Wagan 18M Spotlight - 75 Watt HID conversion

I will be getting a Wagan 18M Spotlight for Father's Day. It's a clone of the Thor and it's sold by Costco. I'm thinking of putting a 75 Watt HID bulb/ballast in it but I had a few questions...

The bulb that's in it now is an H4 with Hi/Lo beams. I'm thinking of putting in an H4 HID replacement with only one level of brightness. This is the one I was thinking of off of Ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/75W-S...item4cf7905c19

I'll get two if I order that kit so I guess I'd probably sell the other one off (or possibly keep it as a spare). Does anyone know if the 75 Watt HID will generate significantly more heat and damage the light or reflector?

I'm sure the focal point will need to be changed by the shimming method, but that shouldn't be too big of a deal. From what I understand, this should have 3x the output of regular Halogen bulb so it should be equivalent (roughly) to a 225W Halogen (so about twice the brightness of the stock 130W halogen bulb) and a little bit better (longer and more consistent brightness) runtime.

What do you guys think of the Chinese HID bulb ballast combo I have listed? Does anyone foresee any problems?

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

Also, the Wagan reflector seems to be significantly different from the Thor Colossus reflector (from what I can tell in the pictures). Can anyone that owns both of these lights tell me which one has the better throw? I like the Wagan because it has a battery gauge on it, however, I really want the one with the better throw. I can return the Wagan and get the Thor for a cheaper price from Amazon/Walmart.

If anyone has either of these lights (or both of them) I would be very grateful to hear what you think about the throw on each of them comparatively. Worst comes to worst, I can just buy a Thor and compare the two directly I guess if I don't get any responses.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

I don't have both. I have the costco and modded it with a 75-80 Watt ballast. Heat is not a problem but then I don't run it for much more that 10-15 minutes at one time. It's pretty big inside there and it has cooling holes so I don't think a longer run would be a problem. I've tested that particular ballast and recorded 80+ Watts to the bulb. The reflector performs very well for throw if you can live with the "ringyness"

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

So you have the Wagan and it's a great thrower? I was overly concerned because the reflector doesn't look parabolic at all. In fact, it's the same shape as my P7 reflector I got from DX and that's almost entirely flood.

I'm pretty excited to hear that it's a great thrower, I guess I'll order the 75W bulb/ballast combo tonight then

Did you rewire yours at all or did you use the factory crappy thin wiring.

Did you set your switch to activate the HID on low or hi (or did you replace the switch all together)? I'll be losing the mode (hi/low) switching ability because of the HID bulb, but I don't really care.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

The Costco I have has only one switch because it was an HID originally. You'll just use either one of the switches (doesn't matter which one) to switch the ballast. The stock wiring is large enough. You're actually using less power thru it than the stock higher Wattage bulb. I've not seen a Wagan so I don't know what its' reflector looks like.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

Oh man, I'm looking to see if someone that has the Wagan 18M from Costco to tell me if it's a good thrower. I may just have to buy the Thor and compare the two. The Wagan 18M doesn't look like it has a deep reflector at all...

http://www.wagan.com/pdf/spotlights/2741.pdf

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

Also, the reason I was worried about the stock wiring wasn't because of it's normal draw rate. I was worried about it because I read that on startup, the draw is almost twice what it's normal run rate is. So if it's normally running around 6.25A (75W/12V), I was worried that the crappy wires inside wouldn't hand the 12Amp-ish startup of the bulb for the first 20 to 30 seconds or whatever the startup time is.

If you think it's ok, I won't worry about it though.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

That 2 to 3 times factor is just during the ignition moment - maybe a few nano seconds. During the rest of the warm-up cycle, 20 or so seconds, it's in the 1.x times range. It's probably 16 AWG which is more than enough to handle it. Even 18 AWG would be ok.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

After getting the Wagan for Father's Day (and wondering how it compares to the Thor), I'm not sure i want to mod the light. I have the 75W HID bulb and ballast on it's way, but I was wondering if someone else sold a cheaper host to throw it in?

Is there a nice cheap host that you can buy to make a super thrower with a 75W HID, or can you just buy a reflector from somewhere? Who makes a very nice throw reflector that fits an H4 HID? Or can anyone recommend a nice host?

I'm looking for something that I'll get the most throw from. The Wagan that I got has a ton of lines in the spot, it's irregulary shaped, and the spot is like 3 feet across at 25 feet and 10 feet across at 100 feet LoL.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

Halogen makes much much more heat than the hid so if you look it from a heat point of view, hid will not do any harm.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

I'm not sure if my Wagan halogen beam is focused properly from the factory or if the reflector is just not made to throw very well. I'll try to post some pics tonight of the beam at a few close distances and perhaps someone could give me their thoughts on it.it seems like no one has this light...

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

As it turns out, the Halogen bulb is too far back into the reflector to give a good tight spot. However, I like this light so much that I'm not going to modify it as it's very useful for yard work.

After reading a ton of threads on here and seeing how much people were bragging about the throw on the Professional's Favorite 20M Plus spotlight, I picked up the Advance Auto Parts clone today for $35. I'll be modding that light with my new HID kit that's in the mail.

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

So looooooooong story short, the HID bulb I got wouldn't fit far enough into the Professional's Favorite housing so it had to be installed into the Wagan 18M.

On the plus side, had I mounted it in the Professional's Fav, the ballast would have had to been mounted to the bottom of the light. Since the Wagan had a deep cavity behind the reflector, I was able to fit all of it nicely behind it.

Here are a few pics:











This is a side by side of the Professional's Favorite (Left - 120 Watt Halogen) vs the Wagan (Right - 75 Watt HID)



This is a shot of and HID bulb just after you turn it off, I'm not sure how many people have seen this but it looks pretty cool in the dark...

Re: Thor / Wagan 18M Spotlight - HID bulb question

thats cool, shame you couldn't get it right in the advanced autoparts one, that would have been an even better thrower. Are you sure it wasn't deep enough in the reflector and not too deep? someone who modded a Thor X to hid thought the bulb wouldn't go deep enough but it actually was too deep, they used shims to back it out a bit.

I'm really interested in this because I want to make a really good HID thrower.

And how much did you pay for the advanced autoparts clone?

Yeah it needed to go about 1/4 inch deeper into the Prof Fav and the only way I would have been able to get it in deeper would have been to cut the reflector center out. For some reason, the stock bulb filament position is about 3/8 deeper into the PF than it is in the Wagan (two completely different bulbs, even though they're both 120W). In fact, the Wagan halogen bulb looks normal on low/hi while the PF bulb looks normal on hi but completely ridiculous on low because there is a large peice of metal inside the bulb.

As far as finding a bulb that fits, I think it depends who you get the HID bulb from, they are all different. What you could do is measure how far in the high filament is on the PF and then ask around on ebay until you find an HID bulb that's around the same arc depth.

The more you back the bulb out, the more you wind up with a black core to the beam. As you back it out, you wind up with a bigger and bigger black spot in the middle of the beam instead of a nice hot spot.

I think I wound up paying $35 for the PF with the online coupon. You just have to bring the price up it it a little bit by adding a bag of cotter pins or something.

Sounds like a reasonable price. Have you had a chance to see how far your wagan HID throws yet? does it out throw the stock professionals favourite?

Where I live at, I can only shine my lights about 100 feet or so. I haven't had a chance to compare the two yet. I can tell you that if you shine the 75W HID on the wall on top of the 120W Halogen, the HID completely obliterates it and you can't even see the Halogen beam lol.

A couple things to keep in mind. All other factors being identical, HID will provide 3 times the light output of Halogen at the same power level. Also, a 120 Watt rated Halogen bulb, as with most all other Halogen bulbs, will not consume 120 Watts until you reach about 14.4 Volts. That's obviously not going to happen when using an SLA. You'll be lucky to get 12.3 or 4 V to the bulb. In a test yesterday, I provided a 130 watt Halogen bulb 12.4 Volts with a resulting consumption of 102 watts. It took 14.4V to reach 130 Watts.