Hidden Aux Driving Lamps

Wanted to share my first welding project and which includes my experience finding the best lighting position for me in case it helps someone else since I often take a lot of knowledge from these forums without sharing in return.

I don't do as much offroading as I had originally hoped to, but I travel to a lot of dark and remote places for rock climbing with much of the trip being on some level of dark public road. Originally I bought some SSC2 Pros from Diode Dynamics and used them as A-pillar lights. When I could use them they were great. They made up for my halogens not being up to par, but not being street legal I felt I wasted my money spending so much time on pavement at night. I eventually bought a set of SS3 fogs which were complete game changers! However, they made it more obvious my high beams were struggling. When I checked the Pennsylvania lighting code, I found that I could have auxiliary driving lights to aid my high beams provided they were mounted less than 42 inches above the roadway and only 4 total forward-facing lights illuminated at a time.

I didn't want to mount them in the lower opening since I have a hidden front hitch receiver there. In the event I hook up a basket winch, I didn't want to block the lights. With this direction in mind, I broke out the Harbor Freight welder I had been practicing on, took some measurements, and created a hidden light pod mount that lines up perfectly with the 2015 grill (with the lights at ~40 inches)! The photos are with the SSC2 backlights on, but with the actual lights turned on they work better than my high beams and have minimal loss through the grill. They're especially helpful in the rain. Living in Appalachia we get a lot of it. I opted to relocate the horns according to this thread.



Hope this helps someone build their own. Cheers.

 

Nice job, they look really good!

 

Thanks!

 

Nice work! Looks like a clean job.

It is amusing, whats old is cool again, the "satoshi mod" was all the rage on the early second gens, putting lamps behind a mesh grille.

 

Well done on the light bracket, and kudos for actually searching up the relevent laws for you lamps.

 

Yep, I remember that well... then light bars were all the rage. Good times.

 

Any pictures of the beam pattern when on? I have a winch in the lower spot so have the same issue of not wanting to put a light bar there and have been looking for a spot to locate some additional forward facing lights. Have ditch lights on the A pillars and not interested in a roof rack, so something in the grille was what I was thinking as well.

 

Chek out the SAE J581 driving light thread at the top of the lighting forum. All the DD driving lights have a similsr beam pattern. The emitter (different LEDs offerednin different models) changes it slightly, but they're all similsrl roughly 8*×20* with a more intense center hotspot.

 

I dont have any pictures at the moment but I have the driving beam pattern lenses. I have them positioned to overlay my high beams almost identically. Imo, I think the spots from these small pods would be too focused and would recommend the driving pattern coming from the grill

 

I think you might find that the more dispersed the light pattern is - such as going from a Spot to a Driving pattern - the more the grill in front of the lights will interfere with how much light actually gets out. I'd also suggest that the closer to the grill the light is, the less light one will lose to the grill.

I have a pair of Diode Dynamics SS5 Pro Spot pattern lights behind the grill on my 4Runner. (I started with the Driving pattern.) They too are partially hidden by the grill. But the amount of usable light way down the road with the Spot lenses is far better than the Driving lenses. I'd post pics but Photobucket is apparently having a bad hair day right now.

 

Apparently, Photobucket is not allowing me to share pics online anymore. No matter. The pic I wanted to share is in the link below.

The SAE J581 Aux High Beam Thread | Page 38 | Tacoma World

 

Interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way since I was worried about not having the light spread enough down the road but that makes sense with how deep the grill fins are. I don't find that I'm hurting for more light than I have in my current setup but it would be neat to try the spots.