LED LIGHTING REVIEW

[LRH]

My TruckLite's in use since '98 are still going strong. I have 2 Trapezoidal (work beam) lamps mounted top of windshield below roof overhang, and later purchased 2 floods for the rear; but before installing the rear I tried out the flood in the garage and outside at night and found the flood a little to wide and not enough reach mounted up high. Ended using 1 flood and purchasing 3 more traps, and used 1 flood and 1 trap at the rear keeping 2 traps on the shelf for future use. A friend has a spot beam and it would not seem to useful as aiming it just a reasonable distance leaves too many dark areas to the sides. The traps seem to work the best of all with wide side coverage and lots of reach due to the narrower, more concentrated beam from the top of the lamp. No reflector is used; just the fluting of the lenses shapes the pattern, and since the LED's and the lens can't be removed from or rotated in the housing they can only be mounted 1 way, usually base down. Several manufacturers make PAR 36 LED assemblies that will fit common lamp housings both rubber and metal that have the ability to be indexed if needed, and are very bright, but a little below lamps that have more heat sink area. I notice a lot of lamps on tractors on this site do have the lamp mounted base up, but it does not matter on a spot/flood/pencil beam what clock position is used, and most fog lamps if needed could be mounted 180 degrees out. I mention all of this since the trap beam has always been the most popular on almost all equipment, and seem to be the best beam compromise. Just make sure to see if the mounting base has optional positions or the unit has either the ability to rotate lamp within housing, or has a separate lens, like the Grote Trilliant which has LED board fixed in a die cast housing, and several lenses to choose from which can be flipped on the traps to get proper beam dispersion.