MkIV LED (Off Road) Driving Light

Fix_Until_Broke

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Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
The chinese E-Codes were a great improvement over my milk jug looking OEM headlights, but still lacking in the rural driving conditions where there isn't another light for miles around.

I saw this thread recently on driving lights and did a little research on the bar style LED lights.

I settled on a Rigid Industries 20" E-Series model with combination spot/flood pattern from Amazon.com - Expensive, but it appears to be a very welll built unit.

The next question was where to put it...? I liked the roof location, but without a roof rack it's really difficult to mount and run wires to, etc.

The light fits very well inside the valance opening just below the license plate, but is pretty low and ends up being the most forward thing on the car so very likely to get damaged by road debris and snow drifts, etc

Inside on the dash over top of the defrost vents is a very nice place, but covers the defrost vents and I would need to build a cowl so the reflection from the inside of the windshield does not blind me. Blocking the defrost was a deal breaker for that location.

Just outside the windshield on the back edge of the hood was another option, however it's a bit obnoxious there and would require drilling holes in the hood or some kind of clamp system to mount it.

I decided on the grille right between the two headlights. The spacing of the brackets was perfect (see pictures below), there was a good mounting location, it's a little less obnoxious and a bit protected, should project light right in line with the OEM headlights, etc.

I have not wired it up yet, but intend to wire it so that it comes on with the high beams and an enable switch - so both the enable switch and the high beams have to be on before the light turns on so I don't accidently turn it on while on the road and blind oncoming traffic.







It's VERY close to the hood, but still pivots more than enough for aiming. I'd like it to be about 1" lower so it's centered vertically in the opening, but I'd have to make new mounting brackets that the lights pivot on and this was just too easy.




The width is perfect for the location with the supplied mounting feet turned so they point to the inside


I cut a ~2" long piece of 1" x 3/16" flat steel and gave it a little bend to follow the contour of the bumper cover. Then I drilled/tapped a hole (1/4-20) for the bolt to hold the foot of the light so I wouldn't need a nut under it. Since the bolt is under the light, it needs to be bolted to the steel "adapter" tab first, then the mounting foot can be assembled to the light itself, then the whole assembly can be screwed to the car.

I drilled a hole in the back of the adapter tab and used the outer two T30 shoulder bolts that hold the bumper cover to the radiator support to hold the tabs down. I had to drill the hole to 7/16" so the shoulder would sit down through the steel tab. There's still full thread engagement into the radiator support piece.

This picture shows the mounting tab a little better


The wiring ran perfectly through the passage in the air inlet duct into the engine compartment right in front of the battery. No cutting required


I made a ghetto hood release for the time being - it's just welding wire - I'll do something nicer later when I finish the wiring.


More pictures later when I finish the wiring an can actually fire it up.
 

hpc

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2004
Location
indiana
TDI
2002 NB TDI, 2013 GLK 250 BlueTec
Buy the Rigid Industries cover - you spent a lot of cash, protect the light.

I have two Dually D2's which replaced the fog lamps - infinitely better. I thought
about their 8", but on a Bug - where would you mount it.

SO - how 'bout some night time shots?

I predict a lot of "blind" deer in your area....
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
It's not wired up yet - hopefully over my Christmas break I'll be able to finish it up.

The cover is a double edge sword - I like the idea of protecting the light, but am not going to stop when it gets dark and take it off because I might use it, then put it back on later, etc. It just won't happen.

You could put it in the lower valance, but it's not a great spot for the reasons I mentioned above. Back of the hood would still work - may as well go 20" then :)
 

nokivasara

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Joined
Jan 25, 2008
Location
Sweden @ Lat 61N
TDI
Tiguan 4-motion, Golf mk7
Wow, didn't expect that!
In all spot light tests I've seen over here they use 1 lux (or lumen?) as a point where they draw the line on range/distance of the beam.

That is 443m for these LEDs, I thought they would be around 200m :eek:

My SIMs light up at least a hundred meters beyond the LED bar but at that distance it doesn't really matter.
 

Mdub707

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2012
Location
Richfield Springs NY
TDI
2002 Jetta TDI
These things are wildly popular on some of the powerstroke boards I'm on, the light output is simply amazing. Turns the night into day time.

The rigid bars are very nice and top quality.
 

spartan

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2011
Location
MI
TDI
05 Passat Wagon
Very cool, can't wait to see pictures of the output. But that is a ton of money for lights, you could have retrofitted 2 sets of headlights for that much!
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
I didn't really like the mounting location of the light - it was too close to the hood, stuck out farther from the car than I liked and was too high in the opening. I ordered the weld on mounting tabs from Rigid along with the clear light covers. If I had to do it again, I probably would just use a couple pieces of flat steel that I have laying around instead of paying $10 for these laser cut pieces.
For reference, these tabs and the die-cast feet from a month ago are dimensionally the same so you can see how much lower the light is from the earlier pictures. I also moved the light back as far as I could and still be able to aim it. It will tilt up/down at least 10 degrees which is more than enough.
I wired it up to my "Funk" switch using the included wiring harness - only wire I had to run was one from the dimmer so the switch backlight dimmed with the others. Otherwise red wire to power, black to ground and that's it - pretty simple actually.
The clear covers were a great recommendation - I ended up driving through a good portion of the snow storm before Christmas and the cover was packed full of road salt, grime, etc. I wish they had a full 20" cover instead of 2 separate 10" ones though.

Once I run this for a while and am happy with it, I'll remove the tabs, sandblast and paint them.





I'm not a photography expert, but I tried to take some pictures of the lighting. I just set my camera on the steering wheel, let it auto focus and select the exposure and push the button. I think the pictures are representative.
E-Code Low Beams only - the door is ~35 feet from the front of the car

E-Code High Beams only

Rigid 20" E-Series with the E-Code High Beams

These pictures are down a ~400 foot long driveway.
E-Code Low Beams only

E-Code High Beams only

Rigid 20" E-Series with the E-Code High Beams

It's aimed a bit low so I tilted it up after these pictures which helped light things up farther away instead of right in front of the car. In some ways it's not as bright as I had hoped, but when you turn it off you wonder how it got so dark.
Overall I like it, I think it looks OK and performs well.
 

Digital Corpus

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Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Location
Ontario, California
TDI
'97 B4 w/ 236K mi body, 46K mi soul
Does your camera have a RAW file format you can take a photo in? If you could send me a sample of all three pics against your garage door, I can give some relatively close approximations as to the relative brightness of the light bar.

I've been toying with this idea for a while now myself too. Just have had higher priority list of items to deal with though.

PS - I'm actually interested in this piece of hardware now...
 

Zedbra

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Joined
Feb 26, 2006
Location
Squamish, BC
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2005 Jetta TDI

Digital Corpus

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Location
Ontario, California
TDI
'97 B4 w/ 236K mi body, 46K mi soul
If no RAW, then just a JPEG would work. If you have a manual mode and can take a shot of the flood light just before you loose detail and then use the same exposure for the regular headlights, that would suffice.

RAW just gives me a buffer to work with
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
I like how you sunk it back into the grill area more, looks better.

I was looking at LED lights for my truck, and I came across a site that has some more budget-friendly options: http://blitzpro.com/12v-led-lights.html

Here are pages of uses and reviews: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/89795-Inexpensive-LED-flood-lights

I am in no way affiliated with this manufacturer, just passing along the info.
Cool - thanks for the other links. It does not look like they have a dual row ~ 20" but they do have a single row version. It's about 4000 lumens vs 8000 for the Rigid dual row.

Definately much cheaper which is nice and the smaller (one row vs two row) will probably fit better as well.

One thing I'm finding is that I think a true spot might work better than a combo spot/flood. The ground right in front of the car is really bright which makes it harder to see things at a distance. I don't need any aditional illumination on the ground for the first 100 feet.
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
Does your camera have a RAW file format you can take a photo in? If you could send me a sample of all three pics against your garage door, I can give some relatively close approximations as to the relative brightness of the light bar.
I've been toying with this idea for a while now myself too. Just have had higher priority list of items to deal with though.
PS - I'm actually interested in this piece of hardware now...
PM me your e-mail address and I'll send you the pictures. They all look like .jpg to me, but that's not saying much :rolleyes:
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
From a purely aesthetics perspective, anyway to put those in the lower center grill instead?
Yes, it wil fit there but as I explained in the first post, there is really nothing to mount to in that area, the light will be subject to a lot more road debris, and the lighting is not as good being so close to the ground.

I think the best lighting position is just above the windshield, but I didn't want to take the aerodynamic penalty and install would be more challenging. If you've already got a roof rack, then that's a different story.
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
I removed the light this weekend and replaced the OEM grill.

I tried many different things to reduce the foreground lighting, blocking off the flood LED's on the sides, blocking off the lower half of the lower row of LED's across the bottom, blocking off the whole lower row, changing aim, etc - nothing worked.

There was just way too much spill that illuminated the foreground so much that it actually inhibited distance vision.

When you look at the specs for all these lights, and they call out a 5 degree or 10 degree spot angle. Digging into this more, what this means is that 50% of the lumens fall within the 5 or 10 degree (or whatever they're specified) window. That leaves 25% of the light that falls outside that window both up and down.

I think if the light were able to be mounted twice as high (top of the windshield for example) it would have much less foreground illumination.

I looked at a lot of other lights and couldn't find anything that was going to be appreciably better (per the specifications).
 

bmali98

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 16, 2008
Location
Dunsford Ontario
TDI
O4 golf pd auto
Have you reconsidered possibly roof mounting it? Maybe a custom transparent roof bar wind deflector for aerodynamics?
 

Fix_Until_Broke

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Location
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
TDI
03 Jetta, 03 TT TDI
I looked at it, but never came up with a good method to mount it, wire it, and then the wind noise and aerodynamic penalty all kind of made it a non starter :(

If I already had a roof rack that would be a different story, but I don't.

One other thing I had thought of was using some stand alone HID lights, some of which have a razor sharp cutoff and flipping them upside down which should allow me to control the foreground lighting a lot better.

Have not found a good source of something like this and the HID's don't like turning on/off much.

Still open to other suggestions and ideas - keep them coming!
 

Digital Corpus

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Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Location
Ontario, California
TDI
'97 B4 w/ 236K mi body, 46K mi soul
Are the lenses refractive/reflective, or TIR? If they're not the latter, they usually have a bit of spillover. Probably too much work to buy your own lenses and roll a custom way to mount them?

If not and you have time to dive into the favor hole, have a look at LEDiL's catalog of spot lenses. They make both TIR & refractive btw.
 
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