Rough Country Fog light kit installed

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Truckzor

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If you’re in an urban, suburban, not sand-dune-blasting at night, east coast off roading type of driving scenario, you can do fine with lower cost light options.

I don't disagree with this. My Rigid DSS driving pattern lights on the A pillars are my go to. Most of the time I don't need any more distance and just want to see everything in front of me in a wide field of view. By contrast, a pair of XL80s up there, while the amount of light they throw is incredible, is almost too much. The reflections off of street signs from those is WAY more than I get.

To all - Vendor pricing on lights is typically well below retail. Check with the guys at Freedom Motorsports.
 

realjones88

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Nick@Apollo-Optics

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putting a B/D light bar behind the grill is a gigantic waste of money, no matter what anyone else tells you. You’re losing a great deal of light throw behind the grill and the B/D lights are awesome, I have several. But not behind the grille.

I love the B/D lights for distance, they rock. That said, the light color is better from my amazon sourced cheap lights. They don’t throw anywhere near as far as a B/D light bar of comparable size and I didn’t expect they would. but damn they throw an incredibly bright amount of medium dispersed, white light that is much closer in color to the factory headlights color than the B/D lights.

What B/D brings to the table is efficiency, distance, warranty, configurability and they’re freakin’ bright. Even the squadron sport / wide cornering is enough to **** off the most tolerant of on coming drivers, and the squadron pros throw light a long-freakin’-way. Also, Baja Designs lightens your wallet like no other lighting vendor out there, so you won’t have to worry about keeping a lot of cash in your wallet.

If you’re in an urban, suburban, not sand-dune-blasting at night, east coast off roading type of driving scenario, you can do fine with lower cost light options. But if you want more consistent, coherent spot beam, longer distance and want options for different lenses, then save your pennies for a couple years and if that doesn’t do it for you, then you can always do what Baja Designs told me when I asked about “easy financing terms” for their lights.

“smurf’, you can always get a paypal credit line”.

it’s your truck, it’s your choice.

Great post here about the differences between the lights and why the higher-end lighting options justify their additional cost. Although, I will have to disagree on the point about the light bars behind the grille. The Gen 2 grille light loss is negligible vs the Gen 1 grille. The distance of the 30" Baja Designs S8 bar behind the grille would out shine the Squadron Racer Edition lights mounted in our Unlimited Fog Light Kit and outshines the KC C-Series Curved 40" bar mounted in our ADD bumper now.

The thinner slots of the Gen 2 grille help with both air flow and light pass through vs the Gen 1 grille.

I don't see how linking a $1300 bar that's different from the one in the BD 2017 raptor kit answers the question as to why it's worth 5x the price. :shitsweak:

"The least of which is the fact that they are 2+ times as bright."

In what way is a 13.5K lumen bar twice as bright as a 12K lumen bar?

As @smurflslayer mentioned, build quality, IP rating, distance, LED chip quality, and lux.

More important than the lumens of a light bar are the lux (basically, light focus or brightness at a distance). Higher end lights have better designed optics that better project the light making the light push further down range with the same or even less power draw than a lower tier option.

When talking about the the LED chips themselves, sure CREE and Osram both make good quality LED chips. However, higher end lights will feature higher quality chips. Not all CREE or Osram chips are created equal and achieve the same quality standards. Think of a diamond...the difference between a two 1 karat diamonds can be 5-10x the price. Why? Quality. LEDs are the same way. Some chips are higher quality than others and those higher quality chips go to a higher bin (ie. top bin) and have a higher cost associated with them.

When it comes to IP Rating, IP69K vs IP67 is a significant difference. IP69K will make the light waterproof to both higher pressure water and steam.

At the end of the day, your lighting choice depends on your needs and budget and that's why we offer an array of brands for different customers and their needs.
 

smurfslayer

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Nick,
Thanks for the insightful and informative post. Corrective too. I’m certainly not in a position to disagree with your observations, and I would like to point out that it’s great that we have supporting vendors like you here willing and able to chime in with the 411.

I’ve done my best to spread the purchases among supporting vendors for all my Raptor farkles. You’re moving up on my list of ‘need to buy something from them’. We’re blessed to have you guys here supporting us. Thank you!

I think I may not have considered the focus of the B/D light bars as compared to cheaper ones. So the Gen 2 grille has bigger openings and such, but you still have a lot of depth in the grille as well, and any LED that’s obstructed fully is out of the game, any of the individual LED’s partially obstructed may not get a proper throw depending on the focus. Your point makes sense though.

Great info.
 

Nick@Apollo-Optics

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Nick,
Thanks for the insightful and informative post. Corrective too. I’m certainly not in a position to disagree with your observations, and I would like to point out that it’s great that we have supporting vendors like you here willing and able to chime in with the 411.

I’ve done my best to spread the purchases among supporting vendors for all my Raptor farkles. You’re moving up on my list of ‘need to buy something from them’. We’re blessed to have you guys here supporting us. Thank you!

I think I may not have considered the focus of the B/D light bars as compared to cheaper ones. So the Gen 2 grille has bigger openings and such, but you still have a lot of depth in the grille as well, and any LED that’s obstructed fully is out of the game, any of the individual LED’s partially obstructed may not get a proper throw depending on the focus. Your point makes sense though.

Great info.

I appreciate the kind words Smurf and definitely appreciate the support!

You're definitely right about the added depth of the grille, but the depth becomes more of a factor when looking at a broader optic. For example, let's use the Baja Designs 30" S8 kit since we're on the topic.

On the 30" S8, you have 3 10" sections with each 10" section having 8 LEDs. Of the 8 LEDs, 6 are spot optics and 2 are wide cornering optics. So with the spot pattern, the 6 spot optics are virtually unaffected with the exception of the grille pieces that are in the way of the optic itself. Now the wide cornering optics will be more affected by the grille as it's already spreading light in multiple refracting angles which does present more chance for the blockage of light output. So you'd lose a touch more coverage with the behind the grille mount of the S8, but the distance is relatively similar.

One more thing to note, on the S8 Kit for the Gen 2, the bar is directly up against the grille at either end and pretty close the grille in the middle, so you're not having a lot of spread behind the grill itself since it's nearly flush with the inside of the grille plastic. This is another major factor in mitigating light loss by the grille. On the Gen 1, the average 40" light bar sat between 4-6" from the front of the grille shell. That was the major reason why the light loss behind the grille was roughly 40% of unobstructed lux (as measured at the 2014 Texas Raptor Run).

Thanks again for your time if you read through both of these novels :biggrin:
 

Truckzor

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I don't see how linking a $1300 bar that's different from the one in the BD 2017 raptor kit answers the question as to why it's worth 5x the price. :shitsweak:

"The least of which is the fact that they are 2+ times as bright."

In what way is a 13.5K lumen bar twice as bright as a 12K lumen bar?

The light bar I linked was 35K lumens. Did you miss that part?

:specialed:
 

chefsam

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rough country LED fog light kit

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