GJeep

Another reason why I wouldn’t “flash flood” the trail with light, is the feeling of night offroading...... it has its charm, which excessive light wipes off.
On cloudless, full moon nights, I sometimes shut the lights off. Once the eyes adjust, there’s enough light for driving - quite enjoyable.

On mountainous woody trails, average speed is low, visibility is limited to short distances. Very strong light would glare off trees and annoy me more than it would be helpful.
When in the desert, a long-reaching light would sometimes be helpful.

I have no need or use for 50” light bar + two 12” light bars + … + …

That’s exactly what I intend to do, but not with 50” light bars...

I replaced the miserable stock headlights with TruckLites. The light is very even and wide, and the highs are excellent. In fact, because the TruckLites plus better fog lights serve me so well, adding lights dropped down on the mods list.

Still, I want light to the sides and the back. Those are going to be LED floods, which I already have:
2 very good ones, the 6 CUBE, from Inspired Engineering (a forum vendor).
Link - 6CUBE
The other 2 are from ebay.
Link - 2PCS 18W 4" Cree LED Work Light Bar Flood Offroad 4WD UTE SUV Fog Driving Lamp | eBay

The way they “behave” will determine which will be at the front and which at the back.

I found very nice A-Pillar brackets, made of one-piece Aluminum:
Light Brackets for Wrangler JK Jeep 2007-2015, Aircraft Grade Aluminum , Set of 2, Black.

What I didn’t find on ebay, Amazon or anywhere else, is the time for the installation... when I do have some free time, I offroad instead of “wasting” the time on wiring…



In the meantime, I keep a good hand-held search light in the Jeep, and plug it to the cigarette lighter...
As I use it about 3 or 4 times a year, there was no rush for all those lights, except for the reverse lights. They pop into my mind when I back up between trees and it's pitch dark...

Kojack

Ok, to clarify, 1. my lights get 1000m of light, and its not in a "spot" pattern at 1000m its spread enough to cover 4 lanes of road, and to the ditches on either side that are cleard back another 100-150 meter to tree line. Its not two little dots of light up the road. about 100m in front of my jeep I fill the same width of road. So If you read correctly I am using DRIVING BEAMS, not SPOT beams. I use these lights to light the highway at night so not to hit moose and other animals that kill dozens of people every year on our roads. I am not doing 100 mph, but I don't have to, I want to see up the road. I use them also in the trails and they light up what I need to see as good if not better than LED there too 2nd. the marketing use of lumens IS a ploy, it has no real world use. All these light bars putting out 12,000 lm of light.....they don't tell you its at like 1 meter away. and that at 200m they barely put out enough light to light the road. You use HP/torque as an analogy? Ok. I will use that to prove my point again. What the LED bar companies are doing stating that they put out 12,000 plus Lumens out of their amazing led bars is the same as a car company saying they have a car that puts out 2000hp with 3000 ft lbs of torque, but putting it to the road on 155/85/13 tires. USELESS! My 200 hp jeep would smoke the 2000 hp vehicle as it would not put any of that power to the ground. Its the exact same theory as lighting. We have LED bar manufacturers who claim these outrageous Lumens from their products, and yes. at 1m they do. At 100m, they fall flat on their face. Where as the HID Puts out about 1/2 of what they CLAIM, at about 4500-5000lumens at 1m, but down the road 1000m I am still getting 80-85% of light down that far. I don't get as much close in, but way more down the line!....

GJeep

1000m radius is 6280m circumference. Divided by 360, it’s 17.44m light spread per each 1 degree.
150m wide circle of light, is 150:17.44= 8.6 degrees… That, my friend, is a narrow beam spot light.

If it didn’t have such a tight beam angle, you’d have seen no light 1000m away, even if your light was x2 more powerful.

Spot lights are almost never perfect, so some light spills around the spots’ light circle – and that’s the extra light you see outside the basic light spread angle.

That was not the analogy. The analogy is this:

There’s engine power, and there’s the gears (or wheel diameter, if you wish).
For the same engine power, if we use 4.1 gear ratio, we get less acceleration and higher max’ speed.
If we use 4.56 gear ratio, we get more acceleration and lower max’ speed.
With the 4.56, power is concentrated into a smaller speed span.
Back to lights –
Lumen is the engine power. Gear ratio is what we do with it.
If we spread the light, we get more light area, less light per square ft, and less distance.
If we concentrate the light, we get less light area, more light per square ft, and more distance.
With a spot light, Lumen power is concentrated into a smaller angle span.

With the 4.56, power is concentrated into a smaller speed span.
With a spot light, Lumen is concentrated into a smaller angle span.

Lumen is one of the universally and commonly used measure units for the amount of light from a light source. It can't be shoved under the carpet any more than ft, pound or psi can.


They don’t have to tell you it’s at 1 meter away, because that’s a standard light measure unit.
…Just like when they say the light weighs 'X grams', they don’t tell you that 1 Gram is the weight of 1 cubic centimeter of distilled water, at 4 degrees Celsius… Standard units don’t have to be defined each time they are used.

Your HID concentrates the light into a narrow beam, while LED bar lights have a much wider spread.
Doubling the light angle, reduces the light per square ft. by x4.
If we take your 8.6 degrees spot, and double the angle just twice, 8.6x2x2 = 34.4 degrees, the light per sq. ft. will be less than 1/10 of what you now have.
I have yet to see a LED light bar which spreads the light less than 34 degrees.
The influence of even small changes in beam angle, on light intensity , is very big.

GJeep

Here's a typical LED light bar behavior. This is a 10" Rigid so-called 'spot'.

See how large the light spot is at a short distance, and how much of the light is spilled outside the spot, pretty widely:



Obviously, if the same Lumen were concentrated into a much narrower beam, there could have been the same circle with the same amount of light, but at a much greater distance.

Kojack