Looking for ideas on a light bar. Size, mounting, type of beam... Flood or diffused...spot etc. also type of switch and where you mounted? I'm riding 2015 xt max 800
There have been numerous discussions about LED bars in the past few months and I'll try to summarize my take away. If you have the money and want to notch quality you can't go wrong with a Rigid. A lot of others recommended VisionX or Sirius. The VisionX bars are made in Asia but I really haven't seen too many complaints about them and they are comparable in price to the Rigids. The Sirius bars are OEM'd by Rigid, just not to the same specs as the Rigid, but still a great bar and a cheaper solution. The Ebay bars are the cheapest solution and either loved or hated it seems. I've read a lot of posts complaining about water leaking into them. Other complaints were they didn't come with a wire harness and it had to be purchased separately.
Most common sizes are 10", 12" 6" or duallies. A lot of guys use the round tube clamps, with clamp on to the top bumper bar or between the top bar and next bar down. Others attached to the bottom or top of their radiator relocate frame. One piece of advice that made sense was mount as high as possible but not so high that your vision is obstructed by feedback from the bar (i.e. light pollution halo causing glare). That said I'm going for top of bumper between rad relocate.
As for lighting patterns, it comes down to personal preference and riding styles. Diffusion will light up a huge swath in front of you and side to side but not to far. Spot is very focused and in most of the youtube videos I have watched doesn't give much side lighting immediately in front of the atv. Combo is a mashup of both, and is a bit better, but there seems to be a dark spot / gap between the spot and flood beams. The best compromise to me personally is the Rigid driving. It's like an improved combo where the projectors focus flood and spot into a pattern to better fill the gaps. The combo is a close 2nd and in my case would likely work, I just prefer the driving better. Plus other companies don't seem to have this pattern and it's likely their combo may do a better job of filling the gap between beam patterns.
The key here is how fast are you riding and what terrain. I want distance and to light up the sides of my trails. I don't want to suddenly find at 60mph a widow maker hanging in my path. Nor do I want to get hit by a deer or bear freight train coming from the side of the trail. That steers me towards the driving pattern. If you're driving slower, then a diffused might be a great solution. I definitely see use for diffused at night in the middle of no where trying to pull your buddy out. I can also see using duallies on the exterior of the bumper and a 6" in the middle too, but that's 3 lights and wire sets to deal with. However it wold give you the flexibility to adjust the duallies to light up the side of the trails directly.
Wiring for power you have three popular options (not in any particular order):
Tap an existing accessory power plug
- Purchase the compatible plug and attach to LED harness
-Splicing led harness in below the accessory plug
-Cut the accessory plug off completely and attach harness bare wire to bare
wire.
Use 12V cigarette light plug
-Attach cigarette plug to your harness
-Splice into plug wires
-Detach wires from plug and bare wire to bare wire
Direct battery wire
-Connect straight to battery terminals with fuse in between
Switch wiring has a few options as well:
-Use wiring harness with waterproof switch (with direct battery connection
light can be on without turning key, accessory / cigarette plug would
require key to be on I believe
-Splice into high or low beams so bar comes on or goes off with headlights
when key is turned
If you settle on Sirius, talk to RVSPeformance on here. Ryan carries them and has good pricing. He can likely answer questions for you too. I'm sure if I missed something someone will chime in. Also if you you want to go even further then consider changing our the LED bulbs in your headlights.
HTH
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