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Review - 4WD Supacentre 9 inch LED Spotlights
I've been looking at these lights for a while, and I couldn't find a lot of info about them. I eventually bought a set of these for my GU and thought I would post a quick review.
The lights themselves seem well made, the sealing looks good and they look pretty robust. The lights are quite thin front to back which means they are set back from the front of the bull bar for protection. The lights have large, deeply set heat sinks designed into the housing, however I have found that they don't get too hot even when used stationary. The lights come fitted with water-resistant deutsche connectors, they fit the factory bar quite well and utilise the factory spotlight holes but it leaves minimal room between the mounting bracket and the grill.
The lights come with two sets of protective covers, one set clear and one set diffused. The covers don't fit over the top of the light (like most covers) but instead clip inside. The fitting seems snug and looks unlikely to come loose over corrugations, but only time will tell. Even without the protective covers, the front lens of the light is also plastic and have a bit of 'give' to them so they seem unlikely to be easily damaged by rocks.
The light mounts themselves are a real highlight. Instead of having a typical 'ball' fitting that tend to give pronounced bounce over vibrations and are prone to vibrating loose, these lights have a really great design including two vertical pivot fulcrums with two locking screws, and one horizontal fulcrum with two locking bolts. So far these have been terrific at minimising bounce due to vibration. The only downside is that you will need to drill four new holes in the bull bar and the mounts take up a bit of extra room, but in all other respects I have found them to be great. The fitting also comes with a thin (approx 3mm) rubber pad that goes between the mount and the bull bar. Unfortunately the bolts are not stainless steel, but then what do you expect at the price?
I bought the optional wiring harness that I highly recommend. It is super easy to install and comes with a relay, illuminated switch, deutsche connectors for the lights, inline 40A large blade fuse in holder and headlight bulb harness. Basically you just need to connect positive and negative to the battery, mount the relay, plug in the headlight bulb harness, mount the switch and plug in the lights. Depending on where you mount the relay, there is plenty of length to mount the switch in the centre console, and it fits perfectly in the blanks next to the handbrake. Note that the harness comes with a carling switch, not the crappy round one in the photo. Given that you get the carling switch, relay, fuse and headlight harness, this is good value even if you are using a different set of spot lights.
The lights themselves are very bright and give great spread. It is pretty amazing to drive down the road and turn them off and realise how crappy the factory headlights really are. They give reasonable depth of throw but if you are looking for driving lights that will light up 1km down the road, these are not what you are after - compared to a good set of HID lights they really are nowhere near as good. This is not really a criticism of these specific LED lights, this applies to all LED lights I have ever seen. If you want the perfect solution, then IMO a quality set of HID driving lights and a LED light bar make an unbeatable combination.
These lights are also available as a 7 inch which seem identical but have fewer LEDs, while I haven't tested these I don't think I would recommend them. You really don't want any less light than the 9 inch lights provider so I would definitely go for the bigger lights.
In summary, if you are after one set of lights that have great spread for the low speed stuff, but still throw a reasonable distance down the road, these are really hard to go past (especially for the price). As far as reliability goes, I will let you know if I run into any trouble, but so far they look pretty good :)
