off road light housing

[Hilldweller]

How do the 500 and 700 compare? Which one would you get if you only were getting a pair?

The 700 FF blows away the 500.
The 500 suffers from hot-spot-itis...

 

[tommudd]

Been running a pair of the FF 700s on the front of mine , well onto the third Jeep as of yesterday and they do a good job for what I use them for
Had the 500s and sold them to a guy I didn't like .............

 

[punisher1130]

General rule of thumb: the bigger the reflector, the more light.

If you're on a 250$ budget, its hard to beat a tried and trued technology as far as lights go: Aircraft landing lights. There are several 13 volt sealed beams available, and for the price its hard to beat. The PAR36 (4.5") and PAR46 (5.75") bulbs are readily available at your nearest NAPA or farm supply store, or even cheaper from rock auto. I ran 2 GE 4509 100w 4.5" spots on the front of Toyota for years tied into the high beams with a relay, and for the price at ~30$ a light, they were damn hard to beat. You can get flood bulbs too that fit the same rubber housing. NAPA part number 80374 are the 100w spots WITH the housing, and are 24$ each. I'm running dual filament GE 4700's in the bottom grill of my mustang, with one filament for spot and one for flood, both running when I hit the switch. I've since upgraded to Hella Ralleye 4000's, but for a true budget light, the old sealed beams are hard to beat. The rated life is only like 25 hours, but thats also in a sealed housing with no airflow. I've got at least 40 hours on the set I pulled off the truck and they were working when I took them off.

To answer your original question on the square vs round debate: square housings do tend to limit the output, both in width and height, due to the limitations of not having as much curvature for the light to reflect off of.

For roof or cab mounted lights, try to stick with spot beams as they won't tire your eyes by reflecting off of the hood.

I've had (and currently have My Big A** Hella 4000's) hid swapped, and while they are brighter than halogen, they tend to lose their beam pattern, resulting in less light where you want it.

Although the newer LED's are pretty nice for up close.

I have an extended cab Dakota and plan on a custom light bar in the bed so I am not sure hood reflection would be much issue, though I could be wrong. As for the over the cab lights I was thinking 4 lights, 2 center lights being spots and the 2 outer lights as floods, are you saying it would be better to have all 4 up top as spots and put the floods on the bumper?

Love your 'yota btw.

 

[punisher1130]

It varies too much to know.

A friend of mine has a pair of huge rectangular KC lights that match my 8" round KC's. Both use 130W bulbs and have a spot pattern. I highly recommend both of them.

Another friend of mine has the same rectangular KC's but he has a flood pattern, and another one has rectangular Hellas (Much smaller) The Hellas are pitiful with 100W bulbs.

Its pretty much what everyone has said, depends on what the manufacturer was looking for. If you want halogen lights, I highly recommend KC's. However if you're into up close distance, get a pair of LED's, they'll be much smaller and will light up the front of the vehicle much better up close. IF you want longer distance, go Halogens. HID's are out of budget..

Hotnotch is correct, the other reason I wanted to see if I could get a answer on this, beside what I said in the first post, is because I was thinking of getting a couple of those Baja off road lights that auto part stores sell and use a hid bulb conversion kit on them for equal or better lighting than the projector headlights I am looking at for the truck. I figure the kits with 3 stars or better would be a safe bet on quality for the bulbs.

 

[kojackJKU]

500s have no such "hot spot itis" that the self proclaimed lighting expert says up there. I run them on my rig with 55w HID installed and there are no hot spots cold spots or dead spots. Just nice smooth bright light. They put out much better light than my buddies two rigid light bars on the front of his f150. By a good margin as well. If you want to run HID, do NOT use FF housings, they produce terrible beam patterns. The 500 housing in a driving beam is MUCH better than the 500/700 FF housing. For rectangle lighting go with the hella 550 driving beam and install HID into them. I am going to be running these very soon on my patriot. inexpensive, works great. I have been running the sam 500s on my rig since 2008. Just added HID to them and swap the bulbs one time.

 

[HotNotch]

With all 4 up top as spots and 2 floods on the bumper I think you'd be set. The floods down low will do better to cut through the fog and rain

 

[rayra]

You want fog lights, get fog lights and mount them properly low. There's a reason most of those are narrow rectangles, the reflector is shaped to give you a wide fan of light with little top or bottom scatter / reflectance.
You want flood lights for area lighting, you'd do better to mount them high. And I've put spots both high and on a grill guard, to good effect. Back in the old KC Daylighter days.

 

[punisher1130]

I still have the factory fogs, they work just need to be cleaned. What I am looking for on floods its a better spread the front so see up close, spots for further down range to see what's coming up as I drive, how ever for brightness I am trying to figure out what will add to my headlights in the least, at most outshine my headlights, or somewhere in between.

I do have plans to get LED's as well but those I mainly want to use for the sides, rear ( actually have small flood led lights on either side of my hitch) and as rock lights but not as forward lights since they don't reach very far and even the LED flood lights don't spread as good as hid or halogen lights so I don't want them facing forward.

 

[kojackJKU]

I still have the factory fogs, they work just need to be cleaned. What I am looking for on floods its a better spread the front so see up close, spots for further down range to see what's coming up as I drive, how ever for brightness I am trying to figure out what will add to my headlights in the least, at most outshine my headlights, or somewhere in between.

I do have plans to get LED's as well but those I mainly want to use for the sides, rear ( actually have small flood led lights on either side of my hitch) and as rock lights but not as forward lights since they don't reach very far and even the LED flood lights don't spread as good as hid or halogen lights so I don't want them facing forward.

Good choice on the not running LED for forward lighting.

Here is a shot of the HID converted 500s that someone retrofitted.

Here are another set that was posted

Here is a beam pattern of a FF housing converted. As you can see......NOT good. NOt only that, the 6000k color of these HID are the same as LED and All sorts of wrong.

And the 700 ff beam in halogen. Still Flowering and not smooth..

When I say the FF housings, I mean 500/700 FF. they make this great flower pattern, even with halogen bulbs, they don't put light down the road as far and do not put out the better light beam. Anything that puts out a flower shaped beam, really expert? Come on.

Now, the FF75 is a sweet compact light that when converted with HID out perfroms ALOT of more expensive lights as well.

have a look at this link. Very awesome for the cost and size!

http://www.thenewx.org/forum/15-how-tos/12964-how-hella-ff75-50-watt-hid-conversion.html

 

[kojackJKU]

Hella Micro FFs are pretty solid and have that rectangle look you're after. Fairly inexpensive, and I retrofit them with slightly heavier wiring and run 100w bulbs. The bulbs for them are dirt cheap, and when you run them at 100w they put out a very respectable amount of light. Hella 500s are their round bretheren and cost around the same. Take the same bulbs and and can be retro'd for 100w bulbs also. Glass lens, so no issue with melting anything, I ran them for about 18h straight when I drove across Canada in my Jetta and didn't have any problems.

Aircraft landing lights are decent, but in my experience they have a much shorter lifespan.

My hellas with HID in them are ran for 8hrs straight for years, have more output than 130-150w halogen, and no heat compared to them. They are the best money spent on lighting I have ever used or seen. Cheap, bright, great pattern, and can mount them easy.....The best part, They look like ole 500s, thieves bypass my cheap lights (that outperform 99% of the LED offerings), and rob all the cheap crap bars off the vehicles here. bonus!

 

[thethePete]

Problems with HIDs; they glare and provide poorer output because the focal point of the light is in the wrong spot in the reflector, cheap ones don't perform well in the cold, you need to run relays (a whole lot of extra wiring, on top of the extra wiring for the ballasts and conversion harnesses) for them to not have starting issues, and they don't like cycling- they take time to heat up and their lifespan is shortened by having to re-arc all the time, so you can't use them on the highway in good conscience. If you turn them off every time you would normally turn off your high beams, they take too long to heat back up and be useful again. My halogens, or LEDs are instant and they don't care about being turned on and off a bunch. HIDs in a proper projector housing with a moving cut-off or housing that allows high and low beams make much better light than halogens in a tradional reflector, that's for sure. But they need to be in the right place to be effective.

 

[punisher1130]

Good choice on the not running LED for forward lighting.

Here is a shot of the HID converted 500s that someone retrofitted.

Here are another set that was posted

Here is a beam pattern of a FF housing converted. As you can see......NOT good. NOt only that, the 6000k color of these HID are the same as LED and All sorts of wrong.

And the 700 ff beam in halogen. Still Flowering and not smooth..

When I say the FF housings, I mean 500/700 FF. they make this great flower pattern, even with halogen bulbs, they don't put light down the road as far and do not put out the better light beam. Anything that puts out a flower shaped beam, really expert? Come on.

Now, the FF75 is a sweet compact light that when converted with HID out perfroms ALOT of more expensive lights as well.

have a look at this link. Very awesome for the cost and size!

http://www.thenewx.org/forum/15-how-tos/12964-how-hella-ff75-50-watt-hid-conversion.html

Yeah the first 2 pictures are exactly what I am looking for, more so I can I can get flood lights to match. Here are the housings I would like to use and convert to take hid bubs, is it possible to use these and get good patters?

These for spot>>> http://www.amazon.com/Blazer-C52CW-100-Watt-Quartz-Halogen/dp/B004L0AAQY

These for flood>>> http://www.amazon.com/Blazer-CW8002...60306940&sr=1-2&keywords=baja+off+road+lights

 

[punisher1130]

Problems with HIDs; they glare and provide poorer output because the focal point of the light is in the wrong spot in the reflector, cheap ones don't perform well in the cold, you need to run relays (a whole lot of extra wiring, on top of the extra wiring for the ballasts and conversion harnesses) for them to not have starting issues, and they don't like cycling- they take time to heat up and their lifespan is shortened by having to re-arc all the time, so you can't use them on the highway in good conscience. If you turn them off every time you would normally turn off your high beams, they take too long to heat back up and be useful again. My halogens, or LEDs are instant and they don't care about being turned on and off a bunch. HIDs in a proper projector housing with a moving cut-off or housing that allows high and low beams make much better light than halogens in a tradional reflector, that's for sure. But they need to be in the right place to be effective.

I have heard that before and a lot of that is on he dirt cheap Chinese ones most of which you have to buy everything separate but the decent ones that come as a complete kit with the relay, control boxes and harness actually perform as they should. I have a pair somewhere that are from the flea market that worked perfectly and was given to me by a former friend when we couldn't get them to work on his bike ( bike was a small Ducati and didn't have enough juice to power them) I don't remember where I put them or what size they were.

As for highway use I would not be using them, that's what my headlights are for, the only reason I would ever resort to using off road lights on the highway is during storms that I can only see a few feet in front of me, which is a rarity in its self so its not that much of a issue.

 

[Hilldweller]

Problems with HIDs; they glare and provide poorer output because the focal point of the light is in the wrong spot in the reflector, cheap ones don't perform well in the cold, you need to run relays (a whole lot of extra wiring, on top of the extra wiring for the ballasts and conversion harnesses) for them to not have starting issues, and they don't like cycling- they take time to heat up and their lifespan is shortened by having to re-arc all the time, so you can't use them on the highway in good conscience. If you turn them off every time you would normally turn off your high beams, they take too long to heat back up and be useful again. My halogens, or LEDs are instant and they don't care about being turned on and off a bunch. HIDs in a proper projector housing with a moving cut-off or housing that allows high and low beams make much better light than halogens in a tradional reflector, that's for sure. But they need to be in the right place to be effective.

Excellent points.
Halogen and LED win for driving/fog lights. HID only for "offroad".

BTW, shining a light on a garage door is no substitute for proper photometry. Especially when the lights are shining before their focal point.

 

[kojackJKU]

BTW. it does show the actual beam. and that there are wonky artifacts in the beam pattern.....LIKE BIG *** FLOWERS, and huge dark spots in said flowers. I have never seen that in any other light....and you can see that way off. Just using the Door photo to show what I was talking about.

Bill, btw, "proper photometry" shows that JW speakers of 2 previous generations were "better" than truck lites, Again that's not the case....How about getting the hard on over jw's payment out of the way. GO play in your garage, I will use my lights for DRIVING!

Another thing, NO lights besides the headlights and fogs should ever be on when driving towards someone. If they do coming towards me they EAT my nice bright HIDS until turned off. Even 55w halogen driving lights which are "legal" in some minds, are way to irritating coming towards you. Fog lights should be aimed LOW and wide. And, again, LED fog lights are HORRID for fog....blue light from them sucks and irritates on coming drivers. Hell Bill even YOU should know that!