I’m not gonna lie; when it comes to driving lights, I’m a bit of a snob. Whenever I’m doing long hours in the saddle, I will usually leave in the dark hours and aim to get to my destination during daylight the next day. So having quality lights, that work exceptionally well, and don’t strain the eyes is a must for me and I’m sure would be the same for you.
With this in mind, the folks over at Ultra Vision have thrown a set of their brand spanking new, ridiculously powerful (1 lux at 1.8km?!), NITRO 180 Maxx spotties at me, asked me to install them on the 80, and give my thoughts on them, with no holds barred.
So without any further dribble from me, here are my initial thoughts on the spotties, and how difficult they were to install.
ULTRA VISION NITRO 180 MAXX
GEAR
WORDS AND IMAGES BY WES WHITWORTH
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THE LIGHTS
The most interesting bit of information about these lights, is that Ultra Vision are claiming these will hit 1 lux out at a rather impressive 1.8km. The benchmark has been around the 1.4km mark for a long time, and it seems that the bar has been pushed just that much higher.
If you’ve seen Ev’s unboxing video (click here if you haven’t), you’ll know these puppies are reasonably heavy – thanks in no small part to the whopping big heat-sink lobbed on the back of them. They come with stainless steel mounting plates, reasonable length connector tails, and a bunch of LEDs (180 watts worth) mounted to some rather high-quality optical reflectors.
The bezel around the edge of the light can be changed up in colour; however, I prefer mine black (have you got any blacker?). You can have the lights in different colour temperature too, and in this case, I’ve gone for the 5700K (as opposed to 4000K) as I like my spotties to be on the whiter side of the spectrum, instead of yellow.
I received a set of ‘anti-theft’ nuts which I’m not going to go into, aside to say that you’d need to work out how to swing a hammer and cold-chisel between the bonnet and bullbar to get them off.
They’re exceptionally well built, as you’d expect from a set of high-end, Aussie made lights; no casting marks, paint is perfect, and the staino bracket is top-notch. As a rather nice touch, according to the installation book, my specific lights were made by Paul – Thanks buddy, you done good!
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THE INSTALL
How hard are the NITRO 180’s to install? In a phrase, piece of cake. The harness you get with them is completely plug and play, aside from the trigger wires. Everything mounts up as you’d expect, with bloody solid wiring to your battery (have a go at the size of the wiring!), and Deutsch connectors to the lights.
All I had to do was run the switch wiring through the firewall, slightly modify one of the switch blanks in the 80 to run the factory Ultra Vision hi/lo switch, and it was all but done.
Interestingly enough, despite the 80 series lights being negatively switched (‘Yota owners will understand the shit-fight here), the harness from Ultra Vision worked perfectly. All I needed to do was take the trigger wire from both sides of the high beam circuit and Bob's your uncle.
After we installed the harness, it was just a matter of mounting the lights and plugging them in. The overarching things to note here is how simple the install was with a full harness, and the team at Ultra Vision haven’t cut corners using low grade or just enough amp rating in their wiring. It’s all solid overkill, which saves us with voltage drop, and lets the lights draw all the amps they need.
Bolting them up was simple enough after we modified the bullbar mounting points to work with a bracketed spotlight and a high-mount. They are a standard 9-inch light, so airflow is the same as any 9-incher on the market. They also come with security bolts to allow for aiming, so hopefully you wont have a set of lights go walkabouts from the front of your four-wheel drive.
Upgrading sway bars is not just limited to sports or passenger vehicles. 4x4’s and utility’s benefit greatly from larger sway bars particularly where heavier loads, towing and /or highway driving is involved.
WHITELINE have customised a short range of heavy duty sway bars (anti roll bars) to suit the most common 4X4 models with the objective to minimise excess body roll, dramatically enhance handling performance and most importantly improve safety!
AVAILABLE FOR
FORD RANGER | HOLDEN COLORADO
TOYOTA HILUX | LANDCRUISER | PRADO
NISSAN PATROL | NISSAN NAVARA
MITSUBISHI TRITON | VW AMAROK
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INITIAL IMPRESSIONS - SWITCHING THEM ON!
So, no doubt this is what you folks want to know, how do they go? In a word, wicked. After installing them and as soon as the sun set I was out to test these bad boys and I was blown away.
I didn’t have a light meter or measuring wheel with me to get accurate data, however, in the photo where I’ve pointed them up the powerline easement, the solid panel fence you can see way up in the distance is around 1km away (from google earth). The fence is on the side of the Hunter Expressway, so it’s a big old sound-proof fence and seems to be well more than one lux.
That said, I think they’ve got a good chance of hitting the 1 lux at 1.8km benchmark; however, I think atmospherics will play a big part of it – fog, dust, smoke that will start to impact the results. We shall see.
THE SPECS FOR THE TECH-HEADS (PER LIGHT)
WATTAGE: 180W
LIGHT OUTPUT – EFFECTIVE: 10,978 lumens/lamp
VOLTAGE: 9-36V
CURRENT DRAW: 13.7A @ 13.5V
OPERATING TEMPERATURE: -40°C to +80°C
WATERPROOF RATING: IP68
CONNECTOR TYPE: 4 Pin HD Deutsch
HOUSING: Die-Cast aluminium
LENS CONSTRUCTION: Polycarbonate
BRACKET: 4mm Stainless Steel
BEAM COLOUR: 4000K or 5700K
LIFESPAN: 50,000 hours
DIAMETER: 230mm
NET WEIGHT: 3.45kg
BEAMS AVAILABLE: Combo
WARRANTY: 5 years
MORE INFO: ultra-vision.com.au
They come with a high and low beam setting, where the low beam is dipped to just 20 per cent output, so you’re not blinding yourself on road signs when you roll into towns. The two I have are spots, however they’re available in a spot-spread combo.
As I said earlier, the colour temp is at a nice cool 5700K, but they’re available in 4000K if a warmer output is more your thing. These lights really are that powerful, and it will be interesting to see how they go once I’ve got more scientific data to go on, other than just ‘they’re bloody bright!’.
After one night of initial testing these appear the goods but like everything that we test in Unsealed 4X4, I will check back in with a full report about how they’re doing after about six months or so of use. Give them time to get weathered, and give me some time to take them out and do some solid (and scientific) testing of them.
ULTRA VISION NITRO 180 MAXX
I’m not gonna lie; when it comes to driving lights, I’m a bit of a snob. Whenever I’m doing long hours in the saddle, I will usually leave in the dark hours and aim to get to my destination during daylight the next day. So having quality lights, that work exceptionally well, and don’t strain the eyes is a must for me and I’m sure would be the same for you.
With this in mind, the folks over at Ultra Vision have thrown a set of their brand spanking new, ridiculously powerful (1 lux at 1.8km?!), NITRO 180 Maxx spotties at me, asked me to install them on the 80, and give my thoughts on them, with no holds barred.
So without any further dribble from me, here are my initial thoughts on the spotties, and how difficult they were to install.
GEAR
WORDS AND IMAGES BY WES WHITWORTH
THE LIGHTS
The most interesting bit of information about these lights, is that Ultra Vision are claiming these will hit 1 lux out at a rather impressive 1.8km. The benchmark has been around the 1.4km mark for a long time, and it seems that the bar has been pushed just that much higher.
If you’ve seen Ev’s unboxing video (click here if you haven’t), you’ll know these puppies are reasonably heavy – thanks in no small part to the whopping big heat-sink lobbed on the back of them. They come with stainless steel mounting plates, reasonable length connector tails, and a bunch of LEDs (180 watts worth) mounted to some rather high-quality optical reflectors.
The bezel around the edge of the light can be changed up in colour; however, I prefer mine black (have you got any blacker?). You can have the lights in different colour temperature too, and in this case, I’ve gone for the 5700K (as opposed to 4000K) as I like my spotties to be on the whiter side of the spectrum, instead of yellow.
I received a set of ‘anti-theft’ nuts which I’m not going to go into, aside to say that you’d need to work out how to swing a hammer and cold-chisel between the bonnet and bullbar to get them off.
They’re exceptionally well built, as you’d expect from a set of high-end, Aussie made lights; no casting marks, paint is perfect, and the staino bracket is top-notch. As a rather nice touch, according to the installation book, my specific lights were made by Paul – Thanks buddy, you done good!
THE INSTALL
How hard are the NITRO 180’s to install? In a phrase, piece of cake. The harness you get with them is completely plug and play, aside from the trigger wires. Everything mounts up as you’d expect, with bloody solid wiring to your battery (have a go at the size of the wiring!), and Deutsch connectors to the lights.
All I had to do was run the switch wiring through the firewall, slightly modify one of the switch blanks in the 80 to run the factory Ultra Vision hi/lo switch, and it was all but done.
Interestingly enough, despite the 80 series lights being negatively switched (‘Yota owners will understand the shit-fight here), the harness from Ultra Vision worked perfectly. All I needed to do was take the trigger wire from both sides of the high beam circuit and Bob's your uncle.
After we installed the harness, it was just a matter of mounting the lights and plugging them in. The overarching things to note here is how simple the install was with a full harness, and the team at Ultra Vision haven’t cut corners using low grade or just enough amp rating in their wiring. It’s all solid overkill, which saves us with voltage drop, and lets the lights draw all the amps they need.
Bolting them up was simple enough after we modified the bullbar mounting points to work with a bracketed spotlight and a high-mount. They are a standard 9-inch light, so airflow is the same as any 9-incher on the market. They also come with security bolts to allow for aiming, so hopefully you wont have a set of lights go walkabouts from the front of your four-wheel drive.
Upgrading sway bars is not just limited to sports or passenger vehicles. 4x4’s and utility’s benefit greatly from larger sway bars particularly where heavier loads, towing and /or highway driving is involved.
WHITELINE have customised a short range of heavy duty sway bars (anti roll bars) to suit the most common 4X4 models with the objective to minimise excess body roll, dramatically enhance handling performance and most importantly improve safety!
ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS - SWITCHING THEM ON!
So, no doubt this is what you folks want to know, how do they go? In a word, wicked. After installing them and as soon as the sun set I was out to test these bad boys and I was blown away.
I didn’t have a light meter or measuring wheel with me to get accurate data, however, in the photo where I’ve pointed them up the powerline easement, the solid panel fence you can see way up in the distance is around 1km away (from google earth). The fence is on the side of the Hunter Expressway, so it’s a big old sound-proof fence and seems to be well more than one lux.
That said, I think they’ve got a good chance of hitting the 1 lux at 1.8km benchmark; however, I think atmospherics will play a big part of it – fog, dust, smoke that will start to impact the results. We shall see.
THE SPECS FOR THE TECH-HEADS (PER LIGHT)
WATTAGE: 180W
LIGHT OUTPUT – EFFECTIVE: 10,978 lumens/lamp
VOLTAGE: 9-36V
CURRENT DRAW: 13.7A @ 13.5V
OPERATING TEMPERATURE: -40°C to +80°C
WATERPROOF RATING: IP68
CONNECTOR TYPE: 4 Pin HD Deutsch
HOUSING: Die-Cast aluminium
LENS CONSTRUCTION: Polycarbonate
BRACKET: 4mm Stainless Steel
BEAM COLOUR: 4000K or 5700K
LIFESPAN: 50,000 hours
DIAMETER: 230mm
NET WEIGHT: 3.45kg
BEAMS AVAILABLE: Combo
WARRANTY: 5 years
MORE INFO: ultra-vision.com.au
They come with a high and low beam setting, where the low beam is dipped to just 20 per cent output, so you’re not blinding yourself on road signs when you roll into towns. The two I have are spots, however they’re available in a spot-spread combo.
As I said earlier, the colour temp is at a nice cool 5700K, but they’re available in 4000K if a warmer output is more your thing. These lights really are that powerful, and it will be interesting to see how they go once I’ve got more scientific data to go on, other than just ‘they’re bloody bright!’.
After one night of initial testing these appear the goods but like everything that we test in Unsealed 4X4, I will check back in with a full report about how they’re doing after about six months or so of use. Give them time to get weathered, and give me some time to take them out and do some solid (and scientific) testing of them.