Lighting I have essentially the same question as CAT320. Magnetic strobes, what do you like? Also, do any of you have rear facing lights on a toggle switch or do you find you don't have much problem seeing with no auxillary backup lighting? Can you mount rear facing lights on the underside of the bumper (or elsewhere) without making your truck look like a Columbus Day Parade float? Any ideas along these lines would be appreciated. Also, as far as the strobes, will the smaller, less powerful models be suffcient, or is the slightly larger magnetic "bar" style probably necessary?
guys, i plow with a pickup and use the old fashion revolving amber light- granted its not the one you get from walmart for 19.95 and plugs into the cig lighter. this is a good size light that is hard wired and mounted to a piece of pvc then mounted to my toolbox in the bed. i do not have any auxillary backup lights but i remove the tailgate in winter and install a gate made of 1x1 tubing and steel mesh so i can look out the back of the truck. would like some of those new fancy strobe lights but what i got works well and those strobes are e$pensive. that is my input dan
We like the revolving light with the mirrors in them. AW Direct sells them. The use more power but are very noticable in the day and night time.
Noval stobes, work very well, and are at a good price from aw direct. I use those on my rear body lights for dump trucks, and there quad flash (18 jouls ?) strobes work great. Whelen makes great lights bars. If you are going to buy a light bar i would go with a Whelen. Last year i started useing the whelen mini edge on pick ups, over the stanadrd 6" stobe i used to use. Geoff
We use permenant mount strobe lights. We prefer to use PSE Brand strobes. You can buy them from AW Direct, they have many brands and styles to chose. The type we use are 8" tall and have a choice of single,triple or quad flash. And an automatic high/low intensity sensor. We usually have two stobes on each side of the dump or rack, welded on 1" pipe to the head board or cabshield. Our pickups we have one on the roof and hideaways in the rear lights, and on our loader we use a magnetic one. The reason we don't use the magnetics on the trucks is that a few years ago people were going around steeling them, all they had to do was cut the wire and take it right off the truck, and there goes $160.00 in two seconds, so we have all of the ones mounted right to the truck. Just My two cents
On my Dump, I have a Peco strobes mounted on each corner of the head board and two flood lights bolted onto the sander. On our pickups, I use a magnetic strobes for the roof and put two floods on the bumper, one on each corner. Works for me. Unlike other states CT and NJ that have crazy laws about emergency lights, Massachusetts requires you to have emergency lighting for any plowing. You will get a ticket for not using them. No permits needed.
We have homemade "headache racks", which incorporte a side rails as well, on our pickups. On the top of the rack there are "mouse ears" that stick up for tieing loads off. I made removable bars that clamp to the ears and hold our strobes so we can remove them in the summer. At the rear of the side rails are brackets for two auxiliary bakup lights. We use the rubber housing tractor headlights for that purpose. I wire them through a double throw switch and relay, they can operate either full time or in conjunction with the factory backup lights. I run the relay to keep current draw out of the factory switch. This way the only additional load on the factory switch/wiring is the trigger current for the relay. I have never figured hwo you can keep lights mounted under the bumper from getting wiped off on the first snowbank you back through. In addition, having the lights mounted high provides better visibility.
We use both rotating lights and strobe lights, we are replacing the revolving ones with strobes because of the lower amount of power they draw. Most revolving lights that I have seen draw approx. 12 amps as compared to 2 amps by the strobes. With the electric motors on the plows we will sometimes have a battery get drawn down if the operator isn't paying attention to the meter. Both are strobes and revolvers are the Star brand and we have been very satisfied with them. For rear lighting we have lights mounted on the headache rack and on the bumper, all of which are on seperate toggles. The one thing that we have also done is put are backup alarms on a switch, we run a wire from the backup light to a switch then to the alarm, this allows us to overide the alarm. The reason we do this is for our customers we plow that don't enjoy beep, beep, beep.......... at 2:30 or whatever in the morning. But when we start plowing during more congested times we flip the switch and the alarm sounds as normal. Matt
Studies show...strobes more visible at night, rotators more visible in daytime so a combo would be ideal. I use a magnetic strobe (Whelen 20 joule, decent unit set me back 100 bucks several years ago) I only use it when plowing or transporting the plow.
Chances are you won't but if you ever hit something or someone and your back up beeper is turned off, you may be in trouble. You may also be violating state laws buy putting your beeper on a switch. I run back up beepers on all my trucks even pickups. The reason for it on everything is some of my jobs require stuff like that. I have had a few people ask if there is anything i can do about them, i told them about the liablity and risk, and asked them if they wanted to take the fall. Geoff
We run a combo of strobes, hide aways and rotators. Basically what ever I find at a good price. last year a friend gave me a double rotator, all it needed was an amber lens, so 30.00$ later nd I am all set. I also bought 2 8" whelen quad strobes for $ 80.00 per set. I have a three head nova system on my truck, and I sue them all the time. Backing into driveways, pulling off the side of the road, and whenever more visiblity is needed. I dont like strobes at the corners of the headboard, they tend to reflect in the mirror to much. In fact I have mine wired so that I can run my rear strobes separate from my center strobe. that way I still have visibilty, yet when the top strobe starts to bug me, I can turn it off. I have 2 extra work lights facing to the rear, they are mounted on my spreader, and I have a quick connect to hook/unhook them. They are wired to a relay from my back up circut. I also have a work light facing down that comes on with the spreader, one I can see what I am spreading from the mirrors, and two I can tell that the spreader turned on. I also installed plow markers on my spreader horizontally so when backing up, I know where my spinner is. And we have a mudflap installed between the spiner and the truck to keep material off the rear of the truck. Dino
We do the local airport so everthing we have that plows there has to have some sort of yellow light,so I put them on everything so I don't have to worry which truck I send. Also in the past I have won some insurance diputes where my guy has backed into someone in a parking lot but because we had a light the claim went 50/50. I really like rotators because the cost of bulb replacement is so much cheaper as well as the light, and when the get knocked of a machine because of trees and low head room obstructions I would much rather lose a cheap rotator than a expensive strobe.We use mostly Federal Signal dual rotator mini bars and single rotator domes.The mini bar we have on a street sweeper and in the middle of bright summer day it can be seen a long way away so I am really happy with them.
You guys have some good ideas for lighting.I myself got a whelen 9308 strobe light bar with alley and rear take downs which help me very much when backing.If i had a dump i would put whelen 22 joules on each side on the dump body and put a federal mini jet rotator in the center 95/175/95 flash rate 710.then hideawyas in front and in te back with brake and signels installed on the side of the dump.You can never have enough lights .
Cat, how much did that puppy set you back? was it new or used? Whelen is great light but darned expensive, especially if you are outfitting several trucks and trying to stay uniform in what you install on them, so you convey a professional image to your customers.
It was about $800 from Galls new it works great gives off alot of light.They have gone up a little since i bought it and have new amd improved verson with all linner strobes my bar has 8 strobes but they now have 10 and 12 strobe bars now.
