Auxiliary HID lights

I'm looking at getting some HID lights to mount behind the grill of my Tacoma. I'm looking at the Lightforce Striker 170 with a 70 watt bulb and the Venom 170 with the 50 watt bulb. The Lightforce USA website is lackluster in it's detail. Some sources claim the Striker has an internal adjustment to change it from a spot to flood. Does anybody have any experience with theses lights and is that something the Striker can actually do, or is it dependent on changing the filter on the light?

I'm leaning towards the Venom lights since they have an internal ballast and an improved mounting system. I want more of a flood or driving pattern instead of a spot or pencil beam. I'm not doing high speed night driving so a wider shorter beam would be better, especially since these will be my only forward facing lights. I have some Rigid Dually lights that I'm going to mount on the front, but they are going to be pointed a little out to the sides and not straight ahead.

Input anybody?
 

kojackJKU

Autism Family Travellers!
The lightforce allows you to dial the bulb back and forth in the housing causing the beam to go wider and narrower. Think a mag lite in it application. I would jump on the lightforce over venom. Just my opinion but after seeing how they are, I would totally get those. If you go with the LF, you will not need the little cubes. you won't even be able to see them over the sheer power of the HID light force lights.
 

Hilldweller

SE Expedition Society
How much room do you have in there?

And why do you want high-dollar lights? They're really only worth the cheez if you're planning on high speed...
For slow speed, get some cheap HIDs or build budget set like Kojack did.
I've seen the 8" and 4" round Chinese HIDs at Ollie's for around $30/pair. They're excellent wheeling lights.
 
To clarify these would be mostly for middle of nowhere two lane highways driving 50-60mph. I don't need the pencil or spot beams because I'm not driving 100+mph. I want a bit more distance over the halogen brights and some additional width to see anything that's going to jump out in front of the truck. I don't want a LED bar because I'm not a fan of the LED color. I have Rigid Dually cubes and from the information I have found the temperature is ~5700k. I would prefer HID and am willing to spend the money on quality.

The Lightforce Venom are non-adjustable and depend on a diffusing cover to broaden the beam from a spot to a flood. The Lightforce Striker adjusts from flood to spot, but also has the covers available. The Venom is 50 watt and the striker is 70 watt. I'm not sure how much of a difference the extra 20 watts is going to make.

The other light I'm looking at is the Hella 4000 Rallye. It's only 35 watt, but comes in dedicated beam patters. One of those is a driving beam pattern which seems like it would be better suited for my purpose. There isn't any information on Hella's website about how well sealed it is, which i find worrying.
 
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Buddha.

Finally in expo white.
I have Hella non hid's in cornering and euro. For some reason the wires for one of the lights was much thinner guage than the other. Both are 100w lights. I found that worring as well.
 

Hilldweller

SE Expedition Society
...
The other light I'm looking at is the Hella 4000 Rallye. It's only 35 watt, but comes in dedicated beam patters. One of those is a driving beam pattern which seems like it would be better suited for my purpose. There isn't any information on Hella's website about how well sealed it is, which i find worrying.
Get the Hella 4000 Rallye Eurobeam with the 100w bulb from Susquehanna Motorsports. Wide, even spread of light without significant hotspots. Not too spendy. Easy to replace. CRI is nearly 100%.
Only drawback is that they're quite large.
These are excellent driving lights, supplemental highbeams. I thought you were looking for offroad lights. I never recommend HID for driving lights.
 

kojackJKU

Autism Family Travellers!
I use mine the same way, hella 500s, 55w HID in 4300k, nice color, no blue ****, great spread, great distance. I can travel much faster than I do with my lights but with so many BIG animals on our roads I will stick to 55mph in the night. Also, make sure they are triggered with your high beams so that you can shut them off quickly for on coming traffic. Where I live, There are not many people on the roads at night, so having hid as driving lights is not a big a deal as if there is a place where you are constantly flicking them on and off. Even then, its only a second or two and they are on full power. My setup is cheap, reliable, and has great light output with no hot spots or cold spots etc. nice even spread. The best part, unless your looking for it, you don't even know they are HID, keeps the skeety thieves away.

Also, My 500s have been on 3 vehicles since 2008, the same lights, same balasts, just new bulbs last year. They have about 400,000 on them all together in all sorts of **** weather and driving conditions. and they still look like new.
 

Buddha.

Finally in expo white.
Get the Hella 4000 Rallye Eurobeam with
the 100w bulb from Susquehanna Motorsports
. Wide, even spread of light without significant hotspots. Not too spendy. Easy to replace. CRI is nearly 100%.
Only drawback is that they're quite large.
These are excellent driving lights, supplemental highbeams. I thought you were looking for offroad lights. I never recommend HID for driving lights.

Are those bulbs any different the the 100w bulbs that come with the lights?
 
I'm looking at the KC Pro Sport HID lights. Does anybody have experience with these? Direct from KC they are a set of 35 watt lights for ~340. That's a lot more than cheap china mart lights, but much less than the Lightforce or Hella lights. They don't list what temperature they are on their website, but for the money I might have to give them a try.
 

kojackJKU

Autism Family Travellers!
I am guessing they are 6000K as most every light maker has a hard on for blue light. That is easily fixed with a set of new blubs.
 

Hilldweller

SE Expedition Society
I'm looking at the KC Pro Sport HID lights. Does anybody have experience with these? Direct from KC they are a set of 35 watt lights for ~340. That's a lot more than cheap china mart lights, but much less than the Lightforce or Hella lights. They don't list what temperature they are on their website, but for the money I might have to give them a try.
I wouldn't want to pay even that much for HID but they are plenty bright. They're more robust than the China lights and have a better HID capsule.
Are you looking at the spots or the spread pattern?
 
Spread pattern. I was looking at the KC Pro Sport gravity LED lights. The temperature is 5k, but the HID version spread pattern still significantly out distances the LED spot version. The LED version is about the same price as the LED version. Still leaning towards the HID. I just need to figure out a way to mount them. I'm thinking about drilling a couple holes in each side of the Tacoma's grill next to the headlights and mounting them flush with the grill. I still need something to actually mount them to though.
 

meental

Observer
I have 5 of the 6" know pro sport hid and the bulbs are around 4500k-5000k, they almost match the 4300k hid I have installed in the morimoto projectors in my headlights.

I also got mine from amazon during a sale, they were about $240 a pair.
9323af93334df26515e4b18c95023d16.jpg


Sent from my RTT while stargazing
 
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I have 5 of the 6" know pro sport hid and the bulbs are around 4500k-5000k, they almost match the 4300k hid I have installed in the morimoto projectors in my headlights.

I also got mine from amazon during a sale, they were about $240 a pair.
9323af93334df26515e4b18c95023d16.jpg


Sent from my RTT while stargazing

What do you think of them? Spot or flood? I've had a hard time finding anybody with actual experience with them.
 

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