Lights in Lower Grille review

[Zasker1]

 

We had a thunderstorm a few weeks back here in Dallas and while driving down a country road at 35 miles per hour, I came within about two feet of hitting a down tree because the headlights in these truck suck.

 

I did an FXR conversion in my previous Sierra so I know there it's certainly an opportunity to improve the stock headlights considerably I swapping out the projectors and upgrading to a 45 or 50 watt HID kit.

 

there's some point in the future I'll upgrade the stock headlights but for now I decided to focus on some dedicated, off-road / severe weather lighting:

 

1. DD SS3 Pro fogs - 80 degree wide beam pattern

 

2. BD onX6+ 10 inch - 42 degree wide beam pattern

 

3. DD SS3 Pro spot - 6 degree spot beam pattern

 

Observations:

1. I have owned the rigid SAE fog lights, and a friend of mine has the BD Squadron Pro's. No contest the DD SS3 pros, are significantly brighter.

 

A. I chose to go with a selective yellow color vs white and it's impossible to describe how much more detail there is with a yellow light. ( The fogs I pulled off of my 2014 Sierra, and the spots were bought off of Facebook marketplace for cheap)

 

B. They are brighter then the BD Squadron Pro's & about $100 less.

 

C. The spot pattern is a bit tighter at 6 degrees vs. the BD 9 degree.

D. If I could do it over again I would have bought the driving pattern (18x8) as the 6 degree beam of the spot is very narrow, which is not as useful for truck driving down country roads at 50mph vs a prerunner going 110mph through the desert.

 

E. The DD build quality feels good however I did strip one of the screw holes when swapping bezels using just my hand. The screws are SS but the bezels & housings are made of a cheap cast aluminum.

 

F. The color difference between lights is pretty close at 2900 vs. 3200K. but you can tell there's a difference which is a small anoyance.

 

2. The BD onX6+, is simply the brightest SR light you can get at 12.4k effective lumens per 10" section. If I could have fit a 20" or 30" I would have, however I wanted everything to look as factory as possible.

 

I suppose if you don'tdn't mind cutting into the plastic where the parking assist sensors are mounted you might be able to fit a 20-inch bar but it would involve a lot of hacking, cutting, and relocating sensors, since the stock opening is only 19+" inchs wide and you would need about 22"

 

A. BD makes an awesome lower grill mount that lets you install a variety of lights. If I had a bigger budget I would have gotten three XL80s, 2 in yellow + 1 white but they are over $400 each.

 

B. I have included a few photos courtesy of BD of a 3 XL80 setup. (9500LM each)

 

C. The mounting bracket is like 1/8th inch steel, certainly the stoutest bracket I have seen. The install was not very intuitive but once you have it in place it is solid.

 

D. Overall I'm pretty happy however I certainly realize that to take advantage of the full potential of these lights I need to have the mounted higher up on the vehicle.

 

3. Next project is to grille mount a 20in BD S8 in white and wire it to trigger with the brights. Not quite sure how I will make this work as most of the pre-made brackets assume you're installing a 30in light bar, and I want a slightly longer bracket as I'd like the bar to be flush mount to the grill, instead of behind it.

 

If you like a picture number 8 you can see where there is a light bar behind the grill, I plan to bring mine for words to in simply cut one of the horizontal bars out of the factory grill, similar to what you see in photo 13.

 

Note: I have not seen any increase in transmission temperatures however I have yet to tow heavy with this setup

 

 

 

Who else has mounted some lights in the lower grille?

 

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk