullbar(cruiser bar cut n shut to fit) at around 50-60 after heavy braking and although an almighty bang only evidence of collision was hair/blood in the bar, not a huge roo but a modest size. Without the bar..... It's your call but I WONT drive rural at night without one as its asking for trouble or worse.... Swerving to avoid imminent collision, results are ALWAYS bad!
And just to add I have seen in the distance something on the road barely made out but NOT moving and as I approached and slowed and realised it was a big roo just standing there, even as I drive around it it just stood there. So yes they sometimes DON'T hop like a kamikaze in front of your car.
One thing I have learnt about Roos and drought stricken areas, they tend to congregate towards the edge of the road as this is where food tends to be more abundant because of fenced properties and the moisture tends to lay in the gutter/dish drain or whaterever as roads generally are cambered for run off.

[shep]

When you are sharing the road with Roos, horses, donkeys, camels, emus, wallabies, drunks sleeping on he road, buffaloes, etc etc it is unpossable to have enough light. Those that think you can have to much light are kidding themselves.

[bigdogdazza]

shep wrote:

When you are sharing the road with Roos, horses, donkeys, camels, emus, wallabies, drunks sleeping on he road, buffaloes, etc etc it is unpossable to have enough light. Those that think you can have to much light are kidding themselves.

Agreed! Blokes at work call my zook the UFO but I reckon its lacking LIGHT!
To me light = a bit more safety than standard!

[atari4x4]

when i picked up the new LWB from sydney & started driving it home, i actually pulled up stumps & stopped driving for the night due to not having any lighting upgrades at all... found my self constantly "out driving" the standard high beam. it just didn't feel safe & i love night driving, in 1400kms i only saw 1 roo, a heap of emu's & lots of dead cats.

as shep said, it's unpossible to have too much light.

[bigdogdazza]

Yup I hear ya! And the problem is that's all you saw! Could've been lots more!the most common thing I see and nearly every day is dead Roos right on the road..... Not removed to the side etc just laying there waiting to claim ANOTHER unwary driver!

[sideways]

Blakey wrote:

bull bars dont really do much for a roo. might stip it bounceing up into your windscreen but its still going to decimate your car no matter if you have a bull bar or not,

Dafuq are you smoking?

[31zook]

Okay, I think buzbox makes a pretty good point, although its cool to be able to see 1K down the road we are normally scanning the immediate 200meters ahead. And having a spread across the road, and up the embankments would be a good thing.

So, what's a decent LED bar?

[bigdogdazza]

I would definitely think something of considerable quality(not elcheapo) and around the 12,000 lumen or greater will satisfy. Mate at work has 16000lumen led bar can't remember the brand name but he bought it from 4x4 shop cost $800 but it is super bright up to around 80m and starts to fade off from there.

[Mattmorgo]

Can someone explain the difference between single row and double row light bars. Your average person would think the double row bar would be better right? Then what's the point in a single row bar?

[bigdogdazza]

I would think more LEDs = more coverage and more light. I have my eye on one that's 4 rows puts out 24,000 lumens, as stated above... You can't have enough light! There are also differences in led wattage per led and reflector quality is VERY important. Big watt led and crap reflector = poor distance and performance. This is the same with ANY light.... Poor reflector= crap light, there are a lot of different globes/wattage lights out there but in reality it doesn't mean that much, it's the reflector that concentrates and projects the light and I would imagine the same with led light bars. You must remember you get what you pay for.
I am fitting out my tourer with lighting soon and 2 x lightforce xgt 100w HID on bullbar in spot config and 24,000lumen lightbar should do the trick on the rack. Costly? Yup! Around $1600 for both plus fitting, but worth every penny as they are bullet proof!
As for single, double,quad rows etc they have many configurations and vary greatly in length as well, just depending on what and where your fitting it and just how much light you need and obviously what your prepared to spend?

[sando]

Have heard of guys with LED bars being defected due to it being illegal to have an odd number of lights and realistically it is 1 light (even though it is a fark load of little lights making one awesome eye burner). I have HID narvas on my zook as the previous owner had them there and honestly my old halogen lightforce 240s would beat them for light. I will be getting one of the 21.5 inch light bars when funds allow and will run the risk on the defect....

[atari4x4]

have heard of guys being defected or read it on the net somewhere?

bit like having roof lights for 6+ years & being defected, but they DID NOT do me for roof lights nor mention it at all.

[sando]

Well because you didn't get done, it must mean it isn't illegal...

[Matthew]

Roof lights aren't illegal.

The ADR was changed a number of years ago, I believe it was due to pressure from Jeep, so they could release the kj Cherokee Renegade.

[Zook_Fan]

What I was told when I questioned a DOT inspector about roof lights was that there must be a series of switches to turn it on. It can't be on when the high beam isn't on, needs a separate switch in the cabin to turn it off and it is supposed to have another switch located somewhere that it can't activated from inside the car (under the bonnet or something). The purpose of the last switch was so you had to get out and pop the bonnet to turn the light on when you were off the road as they were not legal for on road use.

That was straight from his mouth, I've found nothing to back it up online.