Upcoming Colorado Events

I might be available on Sunday. I can help with the rear leafs and watch you do the coils by hand, might even lend advice on the bumper.

 

Do it! I want to see the first gen flat bed.

 

Change of plans, I'm not going to be able to join you guys today. Have fun and I'll join in on the next run

 

Leave Denver at 3pm meet at the cemetery by 4pm.

 

Yankee Hill Run Saturday Afternoon after 3pm aka today

1. Me
2. Eric from up north
3. Odomandr
4.
5.

 

Edited the original post in the above quote to reflect the changes. Sounds like tomorrow may be more of an option for some since that trail run is this afternoon and not tomorrow afternoon like I had thought I read. So it's for sure going to go down tomorrow but I may start working on things this afternoon since we're now done w/the in-laws and I'm not doing much else anyway. So if you want to come back and either help or just BS and talk trucks while I work on mine today, tonight or tomorrow let me know. Weather is going to be good for a garage BS session either way.

 

If only you lived closer...

 

Road trip!

 

It's not that far.

 

X2 lol

 

Fun times last night! Good to meet most of you, and good to see Nickelodeon again.



(shameless plug)


Looks like an RC car in this picture.

 

Wussy.

 

Wish I coulda made it yesterday, new roof was getting put on the house!!

Looked like a great run though, man the snow pack is horrible this year

 

wish you could have made it too Rancher.

That's the goal of the pictures and stories.... to make sure that next time you do whatever it takes to attend

If you want to try out your new winch, I can do my best to accomodate.

 

I need to test that thing out!! I'm ready to be on the trails!!

 

Hey Brett! I know I heard you mention last night you were curious why LED "spot" is so much less of a spot beam than expected, I wanted to shed some... er, light... on this for you - and anyone else who's interested and was involved in the discussion.

Basically it boils down to the optics of the reflector, their size, and quantity.

When it comes to long distance light output, Eric's fancy 9" HID's will take the cake for focused beam compared to LED just about any day, because of the size and complexity of the reflector in those gigantic round things, the light is able to be produced into a much more refined and focused pattern through the use of the large reflector. The lux/lumen output of his 2 35w (or 50?) HID's in the 9" housing may be less than the measured lumen output of a 30-50" LED bar, but because the light is able to be pushed out in a more focused pattern due to the big reflector, their effective distance and clarity (lux) at distance will be greater (probably).

Where as if you look at your 30" bar, or my 15" bar, or my 42" roof bar (which is in the shed), they've got many many small reflectors, 1 per emitter, spread out over that 30" width. With each reflector measuring out to be about 3/4" diameter, there's only so much optically that can be done in that space to focus the beam for long distance clarity. It can be done, but typically the nature of an LED bar with 50 emitters spread out over a 30" width will naturally develop more of a "flood" beam, scattering light over a wide range of space because of the many, lesser refined reflectors vs. the 2 really nice reflectors.

Even a spot beam LED bar (not combo like yours and mine) will have a natural degree of light flooding from the way the reflectors are structured. To a certain degree I think this makes LED bars more useful for a lot of applications, but your point last night certainly stands, the usable lux at a great distance of the LED bar is less than that of a pair of halogen or HID big lights as a result of that focus.

Granted, most of the halogen lamps spot beam pattern is set to reflect in a "pencil" beam, of 5-10 degrees, whereas the typical non-Rigid branded LED bars consider the "spot" to actually be around 30 degrees, and flood to be 90. So there's that...

I've heard about folks cracking open their LED bars and installing finer reflectors, like a 10 degree that they buy aftermarket, but I've never been able to figure out where they source those parts. It'd certainly be nice, I'd love to do that to the bar on my stinger once I get my roof light on again.

 

^^ Good info. there. I want to find out the lumens my round lights are putting out. I will have to research it. The 40" curved bar I just picked up is all spot beam lenses. I expect it to pretty much be a flood light though due to the curve. Which is exactly what I need since my round lights get plenty down road already.

 

The 42" bar I picked up is a combo beam, just for giggles I covered up the flood sections, it's a whole lot of light in all directions - which is exactly what I was hoping for up that high. It still has great distance, but in a different manner than a typical spot beam... I can't wait to put that thing to the test in Moab.

 

Looked like a fun time and I wish I could've made it. The run was posted when I was en route to Longmont on Friday night and I left all my wheeling stuff at home. Then I was having my exhaust rerouted on Saturday and didn't know if it would be finished in time.

 

The optic LED bars out this day are also helping with the focus aspect, using the lens as well as the reflector to gather and focus the light for better distance.