Has anyone any experience with the HID work lights available on eBay? There seems to be a common style of HID work light available from a number of sellers from around $60 up.
I also did a Google on HID work lamps and found many eTailers selling them for north of $300.
I know the price of HIDs has dropped significantly over the past couple of years and the prices I see on eBay seem to be inline with HID kits.
I'm looking to add a set to my RTV900 to light up the front area better.
Thanks for any input.
Hi Bob,
As my business is selling exclusively lighting for machinery and emergency vehicles, I'm slightly biased but here is what we have found with the HID's you're looking at:
The off shore inexpensive HID work lamps typically use an H3 HID conversion kit similar to what you would use in a vehicle, retrofitted into a low quality housing with a cheap lens and mount.
They provide as you stated about 3300 actual lumens of light, and depending on the quality of the lens and reflector may work very well for you.
I want to reinforce however that LED work lights are not nearly as powerful as they are made to seem in the literature. We rely on LEDs for most of the machines we outfit in todays market, but to have an equivilant light certified to a 35w HID output, we are using a 60w LED version. Now this is certified at 2800 lumens, which is within the machine manufacturer specs of 3000 +- 300 lumens. (these are all extremely heavy duty OEM applications) and machine downtime is far more important than cost. LED lights designed for use on machinery are certified for ingress protection (ie pressure washing, water submersion, dust ingress to IP68 or IP69K. They are rated for grms vibration resistance, they contain circuitry which protects the diodes in adverse heating conditions, and they last for years beyond the life of the machine, they feature Deutsch DT2 connectors and hardened glass which can be washed when hot.
In keeping with your budget and requirements for durability, those maybe a valid choice. I have personally tested many off shore knock off products and they usually work for a few hundred hours before the bulb and occasionally
ballast stops working.
Our high output LED lamps for Cat, Komatsu and Deere equipment are between $650 and $1200 each, and the comparable HIDs are $689 each, so you can definetely afford to buy a few sets off ebay and not worry so much about the longevity.
Charles