Re:Suitable driving lights for a Gen.4.

Lots of led's on the market from silly cheap to silly expensive. Around 150mm in dia, round to match the headlights and driving light style is what I am looking for.
Comments on what is good to the opposite would be appreciated.
Cheers.

Roger

Depends on what you call a silly price 

I have the  KC HILITES , they are the LED version of the Daylighters. They come in Driving or Spot Lamp variant. They have gone up quite a lot to be honest since i got mine. Probably not much point in getting the halogen version if you have LED headlights?

I did look at Cibbie, but they cost the same per lamp as a pair of KCs.

In my experience, driving lights are an item where brand names matter, I've used Cibie, Marchant (showing my age there) as well as numerous "off brands" - my current "brand of choice" is Hella.

The Hella Comet 500F (not the FF) is a classic design that has been in production for over thirty years, I've bought several sets and find them to be excellent.

It comes in an LED version, but I've no personal experience with that model, my concern is that it uses multiple LEDs in individual reflectors, which is not a design noted for it's "reach" or the distance that it can project an acceptable beam.

I have a pair of the halogen 500F to go the front of my Jimny when I get around to fabricating suitable mounting brackets.

wrote:

Lots of led's on the market from silly cheap to silly expensive. Around 150mm in dia, round to match the headlights and driving light style is what I am looking for.
Comments on what is good to the opposite would be appreciated.
Cheers.

Roger

Do you have a budget in mind?

Also are you after beam distance (spot) or to light up a wide area (flood)?


With LED lamps these days they can be lots of money. Not really sure how they can justify the money sometimes, but at the other end of the scale, the cheap ones can be more prone to failure and issues.

It is also difficult to ignore light bars these days. Gone mostly are the regular round lamps. Some companies may offer a round/sqaure lamp housing with multiple LEDs in, but they do largely the same thing as the bar. A few companies offer large reflectors in round housing and single LED, but it is rare.


Some other things to consider is light temperature. Most LEDs are cool white, but a lot of the cheaper ones are very nasty looking light with very poor colour rendition.

Also don't get suckered into "lumens", while more is generally good. It is a bit like torque in regards to an engine. Sometimes less lumens used different will give way better results (aka more horse power or in the case of lights, beam distance).


Personally I wouldn't go halogen these days unless you have halogen headlights. You will get more performance from LEDs and generally with much lower amp draws.

If you want to go retro, you could get some halogen lamps (new or used) and retrofit an LED bulb or even a Xenon HID. I've done both and they can give good results.

For my Jimny however I eventually decided on Osram. As a balance between price, quality & performance. They are a little on the cool side (6000k) but do everything else I want really well. But you will be limited visually/styling in how the items look. They won't offer you a classic round lamp.


My goal was long distance spot beam performance.





My setup works for me and allowed me to buy in stages. I also like the low profile of the light bar.

If you want one item to perform similar then then either of these offer similar ability:
www.bowerspartsonline.co.uk/lighting/led...d-light-beam-pattern

www.bowerspartsonline.co.uk/lighting/led...ht-lamp-beam-pattern


To get a "round" unit it will cost a lot more money (About £500 vs sub £200):
www.bowerspartsonline.co.uk/lighting/spo...round-spot-lightlamp

Many thanks for the info. I wont go into all the details but my eyesight has recently been improved, so I have waited for that to happen and to have a suitable dry clear dark night to do some testing. As 300bhpton has remarked - very good write up by the way - the Gen.4 LED headlights are extremely good with a very impressive low beam cutoff, and the reality is that for distance and far out spread they are probably all that I need. What I also found was that if I added the fog lights I got an improvement in that the very nearside was further illuminated. In truth the old style tungsten bulbs are gloomy so a pair of Martins LED bulbs should improve them further, which begs the question, can Martins LED DRL and fog lamp bulbs both be fitted at the same time?

Cheers

Roger

Yes, I have just fitted them after going back to stock Suzuki lights as my Osrams failed after nearly 10 years.

Cheers both, order to follow.

Roger