Off Road LED lighting

upnover

upnover

Grumpy, decrepit Old Man
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Joined
Mar 20, 2005
Location
Morganton NC
In my new Jeep I want to put LED lights for rock lights, primarily because of the voltage drain all the regular lights have when wheeling.
I have seen a couple folks that have them, never really paid much attention as to how they do and so on. I do have a few questions.

1, Do they just wire up like any other light?
2. Since they are such low voltage, is there a need to run a relay? I AM thinking not, just fuse and switch

My son has a set, as well as loganstoy they are prewired, and run into a little box that has a remote. I am on the fence about these, seems more to go wrong. But, I can see where a remote could come in handy at times.

So, if you have knowledge or experience with Off Road LED's, please post up
 
Pre wired LEDs just wire up like a regular light, +12v and a ground (leds are diodes, so polarity is important, they will only work one way unlike regular incandescents, although most lights have a protection circuit in them to protect if you hook up backwards, if not you can actually fry an LED by hooking it up backwards.)

If they are not prewired, and you are soldering individual leds, you will need a resistor inline, as most LEDs only take 5v or so, 12v (14+ when running) would fry an LED by itself.

No relay, most led housings that have 30 or so LEDs are actually only about 2 or 3w, at the most, so you are looking at less than 0.25A per LED housing, most switches are good for 10-15A so you would need 40+ LED housings to be too much for a switch.

As "ricer" as it seems, those little adhesive thin strip LED lights you see at parts stores on the ricer isle, are fairly bright and you can just stick them anywhere, such as right to the side of the framerail to shine out on the rocks, they would be extremely low profile, and as long as you tuck the wires up, you would have nothing to snag on rocks/brush. I've been planning on picking some of those up to make a light for my toolbox, then put together a battery pack of AAs to make 12v, should last a long time on that, similar to a LED flashlight.
 
I don't have a lot of knowledge about them other than I bought a ton of them off eBay for CHEAP. 5 pod LEDs. They are cheap but work and are bright and come in an array of colors.

For the cost, I could wire up and install 15 of them for the cost of 1 high dollar LED from RoundEyes or similar...
 
Way overpriced for what you get... You're looking at $30 worth of LEDs with a $80 controller. Do you really need strobe, sound interfacing/dancing, and remote control?

You could spend $20-40 at Vhatozone and have more light, although less fancy functions, and not have to worry about that box getting messed up.
 
x2 I was thinking get some LED trailer style lights, easy to mount with rubber grommet, pops out if hit, easy to replace 1 at a time. Group and wire to 3 switches to light up front/rear/belly.

My plan is to use this style and mount but cutting a hole in the tub floor where needed and mount with rubber grommet.
http://www.etrailer.com/Trailer-Lights/Optronics/STL82RCB.html
 
the 5 pod modules in eBay were like $1.50 each plus shipping. I think I got about 50 of them for $65. I'm still on my original 10 that I installed without dimming or damage...
 
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