big red racing: Vision X light test

VISION X driving lights.

I have recently fitted a set of the VISION X HID-8500C lights on the Bullbar of the Patrol and let me tell you … I am blown away by how good they are !!

I have been running a set of 100 watt Hella Rallye 4000 halogen lights for a few years and have been really happy with them so anything that can beat them has to be pretty special.

The VISION X lights I fitted have a spot beam on the drivers side and what they call a Euro beam [driving beam] on the passenger side this is the same set up I had with the Hella’s

There are a lot of similarities between the Hella’s and the VISION X’s … the mounting system is a similar design [the bolt hole distance is different] so they should be just as durable, the size of them are the same [the VISION X clear covers fit the Hellas perfectly] the mounting bolt is the same as the Hella’s, Roolights, and Cibies so any locknuts are interchangeable which is a good thing as when people see how good they are they will want a set too.

The die cast aluminium housing seems even tougher than the Hella’s so there should be no problem there.

Testing:
I wanted to test the difference between the Hella’s and the VISION X’s so I found a little used narrow bitumen road between some canefields with a small tree on the right at 400 metres and a large tree on the left at 500 metres.
I marked out exactly one kilometre from the end of the road and marked out the position of the truck and the tripod for the camera, then I adjusted the lights to shine on the sign at the end of the road and left the truck running to keep the voltage the same.

Camera used was the Pentax K10D with the DA12-24/4 lens sitting on a Manfrotto Tripod with geared head.
The setting used for all the pics were 12mm, F5.6, 8 seconds, iso 100 and opened in photoshop at 5500 [daylight] colour temperature, smart sharpened at 100 and resized to keep everything the same except for the differences in the actual lights.

I then took a photo of low beam,

high beam,

high beam with the Hella’s,

Shot with PENTAX K10D at 2007-06-26

high beam with the Hella,s and the 4 x 100 watt no name brand roof lights on as well.

Shot with PENTAX K10D at 2007-06-26

I then fitted the 2 VISION X HID’s and set the truck and camera up exactly the same and took a photo then compared them all on the computer.

Shot with PENTAX K10D at 2007-06-26

The Hellas only just showed the sign at the end of the road and barely showed the trees

The Hellas and the roof flights showed more light close up at the sides

The VISION X’s shone very brightly on the sign at the end of the road, showed up both trees and was a very white colour like daylight.
The two 35watt HID’s simply blew away the 600watts of halogen lights !!

The replaceable polycarbonate clear covers means I don’t have to worry about stone strikes and the built in ballasts mean I don’t have to worry about trying to find extra space for the external boxes like some other HID’s, I just had to connect up two wires from the previous wiring and I was done, simple!

The power of the HID’s were really shown on the weekend when I was stopped on top of a hill overlooking a 4WD competition on the far hill near the bottom of the valley and was trying to find a road down, I found the road and arrived at the competition area about ten minutes later, a guy walked up and asked what lights I had as he was sitting in his vehicle with the back door open and when my lights lit up the inside of his car he though someone had pulled up behind him but when he looked back he saw my truck was on the top of the hill on the other side of the valley !!

He was just as impressed as I was with them!!

Can’t wait to replace the roof lights with some of the smaller HID-6500’s, I won’t be able to tell when the sun comes up !!

UPDATE:

Fitted the roof lights on sunday comprising two HID-6500 Euro beams and two HID-6501 Flood Beams.

I set everything up the same as previously and took a pic of High Beam with the Vision-X rooflights.

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