Best underbody lighting?

[rjwenter]

Hi. I have a 2001 TXT. I'd like to put some underbody lighting on my cart, but I'm not sure if I want to use neon or LED. I'm leaning towards LED because it would be less of a drain on the cart, but I'm not sure if it gives a nice enough lighting effect. Does anyone have any opinion? Also, if anyone has a kit they would recommend that would be great - and if it's something carried by one of the site sponsors that would be even better. Thanks for your input.

[learningaboutcarts]

I just ordered and received a Green LED set up from Trade Mark carts. I will be installing it tonight and it seems to be pretty straight forward. I wanted to use the LED's on my Gas cart so that I would have a lower battery drain with the undercart lights, headlights, tailights and radio running at the same time.

I will post my thoughts once it is installed.

TradeMark had good prices and I received the kit in Floriday in 1 day.

[Scooter B]

I'm going with LED's too. I ordered the waterproof ones in the clear plastic strips from Ebay, direct from China...I got A LOT of lights for about 30 bucks, just going to wire everthing up myself with a rocker switch.

Should be in this week, I'll let you know how it comes out.

[BrewCityMusic]

I have had the PVC-encased strips from China on my cart for over a year, one 120cm strip on each side of the underbody and 30cm strips under the bagwell and front cowl - tons of effect light, durable as heck (been through snow, rain, mud, branches, grime, etc and never a hiccup) - and a grand total shipped of $13 (the switch and relay cost me that much locally, hahaha)

What I CAN chime in here, though - stay AWAY from the SMD (surface-mount) LED strips (they come on a flat flexible base as versus the wider PVC style) - I work with all kinds of LED's with my company (we do live sound and stage production / lighting) and most if not all of the low-$ mass-produced SMD's are current-overdriven to get them to appear brighter, which makes for early failure situations, etc. In this case, more $ doesn't neccesarily mean a better (or brighter) product.

Also - with the PVC style strips, a little trick I came up with is to buy some 1/4" aluminum channel from Home Depot or Menards (about $6 for an 8ft section) - the strips are a perfect pressfit into the channel, and it protects them from flexing, trauma, etc while also giving you a solid mount to keep them aimed where you want them - in fact, if you look at the pic you'll see where a disaster was thwarted by the channel about midway - whatever kicked up into it was enough to dent the channel, but the lights were just fine:



As to drain, I have on several occasions left the lights on all night long with no ill effect, and last summer they were inadvertently left on day and night for an entire weekend (although to be fair, the cart was driven on and off quite a bit so there was charging going on) - I did the math once and if i remember, I came up with something like 220 hours of constant LED's on without running the cart before the battery would be dead, so that's a mute point as long as they are wired correctly.

[speedfreak]

I have the plastic tubes that have the led lights in them they fade from blue to purple to redish. They have been through tons of water and filth and they also put out some great light. I will have to look at what the brand is on them but they just zip tie to the rails out of the way. You'd have to be down right mean to your cart to get to them.

I'll get a picture of them on when I get a chance.

[rjwenter]

Thanks for all the replies - it's very helpful. Would any of you happen to have a picture of your cart lit up at night?

[BrewCityMusic]

this is a pic of just a single 18cm (7") strip under the cowl from when I was installing the lights last year, the position is approximately 16" from the ground (it's on grass too, which makes it look a lot dimmer than it is) - I'll try and remember to snap a decent pic tonight of all 4 strips lit up

[Scooter B]

Did these over the weekend, a 72 cm Led strip attached to the frame rail on each side (perfect length) sorry for the grainy pic.

Gives off plenty enough light, I'm not worried about the rear, and I have something special planned for the front.

[BrewCityMusic]

Hey Scooter, you should do a couple of lasers up front, I had a couple of LOC 300mW reds on mine for awhile that would have been perfect for you with the red light, swapped them out for a pair of 200mW 532nm greens, it's a trip running the woods with the beams out front, a real "Wow" factor too, heh heh

[rjwenter]

Thanks for the pictures - looks like the LEDs give off plenty of light.

Scooter - can you tell me the name of the seller you bought the lights from on eBay? Thanks.