We are here to talk about off-road lighting. Anybody that's had an older vehicle, like my Jeep from 2015, with incandescent lights in it, an Easy Bake Oven is a brighter light. It was horrible until I started to change things out. Today, we've got Justin Perrett, who's got over 15 years of 12-volt experience. He started with Oracle Lighting as an installer, and over the years has grown with the company into doing many things, ranging from product development, shooting product video content, including helpful install videos.
We ask: So how do we choose a light bar? Where do we start with lumens or whatever other specs? What are looking for for a good roof-mounted light bar?
There are all kinds of LED lights out there. And some of the stuff's pretty cheap. Why would I pay $400 for a light where I might see something similar for $100? What are getting for $300 more?
What do we look for in all the marketing hype? Lux or lumen, flood, spot or combo beam patterns?
What king of lights, beam patterns, and where do we mount them? How do we find out so we don't waste cash because some web site or forum knob says, "THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED!"
Perry Mack: Good morning, we are here to talk about off-road lighting. Anybody that's had an older vehicle, like my Jeep from 2015, with incandescent lights in it, an Easy Bake Oven is a brighter light. It was horrible until I started to change things out. And Oracle Lighting is one of those companies that you can get stuff from to improve your off-road experience and be safer. So today, we've got Justin Perrett, who's got over 15 years of 12-volt experience. including his current 10-year tenure at Oracle Lighting. He started with Oracle as an installer, and over the years has grown with the company into doing many things, ranging from product development, shooting product video content, including helpful install videos, and traveling across the country, educating dealers about the brand and its products. Justin, how are you doing today?
JP: Doing great, how are you?
Perry Mack: Good, good. Yeah, I'm pretty excited. As an off-roader, I've had the Jeep, I already heard about my problems with that as far as lighting goes. And now I've picked up my next restoration, a 1976 Toyota Land Cruiser, an FJ40. So I'm pretty excited. Again, the lighting on that sucks, but the vehicle itself is phenomenal. So I'm hoping we can talk about some stuff that I can put onto my Land Cruiser that I know also works. You've got products for Jeep and for Bronco that can make people going off-road see more, be safer, have more fun. So, yeah. You know, there's definitely some stuff out there. I don't even know where to begin. So let's start at the top. One of the things I did with my Jeep is I put an overhead light bar in order to light up more of the trail. Now personally, I found that I didn't like the reflection off the hood. Do you guys sell a similar product or do you have a better recommendation other than that overhead light bar?
JP: You know, that's really dependent on, you know, the roof light bar is usually meant for just straight forward visibility. Doesn't really do much for lighting out to the sides. But as far as a roof mounted light bar goes, you know, there's different types of beam angles or optics for those light bars. you know dependent on the light bar that you have there already that light that's reflecting off of the hood may just simply be due to the type of optic that's in that light bar.
Perry Mack: Right? So I could fix that with one of your light bars, depending on, I guess. Well, that's a good question. So how do I choose a light bar then? Where do I start with lumens or whatever other specs? What am I looking for for a good roof-mounted light bar?
JP: Yeah, so we tend to look at lumens and lux. So for example, our 50 inch MRFT light bar, which is our latest light bar design, it uses reflector facing LED technology, provides a combination driving, I'm sorry. combination driving beam angle and for that one specifically we get you you get a usable light distance at over 648 meters so it translates to about you know roughly 2,000 feet
Perry Mack: Yeah.
JP: so when we talk about looks we're usually looking at what's the furthest distance where a meter will pick up one looks
Perry Mack: And so you did throw out two units of measure, which are used differently in marketing, and sometimes it can make it hard to compare which light you really need. And those two words are lux and lumen. So what exactly is the difference, and which is a better measurement?
JP: So if we're talking about actual visible like distance, lux is going to be what you're going to want to look at. As far as effective lumens, that's going to be brighter perceived. That's going to be the bright, the total perceived brightness of the light.
Perry Mack: And so you talked about beam patterns. And one of the things that I noticed driving here in British Columbia, I've had elk come out at me across the front of my truck. Is that kind of a beam pattern gonna light up the sides of the roads and into the forest so that I can see him before I hit him?
JP: No, so particularly what you'd want to use for something like that would be a ditch light, is typically what they're referred to, or a ditch type light. It's typically a flood pattern and you know typically or traditionally ditch lights were you know just an a flood auxiliary light that would be mounted to the sides of the vehicle with some sort of bracket. we actually, we took an interesting take on that to do more of an integrated look. Because what we find and what our design philosophy usually is, is to try to develop products that look more like they're supposed to be there and less than an afterthought. So in terms of ditch lights, what that led us to were, we've designed a series of replacement front mirror caps for the side view mirrors that have ditch lights integrated into them.
Perry Mack: Ah, right.
JP: And we offer those for you know all of the more popularly off-roaded vehicles like the Jeeps. You know we we offer that for the Jeep JK, the JL and the Gladiator, the Ford Bronco, the Ford F-150 and Super Duty. We've got them coming for the fifth-gen rams like the TRX. Tons of development going on there.
Perry Mack: Yeah, nice. No, that's a great idea, actually. I think what I'm typically used to seeing is just a square cube that's somehow bolted onto some kind of a bracket that's on the vehicle.
JP: yeah that's the most popular ditch light and and again you know that looks good on some rigs you know personally for me it looks more like an afterthought and you know I like to personally keep things you know looking as factory as or as integrated as possible more of like an enhanced OEM if you will
Perry Mack: Right, right. So the square cubes are effective but not aesthetic, but you've got stuff that will actually be aesthetic and effective to put on the vehicle.
JP: And don't get me wrong, we offer those same ditch type lights, the cubes, and they can look aesthetic in the right, you know, in the right application.
Perry Mack: And if you have an older vehicle like I do, there's not going to be some kind of an OEM ditch light mirror product coming out for something that's 50 years old.
JP: Yeah, you'd have to get creative there, for sure.
Perry Mack: Yeah. No, sounds good. Now, the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, because there are all kinds of LED lamps out there. And some of the stuff's pretty cheap. Why would I pay $400 for a light where I might see something similar for $100? So what am I getting for $300 more?
JP: A lot of the things that you're getting, obviously you're gonna get a better quality product. You're just, when you're talking about the actual internal components used. you're going to have something that's assembled with components that are of a higher quality in that higher range than you are with something in that lower range. It's just matter of fact, every company has got to have some type of margin in the product. And if you think about a light bar that costs a hundred bucks and it only costs 20 bucks to make. You know, you got to kind of question, you know, what components are actually being used in that. And then as far as the things that aren't necessarily tangible, you know, just speaking in terms of our company, you know, you get, we put a ton of resources into actual support around the product, installation assistance. you know, like you mentioned in the introduction, part of what I do is shooting a lot of educational and install content for these products. And we have a full staff of tech support that can actually help the DIYer get the install done if he ends up in a jam. You know, so there's a lot of things that go into the product that are not necessarily the tangible thing that you pull out of the box, right. And I think that's the big the big factor that separates a company like us to your standard just blue label product.
Perry Mack: Right. So let's say I want some driving lights for off-road. And off-road, I know, equipment takes a beating. I've had branches bouncing off my overhead light, and of course, then there's, you know, you get wet. I mean, who doesn't love mud? You know, what do you recommend for maybe a driving light? And the other thing that I like and everybody kind of wants is some kind of a rock light to light up on the front tires. I mean, those are going to get, they're going to get bashed, they're going to get soaked. What have you got for driving lights and for rock lights that are going to withstand the kind of beating that they're going to take in an off-road truck?
JP: Yeah, so, you know, as far as driving lights go, the MRFT light bars that I mentioned earlier, they come in several different sizes from 14 inch all the way up to 50 inch. And those can be purpose mounted on the front of the vehicle and they use a combo driving beam pattern. So those are, you know, very suitable for driving. We also offer full high powered LED replacement bulbs to swap out in the factory assemblies. We also offer complete headlight assemblies that have, for example, like our Oculus headlights that we offer for the Jeep Wrangler, JL, JK, and the Jeep Gladiator, as well as the Ford Bronco now. Those use a high quality, tightly focused bi-LED projector that puts light. down the road or down the trails in a very tight controlled manner fills all quadrants of the Ford lighting section. And those were benchmarked against several of the popular premium options that you would get with some of these newer OEM vehicles and they outperform those in every measurable category in terms of benchmarking. So, you know. those would be great options. As far as rock lights go, our rock lights are very popular. We're very well known for rock lights. And we offer everything from just very durable white. purpose built rock lights for just utility use for someone who's not looking to really be too flashy with changing colors. It just really needs to put light around the wheels out to the sides of the vehicles where they need to be. And we also offer your color changing rock lights for more of the show, for your quote unquote mall crawler guys. And we even offer, now we offer RGBW rock lights of both worlds. That's going to be our newest design and we're very excited about that and some other RGBW products that we have coming.
Perry Mack: Nice. And just to go back a little bit, you use the word combo pattern. So what does a combo pattern do exactly?
JP: So the combination pattern is just going to be, so traditionally you would either have to pick, a spotlight pattern, which would be, your very narrow focused light or your flood pattern, which would be what illuminates the area around the vehicle. The, The purpose of a combo driving light is to blend the best parts of both of those different types of patterns. You know, it's not going to be the best at one or the other, but it's going to create something that's very suitable for driving. It's going to you're going to have light. You're gonna have light being you know tightly focused down the road or trails as well as that bubble of light that you need around the vehicle up to see things up close So yeah, typically the combo driving light is gonna be what you see the most on the market Just because it's the most versatile and it's the best thing that's suited for actual driving and off-roading on the trails But you know the spotlights are definitely
Perry Mack: Yeah, one of the things that is very apparent if anybody drives off-road, especially here, is long distance down the trail is really not that important because we're not driving that fast. We have a club here in BC that's called Herd of Turtles because the idea is not to go 80 miles an hour. You just need enough so you're not over-driving your headlights, but you also do need to be able to see to the sides. And I've seen a lot of guys... And I think it makes sense, tell me if we're wrong, that use perhaps a combo LED light bar in the front and then add a couple of cubes out to the sides for slower driving. Does that make sense?
JP: Yeah, no, that would make the most sense, honestly. And it's definitely an often misunderstood subject when we start talking about placement. Some add whatever lights just look cool or seem trendy. And that often leads to mistakes, subpar lighting patterns, hot spots that are very blinding. Um, you know, potential huge waste of money. Um, and,
Perry Mack: Hahaha
JP: you know, and, and, you know, technically any additional amount of light will help navigate a dark road, but you know, there is definitely a right way to place those lights and choose beam patterns, you know, to be a lot more effective. You know for sure and yeah, so you know combo driving light for forward-facing flood type ditch lighting out to the sides and Spotlighting is you know, very good in my opinion for, you know, illuminating areas around the vehicle, specifically in for recovery situations or, you know, if you're trying to light up a work or a camping area around the vehicle, if you're an overlander, that would be typically what I would purpose those for. Going to our, you know, just. plugging our LED scene light, which is such a versatile light, you know, we've put those on headache racks for just lighting out to the sides, you know, lighting up a camp area or a work area while it's parked. We even have one on our 2021 Ford Bronco underneath our winch, just to light up the winch in the front. It's such a versatile light that I would use for pretty much anything for a spotlighting scenario like that.
Perry Mack: So as the scene lighting, so two issues that I encounter. One is backing up on the trail at night. And I've taken, unfortunately, a solid steel bumper. But I've hit stumps, I've hit trees. It's just so hard to see with the OEM backup lights. Is the scene light the kind of thing you'd recommend for additional lighting for backup lights?
JP: Depending on the vehicle, yeah. You know, we also make some integrated auxiliary reverse light options for vehicles like the newer Jeep Wrangler and the Jeep Gladiator, where we actually we made a set of light modules that replaced the factory reflectors in the bumper, and those integrate in with the reverse lights for the tail lights. And then those provide... I've gotten some reviews, I've read some reviews where people are like, man, it looks like it's still daytime in my rear view camera. And that's inherently, you know, a thing that we've come across with a lot of the newer OEs lately is that the reverse light, the reverse camera. At night, it's just, you know, in combination with the factory reverse lighting is just sub par. It's not very good. You know, so we would definitely look into solving that. issue with reverse lighting and products like our our new flush mount tail lights. Those have high powered reverse light modules built in our bumper reverse lights like I mentioned the scene lights are great for that. Even using standard 3x3 cubes in the rear are better than OEM in most instances.
Perry Mack: And what about something, again, I'm kind of picturing where these things might go on my Toyota, but I have a hitch on it for an overland trailer. Do you have something that will help me? Because a lot of times we do, we roll in at night. Something inevitably goes wrong on the trail, and now instead of arriving when it's light outside, it's dark, and perhaps even leaving. So do you have something that will light up my hitch, so I can back this up at night and nail the hitch and not have to f- Fumble around with it.
JP: Yeah, so those scene lights are great for that. And you know, you depending on where you mount those, like a pair of those on the back of the, on your Toyota, you may be able to kill two birds with one stone in terms of reverse lighting and being able to see the hitch.
Perry Mack: Yeah, nice. And since we're talking overlanding, what have you got as far as, and do you have anything that I could perhaps mount underneath the trailer? It's gonna be more mood lighting up. I gotta say, it's gonna be all about looks and not necessarily about, geez, it's not gonna necessarily be necessary, but do you have something that will do that, that we can set up and kick back at night and have a great time?
JP: Yeah, absolutely. Um, it would be the same thing that I would recommend for the underside of the, the, the vehicle that's towing the trailer, our underbody lighting. Um, yeah, we, we do a very durable underbody lighting strip kit that is RGB. Um, and that paired with one of our several different controller options gives you the option to set it to whichever colour or mood that you want.
Perry Mack: No, that sounds good. And since you mentioned a controller, a lot of these lighting systems that we're talking about, and we could be putting on cube lights on the front for ditch lighting, an LED light bar, perhaps at the headlight level. We've got some reverse lights going on now. We've got underbody lighting. It's starting to sound complicated. Is it still a do-it-yourself project for a
JP: Oh
Perry Mack: guy
JP: yeah,
Perry Mack: to put all this stuff in?
JP: absolutely. So, you know, especially like our Oculus headlights, those are virtually plug and play. So are our, you know, we've also got some really cool Ford lighting fog light products, like our triple fog light kit for the Ford Bronco, which those mount up to the steel modular bumper, just using the factory hardware that's already there. Plug and play connectors, same with the high powered fog lights for the Jeep. Everything that we do, we try to make this plug and play as possible. We are very much on the side of the DIYers. That's, you know, something that we've, you know, we came up as DIYers. You know, the founder of our company started the company, you know, just, you know, building headlights at his fraternity house, just doing it himself. So, you know, we're very big on that.
Perry Mack: So you kind of mentioned it early before, we were talking about support as being part of what a person would get with a better brand. You know, if I, let's say again, a guy, he picks up a new Bronco, he's brand new to off-roading, he wants to get out there, he wants to make the upgrades. Is there somebody at your office that he can call the phone and say, listen, this is the truck I've got, whatever it might be, this is what I want to do to it. And do you have any recommendations for other stuff? Like does that exist there, that kind of support?
JP: Absolutely. Everyone that is able to answer a phone at Oracle Lighting will be able to assist any customer with any type of inquiry like that and if they can't there's usually someone else who they can go to for that information that can't help. So yeah, we you know, we put a ton of resources into training our staff on the products We've got a dedicated staff of technicians who can help out at any time. You know, we're all in the same building, so it's very easy to reach one another. You know, we're not calling across the country to another location to try to get help from someone else. So usually, you know, the majority of customers calling can get help right then and there.
Perry Mack: Well, I mean, that helps a lot, I think, because you can spend so much time on the internet researching things. I know I have, and there's so many websites that are either repeating the same inaccurate information that you don't know what to believe anymore. So to have something like that, I think, is valuable. You know, everybody needs somebody that they can trust, you know, whether it's a buddy or a professional that can say, hey, no, look it, that's the wrong way to do it, but this is the right way to do it. Which also brings me to the next part, so. Again, I've got an older vehicle and it needs to have its lighting updated. But let's say I start that do-it-yourself project. I got so many lights, I got to pick up a, you know, maybe a couple of switches and mount them in. Have you guys got somebody that when I get stuck, not if I get stuck, when I get stuck, can I call one of your guys and say, hey listen, this, I did this and this and this, and it's not working or it's blowing a fuse or whatever else that can happen.
JP: 100% that
Perry Mack: So there's a
JP: is
Perry Mack: special line just for me.
JP: Yeah, no there's a there's actually so so when you call in you just ask for tech support and we'll be able to assist you
Perry Mack: Nice, wow. Look out, you're gonna get some calls. So we talked about a lot of stuff. Well, I like the idea of all your plug and play products, especially with the headlights. I think once upon a time, LEDs headlamps were not plug and play. And now I'm trying to remember, do you guys have some kind of a round headlamp that will, for instance, is it nine inch or seven inch or maybe both, that, again, somebody like me could take out that old incandescent light, slap in an LED and actually be able to see at night? Is there something like that that exists?
JP: Yeah, the, you know, the, the seal beam lighting was something that we actually originated. And, uh, you know, since then there's been a couple of other, uh, replications I'd say, but we were the first to come out with a classic stop. What? So essentially we, we offer a classic round glass sealed beam, just like the ones that came out with some modern updates. So. you know, we get rid of the fensel etching on the lens, so you've got a clear lens, you've got an LED halo that can be used as a driving light. And then the cool thing about the sealed beam headlights that we offer as opposed to what came on those vehicles originally, is that it takes an H4 bulb, and then it takes a H4 bulb, So now you're in a situation where the bulb is a serviceable part rather than, you know, those incandescent seal beams. One goes bad. You just got to take the whole thing out, throw it away.
Perry Mack: Right.
JP: So, um, you know, the, you're, you're giving yourself another level of service ability with your older vehicle. You're updating and enhancing the look in the front. you're opening yourself up to being able to use a high powered LED bulb rather than the standard incandescent bulb. So you're getting the best of all things available. And we offer some other 7 and 5 and 3 quarter replacement lamps that are full LED with projectors that may require a little bit more fabrication involved to get them to work on some of those older cars, but still something, depending on how far you want to get into it.
Perry Mack: Oh nice. You know, I think everybody knows that trying to buy a 4x4 now brand new is like the prices are horrendous. You know, it's like, you know, just like house prices, right? Trying to buy a new house is crazy. So you may as well stay where you're living and just upgrade it. So if you can update the lighting and the safety and use of your existing 4x4, I mean that will save you tens of thousands of dollars. So we've talked about a lot of things. Is there something that I've missed? Like have you guys got something brand new out now that we should know about? Or have you got something in the pipe that perhaps you'd like to let us in on?
JP: Uh, yeah, so you know, you, you, you did mention, uh, you did mention that you've got an older Toyota. We're actually we're working on some really cool products for the Toyota market specifically We've got some We're in the process of developing some of the LED side mirrors For some of the popular Toyota trucks as well as tail lights with those high-powered integrated reverse lights Yeah, we've got a lot on the pipeline for Toyota specifically
Perry Mack: Awesome. So. Yeah, is there anything else that I missed that you said, hey, geez, I wonder why he didn't ask me about blank?
JP: No, I think you've pretty much covered all your bases. You've definitely done your homework.
Perry Mack: Well, it only took 14 or 15 years of driving off-road.
JP: Yeah, look, I've been doing this for so long now and I still feel like there's things that I'm learning just because the technology evolves on a yearly basis almost at this point. There's just the... I remember when LED headlight bulbs first came out and it had to be these really big things with these huge fans and these really, really big oversized LEDs just to be usable or to be something considerably better than what the vehicle already comes with. And now the LED packages are so small and heat is just so much easier to mitigate. technology now to aid with that. You know we've gone in the I don't know in the space in the space of maybe five to seven years we went from these huge bulbs to something like our V-series bulb that basically mimics the exact geometry and construction of one of those small little incandescent bulbs that you pull out of your factory housing.
Perry Mack: Wow, nice. Justin, thank you so much for sharing your info and your expertise today. That was, it was good. I'm excited and now I got to have to put together my own little wish list for my Land Cruiser. Thanks for showing up today. Thanks for sharing it. And I hope that we can do this again.
JP: Yeah, absolutely, anytime.
Perry Mack: Alrighty
JP: Thanks for having me on
Perry Mack: take care, bye bye.