Snowblower retrofit!

[Fird]

Greetings all!

With snow season upon us in the northern U.S. once again I'm making good on my vow to get a bigger snowblower. One of the primary complaints about the brand I chose is the headlight is utterly useless. I joined a snow blower forum and see several mods involving installing outdoor/offroad LED lights made of Chineseum from the 'Bay. My question is does ANYONE produce quality 4000k-5000k off-roading lights for a reasonable price? Everything I have checked is 6000K+ and many have reviews indicating poor quality.

I'll be installing a bridge rectumfrier and sufficient pixie filtration to avoid flickering so that shouldn't be an issue, the requirement I do have is that the light(s) draw less than 20w combined to leave the remaining 40w of power capacity for hand-warmers. Is 20w of LED light overkill? Naturally, that's why I'm here :-D Also being on a snowblower, waterproof is important too.

Bonus points: a quick & dirty way to dim these suckers without flickering?

Thanks!

 

[StarHalo]

Too much work; put a bike mount on the handle and a set a nice multi-thousand lumen flashlight in it - now you control the output, what kind of beam you want, etc, no disassembly required.

 

[archimedes]

Well, this is an uncommon thread topic, but probably not a "General Light Discussion" ... so, Fird, any preference between Special Application Lighting or Automotive ???

 

[Fird]

Special application seems to fit. Sorry if this is out of place.

Also yes i'd thought of strapping a powerful floody light to it, that would definitely do the trick hehe!

 

[archimedes]

Special application seems to fit. Sorry if this is out of place....

No worries ... thread moved

 

[FRITZHID]

I'd have to agree with starhalo. Between all the pixie wrangling and other reliability concerns, a skoocome bike light or two would be your most equitable solution. GL!

 

[milehigher]

There not cheap but there bright as he'll and American made Whelen, Sound Off, Feniex,. I have very small tri color 5K lumen scene lights, fully waterproof ,smaller than half a pack of cigarettes and about $180.

 

[irongate]

Go to Harbor Freight or Northern Tool and they will have the light you need

 

[milehigher]

There not cheap but there bright as he'll and American made Whelen, Sound Off, Feniex,. I have very small tri color 5K lumen scene lights, fully waterproof ,smaller than half a pack of cigarettes and about $180.

I found a source for whelen lightheads on FB for half the price .

 

[HighLight]

I rigged up an oval LED round tractor light to an older Honda snowblower and it worked great. I hooked it up using a 120vAC to 12vDC wall plug adapter with the LED light attached to the 12vdc side and the engine ac alternator output attached to the 120vdc side. I suppose this is the same as a rectifier but I used the whole thing! If I had my time back I would have used the bicycle bike mount with a good bright LED flashlight and rechargeable Eneloop batteries for the cold weather operation. Either option will work. No need to spend too much on the actual light. I think mine was 800 lumens and I paid around 30 dollars for it. It was designed for use on a tractor so it was rugged and water resistant. There was zero flickering with the above tractor setup on my Honda snowblower.

 

[Fird]

I rigged up an oval LED round tractor light to an older Honda snowblower and it worked great. I hooked it up using a 120vAC to 12vDC wall plug adapter with the LED light attached to the 12vdc side and the engine ac alternator output attached to the 120vdc side. I suppose this is the same as a rectifier but I used the whole thing! If I had my time back I would have used the bicycle bike mount with a good bright LED flashlight and rechargeable Eneloop batteries for the cold weather operation. Either option will work. No need to spend too much on the actual light. I think mine was 800 lumens and I paid around 30 dollars for it. It was designed for use on a tractor so it was rugged and water resistant. There was zero flickering with the above tractor setup on my Honda snowblower.

That's a really clever idea, I have at least a half-dozen spare 12 volt power supplies floating around so I may be able to rig up something like that. It just never occurred to me that an AC input is an AC input it they don't care too much about voltage as long as it's a switching supply, and certainly I'm willing to blow one up to experiment with it

 

[Fird]

Actually I remembered I have a bicycle mount for one of my 18 650 lights, that will be my first setup for sure. Click and play