I reached out to BDS suspensions who made the lift to see what they say... I agree if it has a temper or heat treat I'd need to be extra careful. In the meantime: another review for y'all.
Headlights:Bought some bitchin LED headlights.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BWBRDJ5/These ones are brand Afeax and use Osram LED chips. Pretty sure they’re a JW Speaker knock off. Honestly, it might be the highest bang for the buck mod I’ve done on the Jeep. $86 shipped, it’s awesome.
We’re doing the country living thing out here on the Big Island so the last street light is more than a mile from my place. It’s DARK at night (I mean I work in astronomy so I know that’s why we’re all here, but still…)
Before shot… Kinda anemic.
Install is pretty straightforward, you just have to pull some trim and the support rings.
The lights come with surprisingly good packaging and they literally drop right in.
Big difference (both before and after are low beams only)…
One surprise I didn’t know about, the light have a bit of a daytime running light affect that’s always on. Kinda cool in a Vin Diesel, Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick kinda of way.
The new headlights mean I finally get to throw light sabers at the sky.
Here’s a quick shot of the pattern out wheeling… Pardon the slightly out of focus shot but it was fun chasing this wild boar for ~300 yards up the road. He couldn’t give a rip that I was following him.
The pattern
is a touch blotchy and I wish they cast a little more light to the sides but overall, it’s such a massive improvement I can’t complain. $86!!!
Night run with some buddies… Used a flashlight to paint the foreground and that turned out pretty cool.
One twist I didn’t think about before doing headlights. Having serious light being cast below your line of sight is better for technical wheeling. Your elevated vantage point (relative to the lights) means you see shadows on the far side of rocks and such. By comparison a roof mounted light bar has light thrown from above your line of sight so you can’t see the shadows and lose a good bit of your depth perception.
I actually had a friend give me a light bar so I’ll probably mount it up regardless (more lumens down range is still good for running fast) but I hadn’t ever thought this through before so it was an interesting epiphany. I've been seeing more an more trophy trucks where all the light is bumper mounted with the roof left open so apparently others are thinking about this too.
Aiming the headlights requires a long skinny torx bit, FYI, but that's just an XJ thing, not specific to these lights.
Happy wheeling!
-Joel
