Fitting spotlights. Small LED units in foglight mounts.
Discussion
Didn't want to divert ChimpOnGas's excellent LED headlight thread on the Chimaera forum so thought would start a thread on this.
This is on a Land Rover FL2, where the potential for strapping extra lights to the front is not impossible but tricky, as essentially you have to take the front end off, butcher the front cross member and grille. To avoid doing that some have used these brackets which screw onto the number plate mount but doesn't seem particularly strong to me. Others have mounted those stupid (imo) led light bars across the full width of the roof rack. Yuck.
So seeing that LED lights are coming on leaps and bounds, wondered about replacing the front foglight units with something like those small motorcycle driving light units, 2-3" diameter. You can get units with a spot beam that throw out about 2000 lumens per light. Not cheap. Something like these.
https://www.clearwaterlights.com/infopg_darla.html
or
http://www.cyclopsadventuresports.com/Long-Range-E...
or
http://www.twistedthrottle.com/denali-dr1-single-i...
Obvious pitfalls can see is cooling, these are designed to be hung out in the airflow on the front forks, say. Other issues such as alignment and adjustment could be problematic but would have to be devised.
Yet part of me thinks if it could be a very neat solution, it's expensive and potentially a lot more work than just taking off the front end etc, then there's a much wider choice of lights and cheaper.
This is on a Land Rover FL2, where the potential for strapping extra lights to the front is not impossible but tricky, as essentially you have to take the front end off, butcher the front cross member and grille. To avoid doing that some have used these brackets which screw onto the number plate mount but doesn't seem particularly strong to me. Others have mounted those stupid (imo) led light bars across the full width of the roof rack. Yuck.
So seeing that LED lights are coming on leaps and bounds, wondered about replacing the front foglight units with something like those small motorcycle driving light units, 2-3" diameter. You can get units with a spot beam that throw out about 2000 lumens per light. Not cheap. Something like these.
https://www.clearwaterlights.com/infopg_darla.html
or
http://www.cyclopsadventuresports.com/Long-Range-E...
or
http://www.twistedthrottle.com/denali-dr1-single-i...
Obvious pitfalls can see is cooling, these are designed to be hung out in the airflow on the front forks, say. Other issues such as alignment and adjustment could be problematic but would have to be devised.
Yet part of me thinks if it could be a very neat solution, it's expensive and potentially a lot more work than just taking off the front end etc, then there's a much wider choice of lights and cheaper.
FiF said:
Others have mounted those stupid (imo) led light bars across the full width of the roof rack. Yuck.
I agree they look stupid, but they work bloody well. A friend has a fairly cheap light bar (£50 or so) mounted above the bumper of his rally car and I was surprised at just how much light it threw out.The bike driving lamps could work out ok, but the foglamp locations are (deliberately) low down which isn't ideal for spotlamps.
Yes low down doesn't help but on the FL2 the fog lights are similar height to smaller vehicles, but in principle seeing as wanting range on long dark featureless straights picking out wildlife at the road / forest edges then low down doesn't help. Plus if you click the link to the Bushranger-night-hawk-x-bar it shows fitted to FL2 and very similar height to fogs.
One light bar I've seen gives out an absolute phenomenal amount of light, but as it wasn't wired into the dip switch when it was on, flicking from dip to main beam you could still see the vehicle mainbeam headlights filling in the distance. This suggests that whilst there's a lot of lumens, the throw wasn't that good. The owner claimed it was down to alignment, remains to be proven imo. Plus very bright lights across the top of the windscreen must be a nightmare in rain, and dark wet nights is when most light needed. Plus if going to the trouble of fitting above the bumper may as well fit some proper pencil beams.
One light bar I've seen gives out an absolute phenomenal amount of light, but as it wasn't wired into the dip switch when it was on, flicking from dip to main beam you could still see the vehicle mainbeam headlights filling in the distance. This suggests that whilst there's a lot of lumens, the throw wasn't that good. The owner claimed it was down to alignment, remains to be proven imo. Plus very bright lights across the top of the windscreen must be a nightmare in rain, and dark wet nights is when most light needed. Plus if going to the trouble of fitting above the bumper may as well fit some proper pencil beams.
Edited by FiF on Tuesday 29th December 19:53
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