Moar Brighterer! Long Term Vega7 Journal (Customer Review)
Now that the comparison of the Vega7 against the Baja Designs LP6 is done, I figured might as well start a new thread to keep track of how the V7 holds up. If you’re interested in the other thread it can be found here.
Seems how the conditions I run in on a daily basis have likely contributed to my 50% failure rate with BD pods (2 of 4 failing. Though really the LP6’s never saw this abuse up until doing the comparison test. Prior to that they lived the life of most BD products being an aesthetic accessory. With that being taken in to consideration it’s 100%. Light bars on the other hand never had problems) I ordered two more Vegas to run four up front in an attempt to increase the sample size. Two LED+LED and two LED+frickin laser beams
The lasers are now wired on their own circuit from Aux6 and each pair has their own relay. The relays were revised from the previous setup and now Aux1 powers the relay that is closed when the fog lights turn off. That current is sent to two separate relays, one for each set of lights, each set getting an equal load by only having one laser each. All four lights now turn on together. The grill does slightly cover one of the laser beams but I’m not motivated enough to try fixing that. It’s hardly noticeable and it’s not like there’s a ton of options to move stuff around with the way these are mounted.
Swapping everything over provided the chance to check the fans and sure enough-moon dust all up in there. But they still spin without issue. I thought about removing the shroud but decided against it. Can’t imagine there’s a seal in there (maybe @ORACLE Lighting will confirm) but just in case I’ll leave them alone as I’d be tempted to clean the fans. I want to work them and removing the dust will reduce the load, or at least one would assume so. I’ll run them a but then redo the temperature tests to see if mounting position had anything to do with how much hotter the LP6’s got.
I’ll run them a bit then redo the temperature tests to see if mounting position had anything to do with how much hotter the LP6’s got. Will be interesting to see what running all four together will do to the temperatures. You can feel the heat off of the lens from 4-5 inches away! We already know the fans are working with the 40 degrees difference between V7 and LP6, but are they still effective with all four running in an enclosed space?
Unfortunately I received a call in the middle of wiring that needed me to head out asap, so we didn’t get to aim the lasers properly. I wasn’t sure how far they’d spread at distance, so both lasers were installed on the passenger side with the idea being the more focused beam would allow them to stay on without blinding oncoming traffic. So far this seems to be the case as not a single driver has cast retaliatory photons letting me know they thought the brights were still on. They are aimed slightly high though, so not terribly useful at the moment. Hopefully I can fix that soon.
Seems how the conditions I run in on a daily basis have likely contributed to my 50% failure rate with BD pods (2 of 4 failing. Though really the LP6’s never saw this abuse up until doing the comparison test. Prior to that they lived the life of most BD products being an aesthetic accessory. With that being taken in to consideration it’s 100%. Light bars on the other hand never had problems) I ordered two more Vegas to run four up front in an attempt to increase the sample size. Two LED+LED and two LED+frickin laser beams
The lasers are now wired on their own circuit from Aux6 and each pair has their own relay. The relays were revised from the previous setup and now Aux1 powers the relay that is closed when the fog lights turn off. That current is sent to two separate relays, one for each set of lights, each set getting an equal load by only having one laser each. All four lights now turn on together. The grill does slightly cover one of the laser beams but I’m not motivated enough to try fixing that. It’s hardly noticeable and it’s not like there’s a ton of options to move stuff around with the way these are mounted.
Swapping everything over provided the chance to check the fans and sure enough-moon dust all up in there. But they still spin without issue. I thought about removing the shroud but decided against it. Can’t imagine there’s a seal in there (maybe @ORACLE Lighting will confirm) but just in case I’ll leave them alone as I’d be tempted to clean the fans. I want to work them and removing the dust will reduce the load, or at least one would assume so. I’ll run them a but then redo the temperature tests to see if mounting position had anything to do with how much hotter the LP6’s got.
I’ll run them a bit then redo the temperature tests to see if mounting position had anything to do with how much hotter the LP6’s got. Will be interesting to see what running all four together will do to the temperatures. You can feel the heat off of the lens from 4-5 inches away! We already know the fans are working with the 40 degrees difference between V7 and LP6, but are they still effective with all four running in an enclosed space?
Unfortunately I received a call in the middle of wiring that needed me to head out asap, so we didn’t get to aim the lasers properly. I wasn’t sure how far they’d spread at distance, so both lasers were installed on the passenger side with the idea being the more focused beam would allow them to stay on without blinding oncoming traffic. So far this seems to be the case as not a single driver has cast retaliatory photons letting me know they thought the brights were still on. They are aimed slightly high though, so not terribly useful at the moment. Hopefully I can fix that soon.
Had some time available to pull the grill and re-aim the lights, particularly focusing on the lasers to light up the ditch and shoulder more. Had wifey down the road and on the phone for feedback on whether she was being blinded or not. Very useful feature, those lasers. You could do the same thing with two lights as they’re so bright you absolutely don’t need four of these lights up front for auxiliary lighting. Two will be more than sufficient. Only using two you could have one laser on the passenger side for lighting up the ditch or shoulder, but of course four certainly looks better especially if they’re mounted where you can see them like @swamp2 did on the bumper.
