Talk to me about lights!

whec716

Observer
I need to be educated on LED's.

I'm going to be putting on a new front bumper for my 2016 Tacoma. Bumper has a slot for a 30 inch LED bar.
1) How do I determine what color to get? white or amber
2) How do I determine what pattern/beam to get? Flood? driving? etc

Also, how did you determine what amount of light is sufficient?
 

PhulesAU

Explorer
Where you going to use it?? if it's head light height or lower I'd say Driving if you can get one like that. Otherwise the spot / flood combo, spots across middle with floods at each end. this will get you distance and light for cornering and cross roads / hunting turns and signs.
 

LumpyCanuck

Observer
I need to be educated on LED's.how did you determine what amount of light is sufficient?

Just keep adding lights until it's light enough to not be scared of the dark!!

All kidding aside, what one person deems sufficient may not work for others. When racking on lights tho, keep in mind power draw(only becomes an issue with big monster LEDs)

White light is a good general light for general night driving. Amber works better in low visibility situation such as snow, fog, or crazy dusty. Something to do with the amber light cutting through and not reflecting off the snow/dust/fog as much. Most light manufacturers accept clip on filters now, so no need to fret over white or amber!

As for beam selection, spot will project further down the road or trail, but just down the road or trail. Flood will light up more around you, but not as far ahead. Spot is great for fast travel speeds, as you can see what will be coming up sooner. Flood is great if you need to see the sides of the trail. Again, more companies are making combo light bars, with a spot sense array in the centre, and flood type lenses on the sides, to do each job respectably.

Up here, 60% of all vehicles(yep, even gramma in her camry) run an led bar. come winter its dark 14hrs a day, and moose are surprisingly indistinguishable from trees without heavy illumination. being most are used on highway as a fog/aux light, spot is a common pattern. Us that use the resource/gas field roads, get a spot flood combo.

hope it helps!! Good Luck!!
 

mosovich

Observer
Who makes a good spot flood combo? I was thinking like on the ARB lights, getting one spot and one flood.. Would that work? Not that I can afford ARB lights, but some other brands.. Some came with my bumper, but I don't know what lumens they are, but I do know they are floods as they made no difference in distance..
 

rickashay

Explorer
My vote goes to Baja Designs. I've ran a lot of different lights over time: Cheap Hella's, Hella's with HID Conversions, Various Lightforce lights, Chinese LED's, and even Rigid's. I recently went with some Baja Design XL Pros and have never looked back. The quality is outstanding and they have excellent customer service. Made in the USA and the best part is that the front cover is removable with an allen key and you can swap beam patterns and colors in 2 minutes. THey are not cheap but even their small squadron lights are VERY impressive.

I've been planning on doing a "review" on them in one of my build thread posts. Maybe I should get on it sooner than later...
 

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