I'd like to see your off road light setup

Nightmare9

Nightmare9

TJ Enthusiast
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Southern California
I plan to replace the factory headlights with a new set of LEDs (KC, Vision X, or JW Speaker). I'm leaning towards KC Gravity 7"

My brother has an LED light bar above the windshield and I'm pretty sure I DON'T want one of those. His is VERY loud on the freeway.

Mounting lights to the middle of the hood is probably not what I want either.

I'm thinking about the KC Gravity LED G34s in a wide pattern mounted to the A-Pillar. Using the KC mounting brackets.

If I mounted a set of lights to the front bumper, I'm worried that they will be too low and won't fill enough of the ground in front of the Jeep (ie they will cast long shadows).

Is there a Pros / Cons post about the different light positions?

Here is a pic of my front with photochopped G34s and a different set of LEDs mounted on the A-Pillar with the KC brackets.

KC.jpg


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I have almost the same setup as Plumber. I got my lights off amazon from a company called 4wdking.

My thought on lights and placement...

Light bar across top of windshield is not a good place. Too much reflection off of the hood, and if you are in dust, you won't even be able to see the end of the hood when you turn it on.

Light bar on the hood is not a good place. The hood will keep the light from shinning onto the ground in front of the vehicle.

Floods on the windshield hinge mounts is not good. Again, too much reflection from hood and dust.

Spots on the windshield hinge is better. You can project the light past the hood and onto the ground while minimizing reflection from hood and dust.

Floods on the bumper is better. Cast a bunch of light all around without having any of the before mentioned problems. This coupled with the spots on the hinges will help eliminate some of the long shadows you were worried about.

I'm not a fan of light bars in the front of the jeep anywhere. Most are combo lights (flood/spot) and make it hard to control where the light is cast. I think having lights coming from different heights is the best approach.

So I have spots on the windshield hinge and floods on the bumper. All our trails in Utah are dusty and this combo seems to light up the trails and still let me see through some of the dust.
 
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I have LX-LIGHT blacked out Cree LED headlights with Nilight 7" 51w LED blacked out fog lights mounted to the front bumper. Both sets of lights were inexpensive but they put out a lot of light.
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Here is a pic posted on the KC site of the G34 lights on the A-Pillar. It doesn't say if these are the Wide Beam or the Driving Beam. It does light the hood a little bit and also casts a pretty good shadow of the hood right in front of the vehicle. I don't know if the headlights alone would fill that dead spot or not.

g34_drv_a-pillar-2_1.jpg
 
Nightmare9 said:
Here is a pic posted on the KC site of the G34 lights on the A-Pillar. It doesn't say if these are the Wide Beam or the Driving Beam. It does light the hood a little bit and also casts a pretty good shadow of the hood right in front of the vehicle. I don't know if the headlights alone would fill that dead spot or not.

View attachment 171676
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Here’s my trusty light force set up . Please don’t get me wrong , being old school, 9 inch lightforce with different Clipinfo diffusers
- each light draws 8 amp, but .... you get what you pay !!!
- mine are 14 years “old” and holding up from minus 40 Celsius to plus 30 Celsius

- next step is RIGID , with a combo light bar. IMHO
- don’t waste your $ on Chinese knockoffs

Take care

DETOUR overnout

-•|||||•-👋🏿
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A-Pillar Side Light Cubes

DSCN2398.jpg


plus a small light bar.

DSCN2401.jpeg


The SideLighters were $49 and the LightBar, $72 on Amazon. Best deal I've ever found.
 
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Nightmare9 said:
I plan to replace the factory headlights with a new set of LEDs (KC, Vision X, or JW Speaker). I'm leaning towards KC Gravity 7"

My brother has an LED light bar above the windshield and I'm pretty sure I DON'T want one of those. His is VERY loud on the freeway.

Mounting lights to the middle of the hood is probably not what I want either.

I'm thinking about the KC Gravity LED G34s in a wide pattern mounted to the A-Pillar. Using the KC mounting brackets.

If I mounted a set of lights to the front bumper, I'm worried that they will be too low and won't fill enough of the ground in front of the Jeep (ie they will cast long shadows).

Is there a Pros / Cons post about the different light positions?

Here is a pic of my front with photochopped G34s and a different set of LEDs mounted on the A-Pillar with the KC brackets.

View attachment 171615

View attachment 171616
Click to expand...


I have Rugged Ridge spots on the A pillar. I wouldn't run anything other than spots there for daily driving. In NY is not very legal to run spots anywhere anyways unless solely for off-roading.

I have a set of KC LED spot cubes on the way to replace the Rugged Ridge 3" Cubes I currently have (amber background lights with spot bean pattern)and currently running KC G34 driving pattern In the center just below the line of the headlights.

I will run KC G34 Wide 40 LEDs on the outer part of the bumper(these wide-40 replace a set of Rigid Dually Flood Cubes I had for a week) Just want to have the most light output up front and keep it legal.

The Rigid Lights are crazy bright and project more than the KCs, but I was also getting a lot of cars flashing me with them on. Westchester county drivers I guess.

The Rugged Ridge cubes are extremely bright and almost at the same level as the Rigid units, although the light is not as white, more of a blue hint and the spot is not as perfectly concentrated as the KC spots, which are a smaller beam and white

I have a set of JW headlights to install this weekend. Will also upgrade to the K Suspension H4 harness. I want to make sure I get as much clear and bright lights up front as possible. I also like my lights to be on the lower temperature side. Easier on my eyes. Once I have the setup completed I will post. Three separate switches to operate the lights as well. Running the KC Wide 40s with the stock Fog switch, KC driving pattern off a separate one and the A pillar Spots on a third switch.

I also have Laminx Yellow film on the KCs up front
 
Since my last post I have change my light setup to:

4x3" KC Gravity Driving pattern on the Hinges and 4x3" Wide 40 on the front bumper off different switches. This way if I am driving to work in the middle of the night I can see deer before they become a fixture of my jeep (lots of deer on my way to work late at night or very early morning as well as turkeys and other critters)

Still waiting for 6" gravity spot pattern lights to come to mount on the hinges and move the driving 4x3" units to the bumper ahead of the winch and the wide 40 units will go on the outside of these lower on the bumper. This way I can light up the road ahead of me without blinding any oncoming traffic and use the hinge spotters when really need to.

The KC Spot and driving pattern units are DOT/SAE approved as well as the spotters, but the wide 40 are marked off-road only, go figure. I have the wide 40 aimed lower and more to the center to avoid glaring others and will be my fogs with laminx yellow film. These lights project almost as far out as the driving beam units, but have a nice wide spread closer to the vehicle and gutter.

KC lights do have a Fog pattern that is DOT/SAE approved, but it is a true fog light and spreads wider without punching out too far. Looking at those to use as true fog lights when our weather starts getting nasty again.
 
I didn't know what I was doing when I was getting lights, and I'm going to be changing it as soon as I figure out what I'm doing.

I have OZ-USA 3" cube which was sold as a spot/flood but the lighting pattern is pretty much a fog light. Above the windshield I have a 52" Yitamotor light bar. It's stupid bright, like 27000 lumens, but it lights up the hood and the dust and snow so it's gotta go.

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I was thinking of putting some 6" spots on the bumper and a 12" bar on a fairlead mount. But after reading this thread I'm thinking maybe the spots would be better on the windshield hinges and keep the cubes until I pull the trigger on 4" gravity fogs from KC. I've never really liked the way the cubes look, and they got worse when I put on the MCE fenders and round JK turn signals, but I want to have some fog lights because while we don't get fog often, when we do get it, it can be scary thick and always seems to happen while I'm traversing a mountain pass.
 
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freedom_in_4low said:
I didn't know what I was doing when I was getting lights, and I'm going to be changing it as soon as I figure out what I'm doing.

I have OZ-USA 3" cube which was sold as a spot/flood but the lighting pattern is pretty much a fog light. Above the windshield I have a 52" Yitamotor light bar. It's stupid bright, like 27000 lumens, but it lights up the hood and the dust and snow so it's gotta go.

View attachment 175266

I was thinking of putting some 6" spots on the bumper and a 12" bar on a fairlead mount. But after reading this thread I'm thinking maybe the spots would be better on the windshield hinges and keep the cubes until I pull the trigger on 4" gravity fogs from KC. I've never really liked the way the cubes look, and they got worse when I put on the MCE fenders and round JK turn signals, but I want to have some fog lights because while we don't get fog often, when we do get it, it can be scary thick and always seems to happen while I'm traversing a mountain pass.
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Hands down spotters o the hinges for sure.
 
Jeffreybomb said:
I might be the only person who thinks LEDs don't look right on a TJ. 😬
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Are you referring to the light produced or the square/rectangular shape that many LEDs take?

As I posted above, I'm not liking the square fogs or the light bar and am going toward round lights because I think they look better on a TJ. They'll still be LED though, cause the performance is unquestionably superior with a fraction of the current draw.
 
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freedom_in_4low said:
Are you referring to the light produced or the square/rectangular shape that many LEDs take?
Click to expand...

Probably more the square/rectangular shape than anything.

I'll occasionally see some goon in a JK/JL driving around in the Chicagoland area with their auxiliary LEDs on. We're one of the most light-polluted places on the planet. One particular pud had his long-range square LEDs on during sunset. It was comical.
 
Kc gravity 7’s and 6’s. Absolutely love them
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very clean crisp white. Great cutoff. No blue. I went with the wide beam 6’s because I wheel in the desert most of the time. Very happy.
 
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