lights for a troopie , advice please

Hi all,

just a quick question,

mates getting his troopy sorted for the gold season and hes looking at what lights to up date his troopie with. He is looking at HID and halogen. He is quite prepared to spend the money on HID but im wondering if in real terms its worth the extra spend ?

themrburns

r u talking about spotties or external under canopy lights or both.
Personally I have hella 400 spotties on the bullbar and reverse lights of a bus-LED- 12v under my canopy.
Generally I keep the covers on my spotties until I have a need to turn them on. This saves the reflective miror of the spotties.

Regards
Oneday69

spotties and possibly upgrading the standard headlights :)

themrburns

i personally havent played around with the headlights. If I blow 1 its only $20 to replace a standard headlight.

If u do a shit load of night driving then very good spotties play a big part.

Good luck

Regards
Oneday69

Spotties, I used to have 2 Hella aircraft landing lights on the roo bar. They ain't big and they light up the night so you can't miss a thing coming at ya from the front or sides. They used to be illegal to have on motor vehicles, probably the same but just dont point them at an oncoming vehicle.

Yep, I also go along with the spotties.

Because I have turbo induction I have mounted 2 small hi intensity horizontal ones directly below the headlights and within the bull bar for protection.
This allows full airflow through the radiator.

The problem with uprating the standard headlights is the wiring limitation, 90w. is about as far as one can go without problems.
It is possible to buy a loom kit to replace the existing but thats too much hassle for me.

For me, wedgetails chewing on roadkill have been the biggest hazard of recent times followed by crazy kamikazi emus.
mike

I reckon your best choice would be a pair of "Lightforce" 240 XGT HID's

http://www.lightforce.com/hid/products/hid_240_xgt

Robert

First up I'm no expert, and some figures I've quoted may be a bit out as I'm workin' from memory, but essentualy they are close enough.....


Sam, get him to think about HID's (high intensity discharge).

All you need to do is get a kit which replaces the standard H4's or whatever he has. The kit involves replacement globes with ballasts and basicly comes with its own wiring loom. HID's give off a white light as opposed to the "yellow" look of halogens, there is no comparison. Don't get tricked into the higher rated HID's, they are measured in "Kelvin" and between (from memory) 4300 kelvin up to about 12000 kelvin. The higher the rating the more "blue or purple" the lights will look, the boy racers go for these on there jap rockets just for apperence.
The lower rated (say 4300-6800 kelvin) give off a far more pure white light which is sensational in the bush.
The bonus with these lights is they come in 35 watts or 55 watts and the 35's are equally as good as the 55's if not better, for this reason the lights run super cool and don't get hot.
From high beam to low beam there is no change in the output of the lights, what happens instead is the globes have drivers built in and the globe moves forward and back to give high and low beam.
The globes have xenon or some other noble gas in them which is heated by an allmost indestructable element so they are rated at 30,000 hours or some ridiculess amount. Because of this construction they actually "warm up" when you turn them on, but this only takes about 5 seconds or so.
As for work lights I have 4 x 27watt LED's which only draw about 2.5amps each
and would allmost light up a cricket ground for a night match, say no more!
All of this stuff is available off evil-bay on line and is very well priced if you shop around.
Hope this helps!

goldnomad wrote:I reckon your best choice would be a pair of "Lightforce" 240 XGT HID's

http://www.lightforce.com/hid/products/hid_240_xgt

Robert

i agree with robert lightforce spot lights are awesome have a look at the 240 blitz

cheers for all the information , mate ryan has been reading ( he is a watcher lol ) , good stuff , thankyou very much for all the help and opinions, my mate had all the questions in his head , now after the HID comments he is buying the lights tommorow.

going HID now , as it seems the best option to best performance. The point on the rating of the lights being for image rather than performance very usefull ! as allways thanks to every one ! your all legends! cheers!

(he is now 1400 lighter within 24 hours , I love spending the stupid fuckers money) lol ! (and his girl (matilda the troopie ) is going to be getting bright blue eyes lol )

just to note - the roos are f***ed!

cheers


themrburns

He / you made the right decision. I did a lot of travelling out west for my job and the roads out there didn't have marker posts etc for reference. We always had the latest vehicles with the best halogen lights available, but you would swear at times they were not working correctly. We often stopped to check that they were indeed functioning as they would not light anything up. Turns out that the red soil etc was absorbing all the light so there was no reflection. Most light you see is reflection.
HID lights, apart from drawing only about 1/3 the wattage, lit up everything and were a far safer option. We could see where we were going.

Sam, we have to help guys in love with Lizzie :rolf:

your mate made the right choise,
i have a 1994 troopie, had the same problem with its standard lights.
i bought a set of HID lights off flea bay in november 2007.
i replaced the standard troopie lights { 55 w / 60w high / low .} with 6000k 55w HID kit , from china. { 3 day delivery . } to nth . qld .
the price was USD $189.95 from HIDWORLD .COM
i have also bought a set of HID spotlights from the same company 4.5 years ago .
no heat problems , no burning out of wire looms,the light is the same as daylight . brilliant white .
no massive power drain.
after nearly 5 of driving they still lightup 1.2km like daylight.

Cant wait to drop a HID kit in mine some time.