L.E.D. Vs.H.I.D.

For extreme difference weather conditions..i.e. 100 F to -40F here in montana what is gonna be my best bet?

Im looking at mountin to lights behind my grill(Hella BM or 500ff or something), and convert them to HID but just saw a L.E.D. light bar(visionx) here at work and I am wondering if its better for my uses.

OR should I just be adventurous and buy the two lights mount them in the grill plus a L.E.D. bar underneath, or would that be pointless?

Thanks sorry I dont understand alot of this.

 

It depends.

HID will shoot the beam farther and wider then an LED will. But LEDs are brighter at closer distance and don't make as bad shadows when mounted lower on the truck.

How far are you wanting the light to shoot? What Type of wheeling do you do? Is their a budget?

in off-road racing for example you Ideally want both. LEDs on the bumper looking at the ground right in front of you and want HIDs on the roof shooting far off in front of you.

 

Tim doesn't sell Visionx products. only RI

 

HID's suck in the snow I don't know about LEDs but I know HID's light up all the snow falling making it hard to see.

 

I'd buy Rigid Industries before I bought VisionX. A guy here spent big bucks on a VX and the thing is filled with moisture. Apparently he is fighting with VisionX now for a replacement. VisionX is a whole lot more expensive for a lesser quality product over Rigid Industries, IMO.

 

Its all good

With any WHITE light (HID, LED and Halogen) it will do the same thing. Thats why you are told not to turn your high beams on when it heavy snow fall. It reflects off it. All bright lights will do that. If you plan on using any off road light during then (Not recommended) Use one that is Amber in color. 3000k or less for HIDs and LEDs can come in amber.

 

Farther is always good, but closeness of LED would be helpful. I do a fair amount but alot of highway driving too. There is always a budget but I am willing to pay for quality. Long story short maybe both like I mentioned? Get the best of both worlds while becoming as poor as possible lol.

I just used the VisionX products as an example. a LED bar is sitting on a ranger here at the garage so I was playing with the light, its bright but didnt seem to go super far so I got wondering. Any compaines would be considered.

I read that in a post somewhere, someone mentioned amber colored for snow and rain. I know brights alone in snow suck so it would definetely be something to consider.

 

RI's are pretty badass... I just bought some dually's and they're bright as hell... The Amber LED's are the way to for snow & rain... Heres a water test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUsRalNgOJM?version=3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkgkyUk1q5g?version=3

 

VisionX - We use them on the Race Truck and Bug. Nice lights
Rigid Industries - Tim sells them here. Not sure what his discount is. Also good lights
phantom-lighting - you get a 20% off discount if you are a Desert Rangers member. http://www.phantom-lighting.com/pages/products_vigilante.php
Black Knight - They sponsor a lot of Racers in the Trophy Truck Class

 

If you do go HID's, I would put two of them on a seperate switch w/ 3000k's to cut through the nasties...

 

I was just about to text you and see what you thought, since you know exactly what I mean with the weather. I checked out your vids too.
Whats the warm up like? Like we talking a few more seconds or minutes lol I am plain with the LEd bar here and its like instant which is cool but not a giant deal if the HIDs are better.

I PMed Tim and asked him his opinion, and to post it here so ppl would have his input too, along with other questions. I have a feeling Im gonna be dropping alot of money on this lol.

Debating on goin to walmart or O'Reillys and getting a semicheap set of two for behind the grill for now.

 

Bullshit I have HIDs on my xterra and tacoma both headlights and fog lights and they are awesome!

 

Sounds good to me

 

HID lights are nice, but they are slowly becoming a thing of the past. They are big and bulky, not as strong, and nowhere near as efficient as LED lighting. They are also more temperamental to weather, more fragile, and they produce more heat.

In my opinion, I will never go with anything except LED lights anymore as far as off road lighting is concerned. I'm not gonna start the shit storm between RI and VX again, it is on another thread if you wanna search for it. I did not have good experiences with VX and I liked RI products better, that is why I chose them as my company to deal with.

Amber LED lights in the snow will work much better than even 3000K HIDs. Also, like mentioned earlier, LEDs are 100% as soon as you flip the switch. HIDs do take a few seconds to fully warm up. That can get irritating at times.

Once again, some of this is fact and some of this is just my opinions from my own personal experiences. Anyone who has seen my 30" light bar in person will tell you that it is absolutely blinding. These lights are expensive, but they are the strongest, most efficient and up to date lights on the market. The LED technology is growing like wildfire right now and will only get better in the future.

My 30" bar will produce over 14,000 lumens and will never ever get to hot to touch, not even in the middle of summer in 115 degree weather. I rolled my rhino onto the same bar that is on my truck and barely even scratched it. The light stayed on the entire time we were flipping it back over and driving it to the trailer. It never failed once, not even after having almost 1000 pounds land on top of it. Every single LED bulbs still lights up and there are still no signs of water or dust inside. I even dropped it to the bottom of an 18 foot deep pool for three days, and still not one drop of water inside. The light still works perfect every single time you flip the switch.

Another thing to think about is what the lights need to run. I say this because it saved my ass one night coming home from a late night deer hunt. My secondary battery on my rhino was going dead and in a hurry. My HID headlights finally just shut off because there wasn't enough power to keep them running. My 30" light bar stayed on the entire time. The LEDs do not need a specific amount of amperage to run, they will just keep getting dimmer and dimmer as the battery goes down. If I didn't have my LED light bar on the rhino that night I would of had to drive 24 miles using a flash light (which would have never lasted that long).

Anyways, I hope this helps you with your decision and hopefully I opened some eyes for other people who weren't sure or just didn't know. If anyone has questions for me please post on here and I will answer them for everyone to see. If your not sure, I'm sure their are a few others who aren't sure and would like to know also.

Thanks
Tim

 

LED's will drop in price in the next year or so because there will be a ton of new companies jumping on the bandwagon. Just like when flat screens first came out the prices were through the roof and now they give them away.

 

a factory ballast could lessen up the warm up time. or at least a high quality aftermarket one like morimoto something all digital. mine get up to optimal pretty quick.

 

Yeah, I hear ya. I would have them everywhere also if they didnt cost so much. I dont have any videos, but if you havent already, check out all the videos on RIs website. They have a lot of good ones on there.

x2. They will go down in price eventually once there is more competition out there that they will have to compete with.