Quality Off-Road Lighting for F350

[BarryandCassandra]

I admit I have not shopped for lights in a long time. I know PIAA, RIGID, LightForce, and that’s about it. My last Cherokee had 4 LF-170s on it, and that was a crazy amount of light. I think technology probably left the LFs behind, better is available.

What I need:

A LOT OF LIGHT

Forward facing: My preference is a LED light bar for the front, with a wide pattern. Think for slow use for fire roads, desert, etc. No need for high speed pencil beems. Stock F350, assume I can mount solidly on the bumper.

45 degree off to the side: Bumper mount, or below windshield? LED as well.

I’m asking because I want to get an idea of what quality off-road lighting this community has learned works well. I want a lot of light.

Thank you,
Barry

 

[PJorgen]

Lots of good info about quality lighting on Candlepowerforums.com, but the moderators there can be a challenge.
Cheap lights can produce a lot of glare which actually affect your night vision and makes it harder to see. Don’t get cheap Chinese knockoffs.

 

[REF]

This…..

The Scientists of Lighting | Home - Baja Designs - Off-Road LED & Laser Lights | Automotive, Jeep, Truck, UTV, ADV, Dirtbike

The enthusiasts' choice, Baja Designs is the Scientists of Lighting when it comes to performance offroad LED auxiliary lights for your vehicle.

www.bajadesigns.com

I’m looking at getting the XL-R pro in clear driving/combo pattern for driving lights and XL-Sport in amber wide cornering for fogs.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pappawheely]

A lot of the lights on the market now are overkill. When you are able to blind oncoming traffic a mile away, even if it's off road, when can you actually use them? I researched lights for an article I wrote after hearing professional racers talking about "out-driving their lights." They were talking about speeds above 100mph. There was not enough light available for their brains to do the processing and determine what they were looking at. Scary, but again when are most going to need that much light. What I have, and recommend is to have lighting that matches your needs. I have a pair of Vision-X transporter LED's mounted to the front bumper. They have 9 LED pods and are a combination of wide and long beams. They put out plenty of light for my forward facing needs.



Next I have some LED lights mounted below the bumper as ditch lights. They are perfect when you need to find a side road, or to see what's on either side of the truck. They are cheap chinese units because they get thrashed.



Then I have more Vision-X lights mounted high on my roof rack. These are super wide floods. Three sets of lights give me total coverage and task lighting that I need. You don't have to spend a million bucks if you don't want to.

 

[BarryandCassandra]

Thanks. I was looking at LF, Rigid, Baja Designs… Rigid makes some nice floods in bars and pods, specs are good. Would love to see videos on the models I researched with them on/off in the dark. Price is not heinous.

-B

 

[Roam.Wild]

I have had the Rigid 360 series and they are a great light. I'm running a few Auxbeams now and they're pretty killer too!

 

[OneTonSoup]

Lots of options out there for sure.

Baja Designs and Diode Dynamics IMO are currently best. For white lights I prefer Baja's color temp of 5000K to DD's 6000K, but you can clear lens swap DDs 3000K yellow lights which use 4000K diodes for a very nice white. Baja's OnX6+ light bars are insanely bright and their LP6/LP9 pods are popular. DD has good specs vs price and been hearing lots of good things about their SS5 pods.

Rigid is still good quality but their lumen specs are misleading. Rigid only states the RAW (theoretical) lumens not the effective lumens. Their effective/actual lumens are likely in the range of 20-30% lower than RAW so keep that in mind.

Lightforce is still good quality but seem to have fallen behind a bit in LEDs.

ARB lights are also good quality as they're built by Rigid, but specs vs price isn't that competitive.

Stedi is big in Aus and has started to make their way over here. Yet to find bad reviews and seem to be great value for the price. Haven't seen them in person though.

As far as amazon/cheapo lights... as long as you're aware you get what you pay for. Actual light power consumption is usually way less than advertised and pretty much only advertised in raw lumens (of course without telling you). Place effective lumens at 50-70% less than specified. Then there's issues with lens fogging, UV fading, cheap housings that rust out, lenses that crack if you blow on them too hard etc.

But like others said you don't need to spend loads of $ on lighting to get a lot of light unless budget isn't a concern. It's easy to overspend on lighting and get way more light than actually needed.

 

[BajaSurfRig]

Anyone know where to buy Stedi lights in the US?

 

[Trestle]

This is specific to Baja Designs, but from what I am reading in your initial post it doesn't sound like you need THAT much light.

Slower speeds, forward throw...their Squadron Sport in combo pattern (a pair of them) is a significant amount of light with a high quality build for decent light/$ for a high end brand. You could pay a little more coin for the Squadron Pro, but it's not really needed for slower speeds forward.

For the sides, their S1 series are probably the best bang per buck (in the Baja Designs line). Get a pair of them in wide/cornering and they make a great ditch light. They make surface mount options if you have a way to cut them into something too.

S2 sport in wide or work/scene would be good for side, filler, or reverse lighting. The S1 puts out slightly more light than the S2 pro for less coin, so keep that in mind of you think you'll need more than the S2 sport offers.

I do like the Baja Designs color temperature, and have found it actually makes a difference for my old eyes when using these lights. You could, of course go with another brand that uses a cooler temperature but select amber lenses to offset that though. The Squadron sports I had were clear, but the lights just purchased for forward throw this time around I went with amber to see if they are better in dust or fog. The nice thing is you can always swap the lense for either color, light pattern, or both with minimal cost/effort. This is a nice option if you have damage to a lense or find a different use case on the same or another vehicle. Build quality is sufficient that they are worth moving from vehicle to vehicle, and they should last a long time to offset the initial cost of you do keep them long term.

Anything more is for speed, aesthetics, or ego...from my experience with them. Nothing wrong with speed, aesthetics, or ego mind you. I just bought way more light than needed from Baja Designs...but I also admit that I am trying for a balance of vehicle aesthetics and function.

The nice thing about nearly all of the LED type lights is the amperage draw is low on the smaller output lights so you don't need relays with many of them. It makes wiring and setup a lot cleaner/faster.

There are other good options out there. I'm just familiar with this brand more so than other brands. The Amazon stuff is hit/miss in terms of how long they last and the initial quality. I've been burned, and pleasantly surprised too.

Either way...best of luck.