Looking at different lighting options and wondering how many watts i actually have to work with. Stock truck, stock alternator, stock stereo. 55W headlights. How many watts can i use for aux lighting if i want to be able to idle the truck with the headlights and aux lights on without draining the battery?

 

stock V10 Alternator is 130Amp, i run 4 100W lights on the front, along with hi/low HIDs, (2)55w side lighting, (2) 55w rear lights. even with both fans on high all winter long, all the lights on, my 800w amp/15" sub woofer i have no issues with voltage at idle in gear or otherwise.

 

Cool, so no worries then. I was only thinking of adding another 200W or so up front but i occasionally just let the truck idle with all the lights on if i want to light a work area up. Just wanted to make sure it didn't drain the battery. Seems like that's not gonna be an issue.

 

I use mine alot in the winter since its so friggin dark up here! For lighting up areas (its nice having 360 degree lighting) eventually i'll switch it out for LED lighting but for the moment it works great. My only concern is as far as i can tell i'm on the stock alternator and i'm almost at 132k miles...my Expedition only lasted 80k and my last V10 only lasted to 121k (it went out 50 miles from home on the way back from a 1000 mile road trip made it home though!!) so i'm just hoping it decides to die during daily driving duty and not on a road trip or towing the camper.

 

I thought about going crazy with lighting but couldn't think of a good way to mount them facing sideways and rearward on the X without a roof rack. I'm not a huge fan of roof racks as i don't really think they're very useful and end up just being a good place for snow to collect.

I'm gonna go with cheap LEDs off ebay. The prices are crazy low now for CREE lights in the 50-100W range. I'm considering these 2X 108W 9" Quad Row CREE LED Work Light Combo Beam Lamp for 4WD Offroad Pickup | eBay for the front bumper. I like the flood/spot combo and it'd be nice to wire them with a double switch so i can set them to spot or flood or both then a main switch just to turn on/off. I think they'd make a killer "hi-beam", though i wonder if i could wire them to work off the hi-beam switch as well...

 

I also had an issue trying to get side lighting then i came up with the idea of some small fog lights mounted on the running board below the door as i did not want a rack either because as i sit i'm limited to the parking garages i can fit into.





my plan for the rear and adding more with LEDs is Rigid flush mounts like below

 

Russ, those are nice, but I kinda dig these flush mounted lights.

Rigid Industries LED Lighting | Leader in Off road LED light bars, truck LED lights, Marine LEDs, and Industrial LEDs




Stewart

 

yeah i had not decided on what version i wanted, just giving an idea of the flush mount lights. i like how streamline those look!