Big Tuna's "Building the Dub!"

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, last weekend NAU 4x4 came down to my neck of the woods, and we ran Moss Wash outside of Kingman!

 

 

The "rear wobble" from having bad bushings on the rear control arms finally got to the point where I decided to buy a pair of Core 4x4 Fab adjustable lowers. Eventually these'll be paired with an adjustable a-arm.

 

 

I was very impressed with Core 4x4's quality on the front uppers, and I wasn't disappointed with these. Hoping to get them on tomorrow after work.

 

[MattsHO 0]

Yes I would love to hear you're thoughts on those. I think I'm gonna go with front arms from Metalcloak with the Duroflex joints. I think TJ ones will fit.

[theksmith 4,019]

Yes I would love to hear you're thoughts on those. I think I'm gonna go with front arms from Metalcloak with the Duroflex joints. I think TJ ones will fit.

 

if you do i can't wait to hear how the joints perform and last - if i had a JK i'd be all over their entire lift kit.

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, the new rears are on. it was one of those things that looks easy on paper, but was a complete pain because the bolts were ceased up on one side. Took about 3 hours to get the passenger side replaced, and probably 20 minutes to get the drivers side. Afterwards I took it onto the dirt to make sure that there was no rattling.

 

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, today I opened the door to the mail lady bringing a big red box to the door. What could be inside it? Let's Look:

 

 

Spyder LED projector assemblies!

 

I actually took a risk on these, and got REALLY lucky. I accidentally ended up checking the used section on Amazon and found that they had a set that were new, but the box had been opened and they couldn't sell them for the retail price because of it. I figured that if there were any defects, I could just return them to amazon for my money back. Fortunately, they were pristine!

 

 

The difference is really quite large. The stock reflector housing on the left is after a good cleaning and one of those "de-fogger" kits. Actually, I should be honest. I've tried them all. The worst of those kits was 3M, and the best was Meguiar's. Anyways, the installation was as simple as expected, plus the new amber marker/turn signal lights, and it really makes her look much younger, I think. I have yet to look into HID or LED kits, although I am curious about those and will look into those in the future. We'll see how she looks at night!

 

[BigTuna117 33]

Night shots:

 

 

With rock lights on:

[Number7 87]

Nice.

 

G:cool:

[MattsHO 0]

New headlights make such a ridiculous difference. Looks great! I"m telling ya though, the little 13" LED lightbar I have on the front of my Jeep is amazing. I can barely tell the headlights are on when its on. Everyone needs one, I want one on every vehicle I own. Just hard to figure out where to mount them. The one on the jeep is mounted on a mount that attaches to the winch fairlead. I can't remember who I ordered it from...

 

edit: Oh and I like the rock lights too! I'd like to add those someday.

[BigTuna117 33]

Thanks! One of my next upgrades will be some sort of LEDs, whether it be a light bar or pods. I did this to adapt the jeep towards not having the fog lights underneath. I plan to trim them out until I can put together a bumper. I also need to get diff skids in place, and purchase rock sliders next year. So much armor!

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, I said my next upgrade would be some sort of LED solution, but it kind of went in a direction I wasn't expecting.

 

 

One of my halogen low beams started acting up, and I was forced to do a premature upgrade. Having just paid bills, I couldn't afford to do a full HID upgrade as I originally planned. I went looking for a cheap halogen on Amazon and somehow it led me to these. For $49, I really couldn't turn down the opportunity to try these out. They claim to be 3600 Lumens per bulb, so if they work as advertised, that's around 3-5 times brighter than the halogens I was running previously. a few short days later, the UPS guy delivered these.

 

A couple of years ago, LED headlight bulbs were a joke. regardless of if you bought cheap or expensive, they were flimsy, poorly made, and fit together like someone had forced un-matching parts to join in some unnatural way. These however, even being on the cheap end of the spectrum, are very surprisingly well built. sporting a plastic "bulb" side, which has two diodes on it. because of this, light only comes out of the two sides of the bulb. on the end is a very large heatsink to keep the diodes' microcontroller cool, which the manufacturer claims is aircraft grade aluminum. The manufacturer also claims that they are IP65 Waterproof, and are rated for 30,000 Hours.

The "bulb" end also happens to be significantly larger than a conventional halogen. Not sure if these would fit in the OEM reflectors, but the Spyder projector accepted it with room to spare.

 

I found them to be very very bright, as they claim to be. They do have an... interesting... effect in the projectors, though. Let's look at them side-by-side.

 

The Halogen bulbs:

 

...Aaand the LEDs:

 

as you can see, the LEDs somehow evade the projector cutoffs. I was afraid that this would be a problem, but no one seems to have a problem with it.

 

 

On the road, light is dispersed well across the road. An interesting note is that the camera doesn't seem to pick up the full extent of the beam You see that tiny spec of the porch light in the middle of the picture? I had visibility all the way out there. Even better, no one has flicked their lights at me. The beam is angled down enough that even the smallest vehicles don't seem to get blinded, I can still see for a great distance. An interesting quirk is that about 20ish feet into the beam, a shadow forms in front of each headlight. Interestingly so, that shadow is perfectly filled in by the beginning of the high beam when they are on.

 

All in all, I'd say it was a 50 bucks well spent. We'll see how they hold up when summer comes back around.

 

Also:

Unboxing video!