Hula
Volume 3 Issue 2
Betty
Hula Betty is dedicated to the men and women who enjoy life exploring beyond their own boundaries of culture and borders. Hula Betty tells their stories of exploration, friendship, rants and raves on the road of life. Explore the hidden trails, back roads and diverse cultures that enrich this shared experience. (c) 2008 all rights reserved
Hula Betty productions tells tales through video, photos and print.
Lights At The End Of The Tunnel When you start driving your FJ Cruiser on off-road adventures, you accept that you will not be driving in ideal conditions. The demands of driving off-road require a clear view of the trail ahead regardless of the conditions. To achieve that clear view, means investing in a lighting system that can handle what mother nature throws at you including moonless nights, foul weather, pea soup fog and dust storms. In other words a lighting system capable of turning night into day. To select the correct lighting for our style of wheeling, we needed to understand some basics. And to understand lighting technology we called up Chris Chapman at Baja Designs (http://bajadesigns.com). The guys at Baja Designs have been developing and racing their highend off-road lighting systems for 1 4 years. Most lights can be put into one of four categories, each designed to supply the driver with light patterns that support different situations. Those lighting categories are flood, driving, pencil and specialty.
Lights, harnesses, relays and wires along with other odds and ends.
great for twists and turns on the trail. When these lights Lights in the flood category are designed to throw a short, are used as fog lights they should be mounted as low as wide evenly distributed pattern that will illuminate the possible while still avoiding the obstacles of the trails ground and the area around the rig. The spread pattern of including mud pits, water crossings or rock gardens. By flood lights is intended to keeping a lower mounting and show the driver what is immediately in front and to the ensuring the beam remains pointed below the plain of the side of the rig giving a big picture view. Flood lights are driver you avoid the eye The wire harness for the Fuego flood lights are tucked and zip tied into the bull bar.
fatigue and strain caused by reflective glare from fog, snow or dust, maximizing their benefits under these nasty conditions. Driving beams are similar to adding high-beams on steroids, to your rig. Driving lights are designed to throw their beam down the road while still illuminating both sides of the trail. These lights extend the driver's vision in order to illuminate obstacles, such as deer that may be in or on the side of the trail ahead. By mounting driving lights higher, you can increase their effective distance and see beyond low obstacles and bushes in the road ahead. Pencil or spot lights are the distance champions, throwing a narrow pattern far down the
trail. These are the Baja style lights that allow rigs to run down dirt roads at 90 mph while still not out running their lights. As the long distance winners, these lights benefit from a mounting as high as possible in order to ensure the beam clears all low road obstacles. The final category, specialty lights, includes rock crawling lights, backup lights and others with specific installs. Each of these lights are designed to provide the Wires running down the external pillar.
maximum benefit in their tightly defined usage. For example rock crawling lights are small LEDs (light emitting diode) mounted under the rig to illuminate the ground beneath so the driver and spotter can carefully pick their way through boulders and other obstacles. These are also invaluable when putting on tire chains in the middle of a dark snowy night. No one light pattern will work
With the roof rack removed the wire harness is run under the channel and down the pillar panel.
for all situations. To achieve the best results over a wide range of situations many wheelers mix several categories of lights together. Pairing one flood and one driving light will deliver a pattern of light that looks down the path while still illuminating a wide section of the trail. This combination is a favorite in the Australian Outback.
all pattern. A more effective comparison of off-road lights is the smoothness of their light distributed over the entire pattern. Look for lights without hot spots or sharp cutoffs, both of which can cause eye strain. A cut-off is where the light sharply drops off creating a distinct light and dark area. Hot spots become distracting as the driver's eyes are drawn to intense concentrations of light. The Candle power is a measure of bouncing of off-road driving brightness and often used to tends to magnify these flaws. compare lighting systems. However, candle power only Discuss lights around the measures the brightness of a campfire and sooner or later single point and not the over the talk will turn to High Wire harness sleeve potects wire installation from the sun's harmfull UV rays.
Wire harness appears neatly in the engine compartment next to the relay / fuse box.
Intensity Discharge (HID) vs. Halogen lights. Halogen lights use tungsten filaments in bulbs filled with pressurized gas that allows them to burn brighter and prolongs their life. The light of halogen bulbs will appear more yellow than sunlight. HID bulbs produce light by firing an electrical arc between two tungsten electrodes surrounded by Xenon gas. Xenon HID light is white and very close to daylight. Starting the arc requires a high bust of electricity, maintaining the arc requires much less electricity. This means a single 45 watt HID
bulb produces the equivalent lighting power of a 250 watt Halogen light. Less wattage draw means lower running temperature and less battery drain. The down side of HID systems is their price, up to five times the cost of Halogen.
adjustments. Finally, we settled on a combination of three beam patterns to create an expedition worthy solution. The system we chose includes: two of BajaDesigns' four inch HID Fuegos in a wide-cornering pattern mounted on the rig's bull bar and four of their eight inch HID LaPaz lights; two pencil beam and two driving beam, all mounted on the roof. While waiting for the lights, harnesses, switches and bar to arrive we turned our attention to engineering the
For our specific lighting we discussed with Chris our overland adventure needs and goals. Chris explained Baja Design's Soltek lighting systems and how they are built using crystal clear optics, fifth generation technologies, as well as a mounting system that isolates vibrations and allows for quick no-tool Fuse and relay locations are clearly marked on the inside cover.
mounting and electrical installation of our system. Roof mounted lights present the most difficult choice for installation. Drill through the roof, as Toyota suggests, and tuck the wire harnesses into the headliner or follow the "Gobi Install" and run wires through root channels, behind external pillar panels and down to the the engine compartment. It rains in the
Pulling the interior panels allows for easy wire harness routing.
Northwest, it rains a lot, so we be powered by the same opted out of putting holes circuit as the existing fog above the driver and lights in the bull bar. Wanting to retain the sleek interior stock look we chose TRD light switches to mount in the lower instrument console. These switches slide right in, replacing the auxiliary switch knockouts.
electrical connector we avoided additional holes in the firewall, maintained a modular design and have a neat clean interior installation. With the new lighting system on, the trail is more visible than a fresh pimple on prom night and screams Baja adventure. While no lighting systems is perfect for all situations, this configuration will provide us with the versatility needed to explore the dusty nights of the Baja, the fog ladened west cost and the 24 hours of darkness up north. Additional resources, pictures and installation video can be found at LastGreatRoadTrip.com.
Last Great Road Trip is a series of overland adventures taken by a team shared with Using the Toyota light switch others over the Internet. The in conjunction with a Toyota wire harness allowed us to tap Blog, a social experiment in web 2.0 and a celebration of into the stock electrical diversity, describes the connector which ties into the adventures, friendships, rants the fuse and relays located and raves on the road of life. under the hood. By taking Explore hidden trails, back advantage of the stock passengers' head. However this means protecting and concealing the wire harness so it dose not get ripped off by a low hanging branch and avoids the sun's insulation deteriorating UV rays. The two Fuego wide-corning lights fit nicely into the predrilled mounting holes in the bull bar and because of the HID's lower draw they could
TRD switches make for a clean look.
roads and diverse cultures that enrich this shared experience while adding your own comments to the adventure. Making this all possible, the Last Great Road Trip is supported by friends, family and sponsors along the way including: Baja Designs www.bajadesigns.com Hula Betty Fans www.WhereIsHulaBetty.com Metal Tech - Protection... Evolved www.metaltech4x4.com Metagyre, Inc - Project Management Experts www.metagyre.com Taylor Made Graphics www.taylormadetshirts.com Working Web Solutions Portland Web Design & Portland SEO Search Engine Optimization workingwebsolutions.com
Factory head
dlights on bright.
New Baja Design Brighter pimple on
ns lighting system... than a fresh n prom night.