Vehicle-mounted search lights

[CLynn85]

Anyone have experience with something of this nature?

We've been mounting the "go-light" brand lights to vehicles for military use lately, and it seems to me to be a pretty neat idea for an adventure/expedition/overland vehicle. On-demand lighting anywhere around the truck, powered by the truck, controlled without having to get out of the truck, seems to me to be a pretty cool concept. I've been considering fabbing a bar to go at the front of my bed that would be a mount for GPS and radio antennas, similar to the utility trucks you see running around (or at least in my neck of the woods) and it'd be an ideal location for one of these.

Here's the PDF for the ones I've seen:
http://www.golight.com/pdfs/golight.pdf

 

[1leglance]

a buddy of mine has 2 of those on the roof of his FJ Cruiser..
I thought they looked rather alien at first but 1 time of seeing how the work & I was impressed.
That and the wireless remote that lets you play with them while sitting in camp.
Very cool

 

[Lynn]

When I was on the SAR team I used one of the portable (suction cup mount) ones. Worked well, but not as 'robust' as I would have liked.

A couple of times the rotating mechanism quit working properly, and I had to take it apart and fiddle with the nylon spacers to get the gears realigned properly.

If you want something more robust, you might look at marine spotlights.

 

[jeff@work]

I have one that came with my van when i bought it. Personally i really don't find it very useful. It's quite rare that i need a spotlight, most of the times i need more like a flood light to light up a larger area...like if i want to see what is off to the right of the van i'd like to light up a large section of the area as opposed to just a small pencil beam section. My other complaint and this one really drives me nuts is the motor moves too fast...i have a hard time getting the light pointed exactly where i want it cause it's hard to make small adjustments. Anywho that's just my $.02. I'd assume mine is a 2004 model since that's the year of my van.... no idea if they've made changes to them since then!

 

[adventureduo]

I always wanted to buy one of those lights.. but never could figure out a spot to put it.

 

[Green Ganesha]

Worked well, but not as 'robust' as I would have liked. A couple of times the rotating mechanism quit working properly, and I had to take it apart and fiddle with the nylon spacers to get the gears realigned properly.

Ditto Lynn's experience. I had one of these (non-wireless version) mounted on my truck, about eight years ago. I removed it because the gear alignment was so problematic. That, and my exposed mounting location tended to attract branches.

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I used mine both as a spotlight and as an aimable platform for a "night-vision driving" system scheme. On one side of the spot I had an infrared light source, and on the other an IR-sensitive CCD camera. This fed to a monitor inside the cab. The system was fun to play with, but definitely not suitable for actual driving.