Looking to buy a 36” light bar. Just to get it out of the way, I’m not spending $1k on a Rigid or Baja.

looking on Amazon, I see they have 4D, 6D and light bars. It appears these 4,6&8 have to do with the led lens.

anyone have insight as to how much better one is over the the other?

 

Look at Totron LED light bars. They are reaonably priced and I bought a 30 inch bar for under $200 about 9 years ago for my Polaris Ranger and have been very satisfied. It is made in China though and not of US manufacture. Be aware that some inexpensive light bars can emit a lot of electrical "noise" due to the drivers for the LED's. Mine did not emit any noise that I could detect.

 

I can’t speak for the ones you are looking at, but when buying a cheap light bar, the first thing you should do when it comes in is to pull the end caps off and silicone around the sealing surface. This is the #1 reason why cheap light bars fail….condensation and water getting in them.

That said, I have a 42” Nilight brand bar on the front of my truck that is still in like-new condition after over 2 years of daily use (I commute at night). $50 for the light bar and a $4 tube of silicone. Like you, $800+ for a light bar was just out of the question for me.

 

I was thinking of rough country lights...I try buy the best quality / value with products ( what I think is ) in most cases but rigid and baja are too much $$$ for me. I can replace a rough country light bar 3 times for the price of rigid.

 

Do you have any pics of where you installed it? Just trying to figure out what size and where to mount.

 

 

Where on your grill/bumper do you plan on mounting it?
I just installed the RC kit on my 22’

 

Diode dynamics light bars are solid and not that expensive. I'd consider them as well.

 

How do you wire them to the upfitter? I hesitated pulling the trigger on there because I wasn’t sure how to take that factory switch out of the loop

 

i just cut the wires off the harness (left the plug of course) and connected the 4 positive wires from the light bar to the uplifter switch wire and used a ground on the truck. I’ll post a pic

 

You can buy a heat shrink reducing butt connector (yellow to blue). That’s what I used for the positive wires.

 

I'll say this about light bars, make sure you have realistic expectations about what you're getting. If the end goal is just to put out a ton of light and the pattern isn't really a concern, I'd say you're on the right path. Bright, flood lights are great for slower speeds so scatter isn't always a bad thing. If you want something that's going to be used for higher speeds where you want the light focused somewhere out in the distance, the better optics you get with companies like Baja Designs or Rigid are worth the price. I had a 30" combo bar on my past truck and after switching to Rigid's hyperspot cubes, the 30" bar went away and hasn't resurfaced.

 

Did you custom make the mounting brackets or buy them somewhere

 

They come with the kit.

https://www.roughcountry.com/ford-10...uty-4wd-758450

 

those look nice and clean. I read the instructions. Made me cringe when I got to the part about drilling holes and what not.
few questions….
How hard was the install?
Are they bright? Any night shots?
How do you adjust them after install?
are they a flood, beam or combo light?