Rigid Industries Dually vs. D2 LED lights

[pfbz]

• Not to dissuade the "my fog particle is bigger than your fog particle" disussion, but I thought I'd give a 12-month update to my Rigid LED project.

What I installed:

• Four Rigid Dually floods (not D2, rated at 1,200 lumens / 15W each) on a lightbar.
• I use them extensively on dark mountain roads. Not technically "off road", but in areas with very little oncoming traffic.
• Also played around with a few other LED lights as well as HID driving lights that I've used in other applications.

Mechanical/Electrical:

• Wired all four to a single relay (15Wx4 = 60W), with a master switch and toggled on with my conventional high beams.
• The mounting system has been robust, easy to mount, easy to align, they don't move around when tightened.
• The physical lights have held up well, housings are very solid.
• While I've had no problem with fogging/seals on my lights, two different friends with Rigid's have had internal fogging requiring light replacement. Rigid did this under warranty, but a hassle none the less.
• The low current and instant fire is definitely a nice feature.
• The lights look great and lots of people check them out and have questions about them.

Light output & pattern:

• Four 1,200 lumen floods definitely provide good near-feild lighting, but as mentioned previously, not great throw down the road. Probably should have done two spots/two floods instead.
• Light pattern is circular with zero cutoff. Lots of light output going where it isn't needed unless you are searching for squirells in trees.
• As cornering/mountain road lights, they are excellent.

Compared to other lights:

• A pair of Kragen HID's definitely work better as driving lights. Great light output, but more importantly, good beam pattern and some cutoff. But all plastic construction and I didn't want big HID's on this particular truck.
• 1,300 lumens is pretty wimpy for a four LED light these days. Even the Dually's ar a bit wimpy at 2,600. Lots of new 4-led lights out there rated at 3,600 lumens running Cree XM-L T6's. Some are quite expensive, like the Baja Designs Squadron at $330 per light, but there are also some import lights that seem quite decent for more like $85 each. I installed a pair of these imports and am pretty impressed with the light output. They also don't have any sort of beam pattern, but they are much brighter than the dually's per light. Compact as well.

Import LED installation:

• I whipped up some quick brackets to mount them behind the grille on my truck. These brackets were prototypes, intended to be cleaned up a bit, painted, etc., but as sometimes happens, if the prototype works well enough, they just end up staying in place.
• For a budget light solution, think a pair of the import 3,200 lumen LED's and a pair of Kragen HID's would be a great combo for less than $400 total.

 

[haplo]

Import LED installation:

• I whipped up some quick brackets to mount them behind the grille on my truck. These brackets were prototypes, intended to be cleaned up a bit, painted, etc., but as sometimes happens, if the prototype works well enough, they just end up staying in place.
• For a budget light solution, think a pair of the import 3,200 lumen LED's and a pair of Kragen HID's would be a great combo for less than $400 total.

I know its been a while, but are you still using those import 3200 lumen LEDs? Are they holding up well?

H.

 

[TheExpert]

just figure I would post some d2 light pics
This is d2 wide
http://instagram.com/p/zB18QcCj74/

 

[Alaric Darconville]

just figure I would post some d2 light pics

If you could resize or crop them such that the longest side is 800 pixels or less, that'd be great.

CPF Rule #3 says "If you post an image in your post, please downsize the image to no larger than 800 x 800 pixels." This means that the longest side can only be 800px, not that the image must be 640,000px or less. (Otherwise, one might construe the rule to mean that a picture that is 639,999 x 1 would be allowed, since it's smaller than 640,000 pixels.)

 

[TheExpert]

If you could resize or crop them such that the longest side is 800 pixels or less, that'd be great.

CPF Rule #3 says "If you post an image in your post, please downsize the image to no larger than 800 x 800 pixels." This means that the longest side can only be 800px, not that the image must be 640,000px or less. (Otherwise, one might construe the rule to mean that a picture that is 639,999 x 1 would be allowed, since it's smaller than 640,000 pixels.)

I tires to re size them but not really sure how to that on my phone..........

 

[TEEJ]

Hey! This is like the old days of CPF when I actually learned something ... or at least pressed myself to learn something ... or remember things long forgotten.

TEEJ, I can see where your thought process is going, but I believe you are mistaken in your conclusions.

There is a simple "test" that shows that yellow/red does not penetrate any farther. What color is fog when your cars headlights are pointed at? It's the white of your headlights. That is because an equal amount of light of all wavelengths is being scattered backwards (or retroflected). If yellow/red penetrated further, then the fog would have a bluer cast. Or look at it from another direction ... the cars coming at you. The lights just appear dimmer, not not a different color. If yellow/red penetrated further, then there would be a significant shift in the apparent color direction towards red.

For round particles in and around the size of the wavelength, Mie's solution to scattering would apply and you would see little difference in the scattering for different wavelengths. For the even larger round fog particles, they become retroreflecting spheres but as the index of refraction of a water droplet is low, they don't reflect directly back, but off access.... perfect for directing headlight beams back to the drivers eyes.

Droplets would need to be really small before Raleigh's scattering approximation came into play but again, if it did, fog would appear blue which it does not.

Semiman

Just noticed this.

I realized that it had been interpreted as still discussing penetration, which it is not. Its merely going to glare more, or less. I mentioned penetration as what others were using incorrectly...but. alas, it was akin to mentioning you DON'T have a bomb to a TSA agent. "You SAID the word, come with us".



IE: If you use those "Blue Light Specials", the light seems to disappear in fog or on a wet road, etc....and, your eyes have less to work with. Its not about the penetration though, its about what bounces back to your eyes in a useful form.

If that were untrue, the blue lights would enable you to see in fog/rain, etc, just as well as white would, for example. When night adapted, the differences can be even more dramatic, as we shift more to black and white vision anyway.

And so forth.

 

[Ofelas]

Would these make a decent addition to Truck-Lite phase 7 headlights?

Mounted inside a truck bumper, off-road use.

http://www.rigidindustries.com/led-lighting/50481
or http://www.rigidindustries.com/led-lighting/20222
or http://www.rigidindustries.com/led-lighting/20221