The SAE J581 Aux High Beam Thread

Small price to pay for the time and detail you can put into these tests and comparisons.

 

Crash saved me a bundle on Odyssey LED headlights by testing them. Hard to know how good they are till you put numbers up. 'course the wife really didn't want me to swap 'em anyway.

 

If this has been posted already, please let me know, but what color temperature do you get if you put standard selective yellow lenses (meant to correct a 4000K LED to 3000K) on a 6000K light? Something approximating 4000K? Would it be greenish and nasty? I assume it wouldn't be nice since nobody seems to be doing it.

 

Its a really nice warm white. Whiter than halogen, but much easier on the eyes than 5 or 6000k. There are actually alot of guys running it on this thread.

 

No, no, no. 6000k emitters with the 4000k yellow optics creates green garbage output. There is a post somewhere that I have demonstrated this. Definitely don't do that.

I think @Aws123 was thinking if you had 4000k emitters and removed the yellow optics for clear, which gives a nice 4000k.

 

Oh shit! Sorry about that. Totally misread that. Thought you meant clear lens swap on an original yellow lamp with 4000k led

 

Here's what a set of Diode Dynamics SS5 Pro lights that came with the selective yellow fog lenses look like with clear spot pattern lenses. Perfect color.

 

Is there much of a difference between the lighting needed for high speed off road driving (which seems to be what Baja's products are marketed for) and highway driving? I don't have any first hand experience with any of Baja's products, but I've got an SS18 driving pattern bar that I've used extensively.

 

Yes, there is a significant difference.

In high speed off road applications you will want both near field and distance light, and you'll want light in a very wide pattern. You need near field to see what is immediately around your vehicle since there is no cleared and defined road way and obstacles may be present, you'll need the wide pattern to determine the best path forward. The foreground light will significantly limit your distance vision and night vision and draw your eyes to looking closer to the vehicle than off in the distance, so ideally you want to balance the foreground light to a usable amount for the purpose while having stronger distance light to try and minimize the negative effects. This balance will really depend on the off-road speeds it is intended to be used for, with lower speeds tipping toward more foreground light. Note that what Baja calls driving is actually combo optics, and not an actual driving pattern.

In high speed highway driving you want to minimize the foreground light to maximize your distance vision, night vision and keep your eyes focused on distance. With a paved road there is no need for the foreground light to focus on terrain. A driving light will illuminate an area larger than the roadway ahead, but it will be focused so it isn't illuminating everything ahead with a wide beam pattern, as that is not useful at highway speed on a pre-determined path and by having a more focused pattern the light will be higher intensity to project further and keep you more focused on seeing distance. KC, Rigid, Diode Dynamics and others offer SAE driving/SAE driving style lights. I say SAE driving style because lights like the SS3 Max and SS5s in Driving are too high intensity to be SAE compliant, but they still have the same SAE style driving pattern.

For use on the street, SAE driving pattern is going to be vastly superior to off road combo optics. For use on the trail, off road combo optics are going to be more useful. You could build a combination of lights to deliver both, by using an SAE driving style in some, and spread optics in others, such that you run the SAE driving on the street, and both on the trail. Baja's open bucket reflector spots are going to provide a much nicer blend of light and spill for trail use though compared to DD's SAE driving which is very focused.

 

@crashnburn80 that makes sense, thank you.

So off road, you sacrifice some distance vision because you need more light up close to see the terrain, whereas on the highway, you want a majority of your light to be downrange to keep your pupils from constricting, so you can see further and go faster on the highway than you would be able to off road, correct?

This sounds like the approach @Aws123 has taken, with Hella 700FFs, and SS3 fogs.

You mention off road combo optics, and SAE driving. I assume Baja's spot pattern has too much spill to be ideal for highway driving, and too little width to be used without being combined with a wide pattern off road. Would you agree?

I really appreciate your explanations as I'm learning.

 

Essentially yes.

Not exactly, while fogs may help a little with a wide pattern, it is an extremely short range pattern with a cut off. Having a distance light like driving and then an extremely short range light with a cut off like a fog is going to leave a lot of unlit area for off road use. With a spread optic, there is no cut off, so you get that wide pattern in a much taller pattern to fill in areas outside of the headlights and outside of the driving lights. Again Driving and Fog are both going to be superior for their on-road purposes, but in off-road applications where you are looking for a light to provide a wide pattern where you don't want cut offs, the spread optic is going to be a much better fit.

Here is a image from Baja showing their Spot optic left vs combo optic right.


Because Baja uses open bucket reflectors, there is a lot of uncontrolled light spill, which you can see creates a bunch of foreground light and modestly wide pattern even though it is called a spot beam. The uncontrolled light spill also reduces the intensity of the center of the pattern in the spot, because light is essentially being wasted. This makes for a poor highway driving light for the reasons mentioned earlier. It isn't that it is too narrow, but more that it doesn't have the needed focus of a driving beam. In off road applications, the excess light spill is helpful, as want that foreground light too. You can see the combo beam creates excessive foreground light, which again can be useful on the trail in the right conditions but this is more harmful than helpful on the highway.

Here is images from Diode Dynamics showing their patterns


You'll notice that the Driving and Spot patterns focus the light at distance and minimize the light spill. You can see that the Driving pattern will not illuminate the area around your vehicle light Baja's Spot pattern, since the DD TIR optics offer far greater control and focus of the light output, meaning you get higher output intensity to project light further down range. While Spot and Driving look similar in these images, the driving pattern is larger, which is what you want to cover the entire area of the road ahead allowing for corners. The Spot will project further, but cover a smaller area, which can be great as secondary aux light to increase distance visibility without increasing foreground, but the first set of aux lights should be Driving for highway use. Spot is also not a highway legal pattern.

I think the vehicle is facing uphill in the DD images, or does not have their fogs aimed as the fogs should not be illuminating the tree tops.

You can see how DDs Driving and Sport lights do not illuminate the area around the vehicle like Bajas do. That area of illumination around the vehicle is what you want off road, but not what you want on the highway. Different strengths and weaknesses of the TIR vs open bucket reflectors, leading to differing use cases for what is best.

 

Back when you ran these, did you ever wish for more light, either in a driving pattern or a spot? Did you ever overdrive them?

 

That statement was a bit misleading. I had the Pro6s for my Tacoma in a behind the grill mount. But to use them I needed a custom grill, which was more complicated than I had intended and did not finish, so I never was able to use them on my truck. I intended to mount them on my Gladiator but they didn’t fit in the location I desired. Then I considered putting them on my 1st Gen, but decided to keep the truck simpler in appearance so didn’t mount them. So while they are one of my favorites, I never got to use them. The output of the Pro6 is actually over the peak Cd Max for J581 compliance, you won’t have to worry about outrunning them at all.

 

That makes sense.

Have you thought about period-correct driving lights? Or keeping it more stock in appearance?

 

It’s hard to do serious driving lights and not consider SS5’s.

 

One of the things I like about the Pro6 is they look semi-period correct with 6” round reflectors. However this headlight upgrade with 100w Superbright Osrams definitely covers more than enough distance for any speed the 1st gen is covering.

Then there is the Tacomas parking space.


No room for front lights, unless behind the grill. (And no the truck isn’t touching the bench). For this specific build it is more restorative on a 20+ year old truck and only very minor mods. Want to keep it classic looking and true to the original form, so a custom grill with a behind the the grill mount is out.

 

They're in the running, I like the look of the Pro6s a little better, and I really like that they match the 5000K of the stock headlights. I have 3200K, 6000K, and 6500K (that I really need to get rid of) on the Forester and I find it a little distracting, so I'd like to keep everything the same color temp.

I've heard the SS5 Pro is better as a spot than a driving light, since it covers 15x15 or 20x20 degrees.

That makes a lot of sense. I plan to upgrade the headlights on whatever replaces the Forester, since hopefully it'll have halogens.

 

Speaking from personal experience, yes, I would agree. I started with the Driving lenses on mine, but quickly switched to the Spot optics - which I am very happy with.

And as for color temperature, I originally ordered selective yellow fogs. Swapping in any clear lens - as I did - yields a nice 4000k color.

 

I got with the wife, since it's her vehicle, and she wants a warmer color temp than the Pro6s, so it's between SS5 Sports, SS5 Pros (in 3000K yellow or 4000K white) and halogen Daylighters. She's got an hour commute through the dark in eastern CO, so getting something that melts snow is a priority. I know the halogen Daylighters will, I'd think the 3000K SS5 Pros would as well, but would the SS5 Sports? Would the 4000K SS5 Pros? Would putting yellow covers on the 4000K SS5s give the exact same effect as having the yellow lens?

Are the SS5 Pros too much light? Are you effectively blind when you switch your high beams off and are just left with your low beams?

Also, is there any reason not to have driving lights permanently tied to the high beams? I can't imagine a scenario where I'd want high beams but not driving lights, or driving lights but not high beams.