Auxiliary or Driving Lights Mounted to Cabover Overhang?

[rando]

To update this - I ended up with a 'behind the grill' mount and 32" LED light bar from Caliraised LEDs. It positions the light bar behind the lower opening in the Tacoma grill, barely noticeable if you are not looking for it. We did some winter camping last weekend with a bunch of after dark driving on lonely roads. The light bar puts out a huge amount of light, and will work for what we want it for. The beam patterns is pretty wide, so it lights up the side of the road well, but would not be great for high speed driving as it puts too much light in the foreground. In retrospect I should have bought the light bar elsewhere - it appears to be a generic Chinese light bar with a brand added to it, I could have bought the same thing for half the price on Amazon.

I did two other lighting upgrades while I was at it - changed the foglight bulbs for Flosser 90W bulbs and switched the low beams from H11 to H9 bulbs. Both of these make a minor difference for on road driving, and maintain the stock light pattern. Worth while primarily because they are cheap, easy and reversible upgrades.

 

[DavidGraves]

Hi Rando

Can you tell me more about the bulb change for your truck low beams ?

We also drive a 16 Tacoma and the night driving is actually dangerous with my older eyes and the poor stock lighting.

Are the H9 bulbs "warmer" in spectrum or something ?

Would appreciate knowing where you bought em also.

David Graves

 

[rando]

H9 bulbs are slightly higher wattage, more efficient and therefor about 60% brighter than H11 bulbs. You can buy H9 bulbs anywhere, they are the stock bulb used in your high beams:
https://smile.amazon.com/Philips-12361B1-Standard-Replacement-Headlight/dp/B003YMPN3A

You do have to modify the connector on the H9 bulb slightly with a utility knife to make it fit with the H11 plug:

Because they are being driven harder the H9 bulb will probably have a slightly shorter lifespan than the H11, so keep the bulbs you take out in your glovebox.

 

[DavidGraves]

Thanks Rando

If they are brighter bulbs, does the lense design avoid blinding oncoming drivers ?

My 97 T100 has much better lighting for our rural roads.

Is it just my eyes ?

David Graves

 

[rando]

It won't blind on coming traffic as the beam pattern is the same, with the same sharp cutoff for your low beams and fogs. The filament in the H9 and H11 are the same size and position, it just burns brighter in the H9. One of my (many) pet peeves are the folks that put HID or LED bulbs in their halogen head lights and drive around blinding everyone and raving about how much better they can see. You can usually see these guys coming b/c their lights are usually also blue to pink for some reason.

The increase in light with this modification is not drastic, but definitely noticeable.

 

[DavidGraves]

Thanks again

DG

 

[Vic Harder]

Thanks Rando

If they are brighter bulbs, does the lense design avoid blinding oncoming drivers ?

My 97 T100 has much better lighting for our rural roads.

Is it just my eyes ?

David Graves

If you want great lights, check out https://www.lightwerkz.net/index.php/ They offer kits for DIY, or you can send them your lights and have them retrofit true HID projectors into your stock headlight assemblies. Involves a lot of cutting/gluing and tweaking when you DIY.

I've done this for two of my vehicles and love the super sharp lighting cut-off and bright output.

No affiliation!

 

[craig333]

They never responded to my email unfortunately.

 

[pvstoy]

Rando

So looking at my 2012 Dodge Ram I have H11 low beams and are 55 watts, You say I can put in H9 and they are 65 watts. Is 10 watts a big enough difference that will be noticeable while driving? As it is now low beams are hardly usable driving, just not enough light to see down the road at highway speeds. Need to use high beams to feel safe.

On the Ram it takes a bit of effort to change bulbs as you have to pull the whole light assemble out to get to the bulbs. Good to know options to make it better, brighter & safer.

 

[rando]

If you want great lights, check out https://www.lightwerkz.net/index.php/ They offer kits for DIY, or you can send them your lights and have them retrofit true HID projectors into your stock headlight assemblies. Involves a lot of cutting/gluing and tweaking when you DIY.

I've done this for two of my vehicles and love the super sharp lighting cut-off and bright output.

No affiliation!

This sounds like a good option - but make sure you get the complete retrofit not just the bulb conversion, otherwise you could be 'that guy' blinding everyone else on the road.

 

[rando]

Rando

So looking at my 2012 Dodge Ram I have H11 low beams and are 55 watts, You say I can put in H9 and they are 65 watts. Is 10 watts a big enough difference that will be noticeable while driving? As it is now low beams are hardly usable driving, just not enough light to see down the road at highway speeds. Need to use high beams to feel safe.

On the Ram it takes a bit of effort to change bulbs as you have to pull the whole light assemble out to get to the bulbs. Good to know options to make it better, brighter & safer.

It is not so much the extra 10W, but that the bulb is more efficient at the expense of a slightly reduced life time. A standard H11 is 1250 lumens while an H9 is 2100 lumens.

However, you should do some research into your particular application before making the swap. The other difference between the bulbs is that an H11 has a glare cap (the end of the bulb is blacked out) whereas the H9 doesn't. In some headlights, primarily projector types, glare is controlled by the optical design not the glare cap, so using a bulb without a glare cap won't change things. If you have older reflector type headlights, they may require the glare cap to keep the stray light under control.

If you have reflector type low beams, it would be safer (albeit more expensive) to buy higher brightness H11 bulbs such as these:
https://smile.amazon.com/Philips-X-tremeVision-Upgraded-Headlight-Vision/dp/B00U1OIESK

I think these produce 1850 lumens, so somewhere between normal H11 and H9s.

 

[Vic Harder]

for sure. and get them aimed right too!

 

[pvstoy]

Thanks Rando for more explanation.

On the 2012 Ram the low beam has a hood in the housing that covers the end of the inserted bulb. So I should be good to get the un-shielded bulb? Picture attached.

I like the thought to change to 2100 lumens and 65 watts. Shorter life hours should still last a long time as most of the driving is done during the day. Areas of road sections where the headlights need to be turned on I can use the running light with the fog lights without low beams to further save hours on the bulb.

Ram list #9005 for the high beam bulb at 65 watts, maybe find a higher output for these while the headlight assembly is removed. But I do worry some about the small gauge wire that is used to go higher output.
.

.

 

[rando]

It will probably be fine with the built in glare caps - but I don't really know. I am not at all familiar with those headlights. One way to get fairly good sense is to change one side then go park 25' or so from a light colored wall (or your garage door) and make sure the pattern is the same on both sides.

My old Landcruiser had 9005 bulbs, and the upgrade for those was 9011 HIR1 bulbs:
The minor modification required is described here:
https://store.candlepower.com/mohirbuba.html

But you can also buy the bulbs on Amazon:
https://smile.amazon.com/Philips-Standard-Halogen-Replacement-Headlight/dp/B00480J5CW

 

[pvstoy]

Rando... Great information!! Thank you for taking the time to share the information and links provided.

 

[So Cal Adventurer]

You can also look at ditch lights,.

Hahahaha! This guy...

 

[ntsqd]

Something that I ran into running the "BriteBox" on our '95 CTD is that the housings are plastic. With both elements lit in high beam they melted one of the headlights. The std pitiful 9004 used in our truck is only 45w/65w, so 100w over say less than 10 hours melted the housing. This probably more wattage than is being discussed, but I thought that I'd mention this possibility.

Something that came out of buying the new to us 9.5' Hallmark is that it weighs considerably more than our old 6.5' Phoenix. On the drive home it raised the headlights. I did not get flashed by on-coming and the difference in usable light was significant. On the Dodges I'd suggest experimenting with a higher than might be normal light adjustment. See if you can get more light where its useful w/o irritating on-coming drivers.

 

[Bombsight]

Been battling myself as to where to mount some Baja Designs on my rig. I think above the cab might make for a lot of glare so I'm trying to figure out a way to mount them up front without a bull bar. I'd like to keep the aerodynamics as close to "factory" as possible.

 

[pvstoy]

Thanks for the tip Thom.

 

[Vic Harder]

Been battling myself as to where to mount some Baja Designs on my rig. I think above the cab might make for a lot of glare so I'm trying to figure out a way to mount them up front without a bull bar. I'd like to keep the aerodynamics as close to "factory" as possible.

Are you open to drilling holes in your bumper? I mounted some 9' lights to a Dodge Ram 1500 I had. There was a plastic area between the metal bumper that was accessible and easier to drill through