I'm going to have a go at making my own lightbar, what could possibly go wrong?...

[MagicMtnDan]

After you do this maybe you can make your own shocks. It's what every $60,000 truck owner does to pass the time.

 

[Maxx2893]

So what? Maybe you don't remember but Raptor Retrofits, a beloved vendor here, started by retrofitting his own headlights when he could have payed somebody else like Sick HID's for some. You seem to have a major hard on lately for people wanting to use a cheaper option. Guess what, the price of a vehicle means jack shit. Somebody can put a $1,500 Rigid on a $5,000 Taco or somebody can put a $500 M&R on a $1.5M Caterpillar Haul Truck. Either way they don't need your approval and would most likely appreciate not having your condescending comments

 

[BramageDained]

After you do this maybe you can make your own shocks. It's what every $60,000 truck owner does to pass the time.

Youmadbro?

My professional background is with electronics, and I like to tinker with things.

No one offers lights that fit behind the grill and are made to follow the larger gap around the FORD letters. All of the grill mount lights have a lot of their light blocked by the grill itself. None of them follow the slight contour either.

If I wanted, I would just buy the really bright(and expensive) VisonX bar. But, I would still be left with having to get a different front bumper and have it mounted outside. Roof mount while probably being the best option for getting useable light out there isn't an option either, as my truck barely fits in some of the parking garages as it sits now.

This isn't about the cost, it's about having it exactly how I want(or at least trying to get there).

 

[tbone]

i wonder if i can swap out my 3 watt cree lghts in my light bar for 10 watt

 

[infinitereality]

Subscribed!

 

[BramageDained]

i wonder if i can swap out my 3 watt cree lghts in my light bar for 10 watt

Probably not. The heatsink might be insufficient if it is spec'd around the 3w LEDs. And, unlike what I'm doing, in a manufactured light the driver is probably part of the same board that the LEDs themselves are on.

Anyway.

I added some leads to two of the drivers I have so that I could set their current output. Problem is, to do that more safely(for the drivers) I had bought a 1ohm 50w resistor(so the voltage drop happens at the resistor and not the driver) so there is a load in the system when adjusting the drivers and I cannot find it. It'd just dump too much power into the driver without that resistor and will either cook it or immediately reach thermal shutdown.

This is all I accomplished today:

Reflectors should be here tomorrow and I'll get my truck back Thursday(my Dad borrowed it). Once I have those I'll make good ol' fashioned cardboard mockups then figure out what size heatsink to order and the spacing of the LEDs so I can make those strings.

 

[jackrook]

Dude if you make a light bar I would totally purchase one from you. I'm all about supporting. Small companies and individuals. Hence I went with the M&R light bar.

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---------- Post added at 02:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:27 PM ----------

I hope you pull this off and show everyone who doubted you the middle finger

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[BramageDained]

I forgot to add this bit:

The guy who designed the drivers made them more clever than I need.

They're designed to use a 3 position switch to change from low/high/off.

I made this little jumper to lock the driver into the high current setting.

With a 3 position switch it would work like

H<->C is high This is how I have it jumped now.
L<->C is low
Nothing connected to C is off.

But, I don't see a reason for modes.

 

[BramageDained]

All the reflectors showed up, and eyeballing an empty kleenex box, I thought I'd make a mockup quicklike.

Keep in mind, this has maybe 10 minutes of work and it's just a rough idea of what I'm figuring on. It's held together with scotch tape.

In the grill:

There's 6 big gaps above the FORD letters. I'm going to fill each of them with these boxes. Looks like the LEDs have a pretty clear shot to the outside world. I'm not actually mounting things to the grill.


Next to the key for size reference:

After having it there, I'm going to cheat the lights towards the top of the box, so the excess is hidden behind the top of the letters. I don't want to make the box any smaller since I need the surface area for the heatsink.

The backside will be either this or something very similar to it:

There are better extrusions I've found, but, they're like 20x the price. This outfit has reasonable prices for small quantities. I'd have to buy an 8 foot section to get a decent price at another place and it's still 10x the price per inch. I figure on each box having a 2" tall back so even if I made the full 12 boxes, I'd have a ton of leftover.

I'm probably going to make a jig tomorrow for soldering up the strings of LEDs. Hopefully the new power resistor I ordered shows up so I can set the current of the drivers.

I'm going to have to slightly modify the reflectors with a dremel to make them work with the boards the LEDs are on. It shouldn't be a big deal and I've seen elsewhere that it works just fine. They'll end up epoxied to the LED's board.

I'm going to have just one box made first and one string of LEDs with reflectors. Temporarily mount it all to a chunk of flat stock and turn it on to see how it all works. Should it not throw light like I think it should... I'll have lots of DIY flashlight parts to sell on ebay. The front will be some kind of poly sheet.

 

[dataustin]

If not the grill, how are you thinking of mounting them?