The SAE J581 Aux High Beam Thread

Re- hella 700 vs kc daylighter beam differences, besides the slightly higher beam intensity (which I could call basically nil, given how the human eye perceives light intensity, it's literally too small to actually see head to head) the hella may be more useful if you would typically use them on roads that have more rolling hills, as the taller beam pattern will help continue to illuminate further ahead and "upward" as you come down to the valley floor along the road and transition to pitching upward once again. The hella appears to have a slightly wider overall beam, but only in a very narrow band, perhaps not as useful for roadside illumination as it otherwise could be.

The ovular-shape of the KC is very similar to the diode dynamics pattern, specifically the Sport models, although the DDss3's may be slightly taller than the daylighter. The daylighter also seems to have a very smooth beam transition from its hotspot to its overall beam, which should be very easy on the eyes when used on the road. This is a point in the daylighters favor vs the Hella 700ff, as the hella does have very distinct banding outside and above its hotspot. If you have lots of reflective roadside signage where you drive, this may be distracting and potentially cause more glare and resulting eye strain.

As always, very good to have some solid photos and test data to be able to give some sort of apples:apples comparison. Great thread Crash

 

One other point, the KC halogen outperforms the LED latecomer in peak intensity by a good margin, but the LED variant has a much taller and broader central hotspot, as well as taller and broader surrounding beam pattern. That extra beam width and height could have been aimed towards the hotspot, but they traded it for a much fuller beam pattern overall.

 

They take about 30 seconds to fireup and stabilize so definitely not a quick on/off light

 

Yep, had them in pencil beam on my Rubicon several years ago. Great light.

 

I ended up mounting the Daylighters by my A-pillars, not ideal from a hood splash perspective, but they don't seem to vibrate much at all. If (when) I buy a bumper I'll mount them level with my headlights.



One oddity I noticed is that the two lights have different patterns. I assume it's a bulb issue.

 

Those are very large lamps for that location. I'd swap the bulbs right to left to check the optics.

 

They are, if I'd known I was going to mount them here because it was such a pain to mount them at headlight height I would have gone with something smaller. That said, they work well and look good so I can't complain.

I swapped the bulb for a brand new 100W Osram and the beam pattern is the same, so I assume it's the reflector. The lenses look identical.

 

Hmm, maybe the reflector isn’t seated correctly in the housing. I’d reach out to KC for a replacement if it bothers you.

 

I've seen that H3 bulbs over 100W have been a disappointment, at least those currently in production. However, it appears that KC Daylighters (and most likely 6" Apollo Pros) accept a PAR46 sealed beam bulb in lieu of the KC reflector/lens assembly. Per this forum thread from 2013, KC recommended a Wagner 4049 150w halogen sealed beam as a replacement bulb, and the 80W, 230,000 cd HIR H7680 bulb would fit as well. This wouldn't be a driving pattern bulb, but seems like it would outperform almost any other halogen spotlight.

 

Seems like I've got light outside of the pattern where I want it, so I've reached out, I'll see what they say.

Rewired and cleaned the Hella 500FFs that came with the Tacoma. A previous owner had wired them up with about 10' of 18 gauge, so I swapped the bulbs for the 100W Osrams and rewired them with the right length of 12 gauge for enormous performance gains.

 

10' of 18ga? Way to turn those 100watters into poor performing sub-50's. Not to mention a fire hazard.

 

Did you see KC has released an 8” light?

https://www.kchilites.com/slimlite-led-8in-bundle.html

it’s hard to find a lot of data around them, they offer an SAE selective yellow cover.
I assume it must filter the lamp enough to be SAE compliant?

 

It’s in the FAQ’s:

12,384 lumens spot beam -

Every SlimLite® 8" light comes as a Spot Beam pattern. However, you can change the beam pattern of the light with shields that simply snap onto the face of the light. These shields are available in SAE Driving and Spread beam patterns.

 

The slimlites very shallow open bucket reflects leave a lot to be desired from an optical standpoint, depending on the intended use. You are certainly not going to get good focus with those optics, no different than the smaller slimlite. The SAE driving filters appear to be spreader optics, but they don't show great pics on the website. If the lamps already had poor focus performance due to shallow open bucket optics, putting a filtration spread optic on-top of that certainly isn't going to make things better. I'd certainly be curious on actual performance measurements, KC claims 138w and 11.5A per lamp which is pretty ridiculous to say the least. I think the big advantage here is the slim form factor, there are some applications like I experienced on my Gladiator where you just don't have the depth to mount something even as simple as a Gravity G6. These are no-where as efficient as the Gravity line, but they appear to makeup for it in raw power.

 

ss3 fit nicely in grille.

 

That's SSc2 in the grill

 

Yes correct I put the wrong number lol

 

I have SSc3 behind the grill

 

Nice. How did you go about cutting your grille?
I have some too. I had them in front of my old grille. But I swapped the grille and didn’t put them back on.

 

Sadly I figured they would have the same fate as the smaller slimlite form factor.

but 8” is huge!