Tower lights - LED bars - let's discuss length and lumens. Who has them?
 

Like a lot of us, I sometimes find myself on the water at night. Docking, loading, hanging out, whatever.

I'm contemplating an led bar for my tower. I'm torn between a 31.5" and a 50"
The 31.5" puts out 16400 lumen
50" puts out 24000 lumen

Both are dual row cree, I can't find much info or pictures of people with them. I'm wondering if a bar that large would look out of place.

05 v215 with the factory tower. The 50" would stretch all the way across the tower.

Anyone have them? Post up pics if you do!

Honestly the 50" would be WAY too much in both size and light output, but if you're the type of guy who goes all out on his toys, go ahead. I had 4 Maxxima 650 lumen LED flood lights (2600 lumens combined) on the back of my truck and they would light up the entire boat ramp so bright that everyone would actually ask me to turn them off while loading up their boats because they were too bright. I imagine the 31.5" would put out more than enough light than you'd ever need, or if you want to save some cash, get couple smaller LED bars. They'll still put out plenty of light at a fraction of the cost.

Great topic, I'm looking into some of the cheaper ones from eBay for my Kawasaki mule and wondered the same. I'm sure rigid and rogue are much better but it's for a ranch vehicle that already has headlights and I can't see spending $600 on a light I only use occasionally to irrigate with. I was thinking a 20"- 30" would be pretty bright. If the lumens are halfway accurate even 4,000 lumins is pretty bright

To take into consideration, a good set of HID headlights is around 3200 lumens.
I'm getting these bars factory direct, for less than it costs me to fill my boat up with gas.
I am worried that too big will look out of place, and too much light will actually be counter productive glaring off the water?

I dug into this as well as i spend a LOT of time on the water at night. I was told that with the light on its so bright on the white vinyl It would kinda blind you. I was told it would work best to kind of flash It on then off so you didn't get so blinded. I want one as well.

I used the vision x solstice prime pods on my last boat and plan to do the same on the new boat. The price is great they are well made and put out lots of lite. Last boat had a tube tower so I just bought some DIY wake clamps to mount them. New boat has a cast tower so no clamps needed
http://www.visionxusa.com/LED-LED_Po...6nics0ajscris2

Tower lights - LED bars - let's discuss length and lumens. Who has them?
 

I'm looking for forward facing light by the way. Forgot to add that

i don't think water glare will be a problem, but most definitely glare from the seats and front of the boat will be. I've experienced that even with a spot light. I have some nice flood lights on the back and front of the houseboat and in open water you aren't seeing a whole lot of water like you'd think unless its closer to the boat. If I point toward a hill is when I realize just how bright they actually are and how far away they shine. These are probably 3000 lumens combined so maybe something 6k or 8k lumens would be a different story.

I'm gonna get 2 of the 3x3 little square ones. Think they will work well

I used to have lights on the tower and in open water they won't help. It's better when you running across the lake to have your light off and use the moon, its brighter. In a cove or docking they are great though.

Too many bugs/skeeters for use at night while anchored is my experience. Maybe good for surfing?

These are the 4 lights I had on the back of my old truck. They were 650 lumens each and you couldn't stand directly behind it because they would blind you bad. This pic was taken about 20-25 ft behind the truck, so you can get an idea of what 2600 lumens would look like while wake surfing behind the boat. If all you're planning on doing is forward facing lights, then I wouldn't go much bigger than something in this light range. You'll get a ton of glare off the interior of the boat and it makes it next to impossible to see while driving. You're better off just driving my the moonlight at a slower speed, and something this bright would definitely light up the entire party cove if that's what you're aiming to do with them.

http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/a.../IMG_00641.jpg

if you're really looking for light around the dock you'd be better off with docking lights below the rub rail. they won't kill your night vision as bad as lighting up the bow with tower mounted lights. none of the various types of lights will do much at speed.

then there's the blinding or killing the night vision of others on the water. light travels very far on the water. lights should be used sparingly. hand-help spotlight in short intervals.

ryan any pictures of the lights illuminating something or how far they lit up? They look bright, but hard to get a feel for how far or much light that is when its just aimed at the camera

I think I may go with the 31.5" bar and see how it works out

I did have some, but they were on my old phone that got trashed. I just happened to have that one on photobucket. As for how well they light up, I could shut down the entire ramp with them because they blinded everyone on the water. They were great for helping me back the trailer down into the water at night, but I had to turn them off to get the boat on the trailer because they were so bright. In that pic the back of my truck is facing my neighbors house about 100yds away and it was lit up clear as day. I also had 2 mounted on the roof facing forward and they were great for spotlighting deer. If I were to mount some on my boat, I'd probably go with something a lot smaller and not quite as bright, maybe a couple of the small pods like posted earlier in the 3-400 lumen range each.

just ordered one of these and should be here within the next week or so, i'll post some pictures when its installed. also ordered some 24w 6 led 2"x2" pods that are supposedly 2000 lumens - we shall see about that. I got it all from ebay so who knows. Its going on a golf cart and mule i use around our ranch so its not going to be noticed if its not top of the line stuff just hope it at least works lol:D

I bought this light bar several years ago and have been very happy with it. All six lights can be faced forward or back and it also has a light that shines down into the cabin. It was white but I painted the plastic cover green to match my other interior lights and added a separate switch so it can be turned on separately.

One thing not mentioned ITT. Forward facing lights, while they may not light up the water in front of you in open water, they do have a benefit while running in a river. My buddy has some PIAA type lights on his tower, they don't light up the water much, more so the interior. We thought they were useless while running at first and were more for style than function. We realized they actually do a good job at lighting up the reflectors on the buoys in the water, which there are a lot of going to and back from our boat ramp.

Here's our tower light, been running it for over 4 years now and love it. We made some custom brackets to adapt it to some bimini rings.
Attachment 35059

I haven't seen anyone mention the legal part about running with these type lights. Here in TN and everywhere else I am pretty sure, it is illegal to run with lights like these. It interferes with other boats being able to see your bow lights and stern lights. I just took the TWRA boater safety course with my son and this was covered.

5mph in CA after dusk. So in many ways I have to assume these lights are strictly for loading/docking.

Could you put up a pic of the mounts? I'd like to do this as well. Looks good.

I used Axia brackets on a 42" bar.

Here you go
Attachment 35107

I got in a 50" for the front and a 20" for the rear. I am trying to figure out the mounting bracket situation right now... Kills me to consider spending ~$70 on mounting when the lights were only like $150

Rev
 

Rev 10 with speaker rings with my abyss hatress lights are what I choose to use

^^^Like a BOSS

Please post a link to $150 light bars. The only ones I have found are more pricey...

^^^Ditto. I want to know where you got a 50" bar for $150. All the ones I've seen in that price range run in the $800-1000 range.

I can get them cheap if you guys want to do a buy in.
I have to get a min of 15 bars to get the pricing.
They are all CREE dual row.
Not the cheaper less lumen with the Chinese LEDs.

Let me know what sizes everyone is interested in and we can get it set up. I didn't there would be much interest

Post a link to them. I may be interested. I want mine facing out the front. Would be amazing if you could get one of the curved 50's for that price.

aliexpress.com

You can buy these things all day long from China.

I've bought stuff off aliexpress before, and 99% of the time it's junk and shipping takes FOREVER. If that's where you're buying your stuff from, then I'd suggest not getting your hopes up because you will be extremely disappointed.

They come from Totron directly. There are about 50+ guys on a few truck forums I'm on that are running them. They are very similar to Rigid. Great output and imo are a great price point bar.
They aren't dirt cheap, but they are very reasonable imo

finally got my 20" bar in and i'm pleasantly surprised with it. I got it for $110 shipped. It ended up coming from china and not us like the listing stated and it took two weeks to get here. In this picture the first tree on the left is 44 feet away. Each tree after that is another 22' so you can see how far it actually projects. There's no picure with the light off because the screen was literally black. This is in the country with no ambient light for the most part.

Woah, that looks good!... As for T Biggs..>McIntosh Amps in a boat..wow man, thats pretty rad and expensive!..Very nice install!

do you have a link at where you ordered it from?

Well that will certainly light up the ramp! Great price on it too.

i wouldn't order from the same seller again personally. They claimed to be in the US but this came from china and took two weeks. I searched 20" led bar and for US locations only. I went with this style vs the mounting on the outside of the bar because the mounting points are on a track and the width can be adjusted as well as the angle. I believe the add said newdigidesign or something along those lines though. I'm convinced all these bars on ebay are the same thing so if it looks like the one in the picture it probably is. I also bought some pods that were 3"x3" with 6led's. They weren't as impressive bang for buck wise but still worked well on a different golf cart i have. I didn't get a picture of those though.

Unfortunately a lot of online sellers are doing that lately. They have someone setup in the US to receive product then ship it, actually making it take longer than just direct from China. Sometimes they still just drop ship it from the factory in China to you. They know we look for US based sellers because we hate the long shipping time, but put someone in the US just so they can say that even though it is still coming from China. Grrrrr!!!

I ordered a 24" CREE 12600 lumen bar for behind my grille on my truck. Going to install it and maybe mock up to the tower and see what happens.
If all goes well, I'll be putting a bar on my tower in the coming weeks.
This is the bar I bought.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231132067089

Let me know how that one works out for you, I've been looking to put one in the bumper opening between my tow hooks, and just haven't been able to stomach the prices of a lot of these bars. That looks like a fairly decent option, just wonder how long those lights will last. I've seen a few guys around here with bars that have a couple LEDs burned out and I wonder if they're using the cheaper bars like that or if they're still dropping $1000 on a bar and getting subpar life span out of them.

There's no doubt these bars are bright, their lumen rating is very generous though. My 126w supposedly equals 8820 lumens and your 126w equals 12600? Probably not. I have 8,000 lumen led flood lights on the house and judging by the difference id estimate my bar to be around 6000 lumens because there isn't quite as much light as the house ones. Lumens are a tricky thing though so it could be the beam angle or some other factors. Generally I'd imagine similar wattage in leds would produce similar output not a 3000+ lumen difference right? Not trying to bag on your purchase I almost got that one as well but wanted a spot flood combo beam. I'm just kinda thinking out loud here hoping someone smarter than me will elaborate further

I've been debating about this for a few days. I think the lumen ratings they claim are hocus pocus, and 8500-9500 seems to be about the norm.
You can however have epistar LEDs, or CREE LEDs in your bar, which the Cree will be brighter and more reliable.
I ended up going with this one over the $96 bar because it came with 2 mounting points/brackets which will be convenient in my install, and the light portion of the bar was 30mm longer than a few of the others I looked at. Does it mean it will be brighter? Probably not. Do I really care? Probably not. Lol

I want to do the same thing on my dodge... Still trying to decide how to mount it though. You got an idea for that or what?

Honestly not real sure. I was thinking about pulling a bolt from each tow hook and trying to build a backer plate that spans the gap. Not real sure how much depth it would give me though, I want the light bar to basically mount flush with the front edge of the bumper. This is basically what I want to do:

http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/a.../M65457408.jpg

any updates on how the cree led bars came out? i'd like to get one for the truck and a new bar for the tower of my boat as well

I'm ordering a new bar today, after being out last night and other people having their bars lit and making it impossible for me to see.
I think a 42" bar beaming out with 50 other boats on the water is a dick move, but if I would have had one, I would be able to see instead of being blinded.
Anyone with them have a preference in spot vs flood beam? Id think spot would be the better way to go

I like the the combo pattern on my 20" bar in the picture . For the most part it's a spot pattern but gives just enough flood on the outside edges to light up close to you. However if your tower is further back you might want spot only as the flood portion might reflect off the interior of your boat and be blinding. If it was me I'd do test run with a handheld spot light or something that's really bright from your approximate mounting location before going through all the trouble.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/151314882093
Winner winner chicken dinner

2 6 inch lights facing stern and 1 6 inch light facing bow. They are spot/flood combo.http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/07/07/a8aqyte3.jpg

Forgot about this thread

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/15...86610eb071.jpg
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/15...2b2d25ef53.jpg