newbie with a question on sams pob

johnson225ho

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jan 17, 2007
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11
Hello, I joined this site a while back and ended up getting a Sams POB hid light after seeing the posts on here. Love the light, but wondering if i could change it a bit and i know enough to be dangerous, but thats it, so i figured i would ask you guys.

I use this light on my boat to navigate the lakes and mississippi river at night. Only thing is, after holding the light up above the windshield for about 20 minutes you feel as if your arms are about to fall off. Would it be possible to extend the battery leads to have an external battery pack that could sit on the floor while operating the light? It would seem that the weight would be greatly reduced without the battery in the light and it may be a little bit easier to hold for an extended period of time. Let me know if it would be ok and any thoughts on how to do it and with what guage wire. Thanks again,

Steve
 

BVH

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Sep 25, 2004
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No problem at all. You could probably use 16 awg wire but I'd use 14 to add a measure of safety depending on how long you make the extensions.

Simply cut your color-matched (red & black, don't remember now) wire to the desired length, crimp on color -coded female spade connectors on one end and color-coded male on the other (use insulated connectors) and you're all set. As long as you're doing this, you might look at buying a little larger battery or running the extension wires to the 12 Volt source on your boat.
 

johnson225ho

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Jan 17, 2007
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11
Ok, glad to hear that it would be ok to do. When you said about running to the 12 volt source on the boat did you mean that i could skip the battery alltogether and just run it off of 12 volt? I didn't think that could be done with this HID? It would be great if i could, because that is what i have done with some other spotlights we used for this purpose, but those were just halogen lights. Let me know,
Steve
 

SafetyBob

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Oct 20, 2007
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Yukon, Oklahoma
I was going to say something like either use boat power if you have it or get yourself a "real" battery....like an Optima RV battery and put it in a nice battery case and you should be able to search for HOURS........

You could put nice leads on it and everything.


Bob E.
 

Patriot

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Feb 13, 2007
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Arizona
When you said about running to the 12 volt source on the boat did you mean that i could skip the battery alltogether and just run it off of 12 volt? I didn't think that could be done with this HID?
Steve

That what BVH is saying. The POB just uses a smaller version of what's in your boat. They're both 12V but the one in your boat has way more capacity. :)
 

BVH

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Sep 25, 2004
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Just to be clear, I'm saying you can run the "original POB battery wires" to any 12 Volt source on your boat and dump the SLA in the light. I'd imagine that would dump 4 pounds give or take. Might be a bit front-heavy.
 

BlueBeam22

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Joined
Apr 18, 2008
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1,518
Both my Pro's Favorite 17.5mcp and POB share a battery. Currently it is out of the POB and in the Pro's Favorite, and the POB feels featherweight without the heavy battery in it.
 
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