Roof Lights - How Small Is Too Small?

ffxcores

[fully disclosed]
Supporting Member
Location
Virginia
Looking for outside opinions - I have a Gobi Ranger rack, and right now have four cheapy round lights up there. The pattern is way too wide and it lights up my windshield and dash. Diode Dynamics is having a 15% off sale for Black Friday, and I'm considering the SS3 sport or maybe the circular ones to add a little height relative to the regular.

PXL_20201125_185644824.jpg

This is my current setup, and I've roughly attempted to show the size of the SS3:
Screenshot_20201126-170059.png

On one hand, function should be the main thing, but I also don't want it to look silly. For what it's worth, the size of these fits in the stock P4X roof boobs, but they also don't have a horizontal bar up above them. What do you all think?
 

TheCrabby1

I Smell Fishy
Supporting Member
Location
Burtonsville, Md
I thought the size you have looked good up there ! Couldn't you angle the corner one's a little more towards the side's , then replace the middle 2 with spot's only ?? Or all spot's on the roof then a bar down lower with flood's in the corner's . But smaller would be less noise/wind resistance , but what do I know ? I don't have any light's !! Yet .
 

ffxcores

[fully disclosed]
Supporting Member
Location
Virginia
I like the size, but none of the main players make an LED light in that size. At least not that I can afford. I managed to find these two images on photobucket that show a Ranger rack with Rigid pod lights. It seems these are discontinued so I can't find exact measurements, but they look close in size.

DSC01295.jpg
DSC01335.jpg
 

IM1RU

Skid Plates
Supporting Member
Location
SLC, UT
Regardless of beam pattern, a roof bar will make your windshield glow. Unless you're the lead dog the roof bar is useless. The second dust happens, off it goes.
 

ffxcores

[fully disclosed]
Supporting Member
Location
Virginia
Regardless of beam pattern, a roof bar will make your windshield glow. Unless you're the lead dog the roof bar is useless. The second dust happens, off it goes.

Generally speaking with a stock roof rack, I agree. On the Pro4X and with lightbars over the stock fairing, the light is sitting right on top the windshield. In my case, the lights are set back and the front fairing partially obstructs any light from hitting the windshield.
upload_2020-11-27_13-23-27.png

The problem with those there now is that they're tall enough to have a direct line to the windshield, and they have about a 60 degree beam.

The Diode Dynamics SS3 is an 8 degree tall beam (18 degrees wide) and based on youtube reviews is actually very focused. Plus it's about half as tall as the one you see in my picture, so even if there's some light bleed outside the intended beam, it will be very minimal. Especially compared to the full power I have streaming directly in the windshield now. Even if I'm lead dog, they're still almost worthless now unless there's heavy canopy cover.
 

IM1RU

Skid Plates
Supporting Member
Location
SLC, UT
To be honest, I don't think roof lights are worth much. I use the lights on the rest of the rig far more than the roof bar..... even when I had the stock P4X roof boobs I still didn't use them for the same reason.

YMMV
 

ffxcores

[fully disclosed]
Supporting Member
Location
Virginia
Totally forgot I had a thread just for this, so to update: the SS3 pods look great I think. The light is indeed very tight in the 8x18° pattern — so much so I'm wondering if I should switch the outside two to fog pattern instead of driving. I'll decide once I get it out in the dark away from people.

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