kick but tractor llight

[hot110ff]

I wanted to share with everybody the light that I installed on my tractor back in the summer. It is a 175 watt metal halide flood light that runs off of a 400 watt inverter thats mounted under the hood. The light is extremely bright and will light up a large swath in front of the tractor. I have it mounted to the underside of the top of the rops and is only temporarily wired in due to the fact that I wasn't sure if the bulb would last. I mounted it back in July and mowed the grass a few times at 10:00 at night and have done numerous other jobs with it and it's still working good. The only drawback to the metal halides is that they take about 2 minutes to reach full brightness and will not fire back up immediately on a hot re-start but for the amount of light they throw it's worth it.

 

[MrJimi]

Very impressive, have you tried aircraft landing lights? they come in 100 watt and 250 watt and are 12 volt ! I used to run 2 of the 250 watt lights in my high beam holes in my Corvette

 

[JB4310]

looks nice, plenty of light, so is it running on 120 volts? that's gotta be a first, is it fused for the 120.
John

 

[elalexander]

OK hot from the second picture you have already melted 1/2 the snow off your pole building Whats the deal...just open the barn door, turn the light on and the snow melts Looks great. I hav e some lights on my tractor and a friend of mine added them to his skidsteer one night when he was feeding he spun around and hit a cow. Black cows at night.....so he put lights on his machine. Great job.

 

[Chris2520]

Thats pretty cool ,
At night it will look like a train comeing....
it sure puts out the light.

Chris...

 

[MACDABS]

Hey , is that your hair burning!!!

Macdabs

 

[hot110ff]

No, it wont burn your hair, I,m only 5'-10" and the rops is high enough that the light is well above your head. The light has a transformer in it that has multiple taps on it for 120, 240, and 277 volts. I don't have it fused yet as the inverter has an overload on it. Once I permanetly wire it in to a factory JD switch I will fuse everything neccessary. You should see the looks on the peoples faces driving by the house when I'm mowing late at night in the summer.

 

[Malvern]

hot110ff,

Great idea, the only thing better than that is two of them!

Malvern

 

[flyngti]

Wow, that last picture looks like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Gotta wear shades when you're coming

Your charging system can handle the 400 watt inverter to power that thing?

 

[JB4310]

No, it wont burn your hair, I,m only 5'-10" and the rops is high enough that the light is well above your head. The light has a transformer in it that has multiple taps on it for 120, 240, and 277 volts. I don't have it fused yet as the inverter has an overload on it. Once I permanetly wire it in to a factory JD switch I will fuse everything neccessary. You should see the looks on the peoples faces driving by the house when I'm mowing late at night in the summer.

Must cast some wicked shadows! regarding the fuse, maybe some kind of GFI protection, though I'm not sure if that would work with out an earth ground, having a 120 volt circuit on a tractor is interesting.

I'm wondering about the charging system as well, I want to get an inverter and was thinking about 400-800 watt range, does the 400 clip to the battery or can you plug it in a cigarette lighter type outlet? I just installed an outlet but it's only on a 10 amp circuit.

 

[Phineas7]

With the inefficiencies of an inverter, it seems it would take 20amps+ to run 175watt light. Unless you just have an unused inverter laying around it seems that some 12v HID light would be about as cost effective.

I'm thinking about doing something like that because my 790 only has a 20amp alternator. 200 watts worth of hologen is the equivilent of 65 watts of HID (about 6 amps @ 12v). No idea about metal halide though.

 

[hot110ff]

Wow, that last picture looks like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Gotta wear shades when you're coming

Your charging system can handle the 400 watt inverter to power that thing?

The light itself only draws about 2 amps due to the transfomer in it that ramps up the voltage to fire the light so the inverter hardly draws anything to power the light. It will stay lit even if you shut the tractor off, but will kill the light when you go to re-start the tractor due to the starting system putting a load on the battery.

 

[hot110ff]

Must cast some wicked shadows! regarding the fuse, maybe some kind of GFI protection, though I'm not sure if that would work with out an earth ground, having a 120 volt circuit on a tractor is interesting.

I'm wondering about the charging system as well, I want to get an inverter and was thinking about 400-800 watt range, does the 400 clip to the battery or can you plug it in a cigarette lighter type outlet? I just installed an outlet but it's only on a 10 amp circuit.

The 400 watt inverter that I bought from Pep Boys has the screw down lugs on it to wire it in.

 

[tommu56]

hot110ff

2 amps at 120v = 20 amps at 12v plus the invertor loss as long as the alternator can handle the draw your ok. but some of the tractors have small dynamo's or alternators.

A GFI dosent need the ground to work it looks at the power going out line and if it dosent see it coming back in the neutral it will trip.

tom

 

[GordNovo]

You should see the looks on the peoples faces driving by the house when I'm mowing late at night in the summer.

I'll bet! You shouldn't have any probs seeing their faces from a couple hundred yards away!

 

[Phineas7]

Do you have any idea how many lumens or the candlepower of the light?

I was thinking of one or two of these:
http://www.trailtech.net/4212-FX.html

1850 lumens for 30watts (~2.5 amps @ !2v)
I'd assume I'd need two to have as much light as you!

Trialtech is pretty popular with the dirt bike community. If they can handle the vibration, shock and random supply voltage of a bike, a tractor ought to be a breeze.