Halogen, HID, LED... Let's talk off road lighting
 

I'm leaving this forum and have deleted all my work in this thread.

I have 2 fogs on my bumper, 2 fogs on my roof, and 2 euros on my roof. Quite bright enough for me :)

All Hella 4000s

i have a 42" LED bar on my roof. no pics of it running on the disco yet, as im waiting to grab a factory switch for the install.

heres a pic of it lit on top of my old XJ. its bright.
Attachment 56870

and heres my thread over on a XJ forum comparing it to my other lights...
LED Lightbar vs. Headlights w/ Pics - NAXJA Forums -::- North American XJ Association

IMO I'd go Halogens for aesthetics, function, and value. Round only because they project the light better (if its a halogen), and the bulbs are cheap. Floods/fogs for bumper and spots for a rack, if you don't have a rack, the floods only imo. I'll have to get a picture of my brothers truck, he has that setup and it's a versatile set up.


Most LED's on the market are overpriced old tech cool white colored turds. I work with LED's and they probably buy their LED's for 5$ a foot... maybe. The cool white isn't good for the eyes either. The new LED strips that's coming from our friends in china now is good stuff, just not the entire fixtures coming from them are.

meh... my buddy works for the company i got my lightbar from and he's told me plenty of the "dirt" on the companies making/branding/selling them. for under 500 bucks, i have 22,000+ lumens. its actually laughable the amount of output it has. a single hella 5000 halogen is 100 bucks, and 5 of those wouldnt even come close to the output of my lightbar.

Grab a $15 basic electronic circuit book, sheet metal, tin snips, rtv, wire and butt connectors, china led flashlights bulk on ebay, and for $500 you could light up the NYFD three times over. The money they make on lighting is even worse then the home theater/speaker market. When I worked at Circuit City for a time we got employee discount plus a 10% shipping/stock fee, if you found a pair of Bose, Yamaha or Polk that DIDNT have atleast a 75% markup from store cost to retail............. cables too... a $39.99 monster cable gold plated HDMI set you grab when you buy a TV cost was about $6.

all i hear is hate. i just got out of the custom home automation/home theater game so i'm pretty familiar with markup/bose/monster cable etc. can you buy aurora or hamna LED bars china direct? sure. are they insanely cheaper than what a reseller can get? no, especially when you factor in that a quality reseller will back their name with a warranty on the product, buying factory direct you are SOL if there is a failure. brands like rigid and especially baja designs can be VERY expensive... but there are alternatives like olympus off road, trail worthy fab, etc. i can give you PLENTY of info from my buddy who works with this stuff every day.

saying every LED bar is crap and you can hack one together backyard booty fab just as good is just ignorance. sorry dude.

olympus is the company my buddy works for. even without that edge, i wouldnt hesitate to buy from them. i have the 42" pro bar and i'm waiting on a (backordered) 7" single row.

Single row combo Chinese 14" on bumper now. It replaced a rigid that I busted. Love it. Makes my roof halos look like candles

Underneath the A pillar plastic finisher