Trailer Lighting

[tornadochaser]

Just bought an enclosed trailer, looking to add LED lights for exterior lighting, mainly for setting decoys. I've already determined I'll be using a deep cycle battery inside the trailer as a power source, but I have no idea as to the quality of LED lights that I see available all over amazon, ebay, etc. I'm thinking a 20" light bar on the back, and two 60 degree floods on the sides.
If anybody has done something similar and can share the pros and cons, I'd appreciate it.

[cstemig]

You may want to look at NoDakOutdoors, "Trailer forum" to get some ideas

[h2ofwlr]

There is now a lot of junk (Asian) in LED manufacturers out there now, so be careful what you buy. Lumens is the key as is Kelvin scale. 1600 lumens = 100 watt incandescent bulb for brightness. Kelvin is the color of the bulb. 3k = a soft white bulb, 5k is natural light, and 7k is the bluish/purple light scale. They are harder to find, but the 5k is what I'd go with.

I just wonder if there are bright enough LED flood lights out there, there wasn't a few years ago. I'd recommend going with 4 of them with 3 wall mount switches (side, rear, side). 1 on each rear corner and and 1 at each side. Basically you can light up 270 degrees around the trailer.

And another option is running a 14 gauge wire with an inline fuse directly from your vehicle battery to the trailer switches. You have to put a 2 prong plug in at the hitch. Some have also tapped the trailer running lights for this auxiliary lights line when using LED lights.

[get-n-birdy]

Been playing around with led's off Amazon. Fairly impressed with them. Been using more and more solar panels hooked up to batteries that sit at all, from campers, to car haulers with winches on them, to trail cameras, etc.

I use more lights at different angles, than one big solid, one directional bar. But that suits my needs better. Led lights are wicked efficient vs old school lights. The battery life is way better off a charge.

If you've got a seven prong plug, use that to charge the battery off the truck, like campers and other big trailers. Way less Jerry rigging. Then when you get out in the field at a$$ crack thirty, there's no dead battery issues.

A couple 12vlt accessory plugs are worth their weight in gold for phone charging or running other junk. Fuse and ground everything seperate with a bus bar and a fuse panel or run a switch panel with fuses in it. When something goes wrong, it won't crap everything out. Grounds are trouble spots. Tape into the trailer and cover it with liquid electrical tape, then run a second ground for when the first one craps out. Heat shrink everything. Use Vaseline or a good electrical grease on everything. Keep everything out of the way of road grime that you can. Silicone holes, moisture is a female dog. If you use interior lights like on campers, replace the bulbs with led bulbs, way more efficient.

[maplelakeduckslayer]

I wouldn't shy away from cheap ones on a trailer application as long as they were super waterproof. The cost of the high quality led bars is mostly the light out put and diffusing/crispness/how it casts the light in a driving situation. You don't have to care about any of that just using them on a trailer. I have a 13" bar on the front of my truck and went quality(pro comp) because I actually wanted to see while driving. Most of the cheap ones will throw light, but its not directed and focused properly. Not good going 60 down the road, but fine to cast light in a fiels

[shnelson]

I also wouldn't shy away from the China variants of LED spotlights, they all ultimately come from there anyways. I've been buying $3 knock-off Cree torchlights to keep around the house and have been very impressed, I can get a pencil beam out to 50m no problem with those things.

Save yourself some money, anything with legitimate Cree LEDs is going to work just fine. I've been looking at going with these on my enclosed trailer & a light bar on the back. I liked the idea of 30 degree lamps to get a little better throw distance, and you could probably pick up three pairs of them cheaper than a single pair of 60 degree. With a decent charged up deep cycle, you should easily see 8+ hours of run time off 108 watts of light.

http://www.amazon.com/Nilight-1260lm-Dr ... +spotlight

get-n-birdy makes some excellent points, just lost the ground connection on my trailer for the 3rd time now since I've had it

Also worth noting, I needed to buy the relay for my truck to offer up a trailer charge on the 7 prong. Not sure if that's just a Ford thing, but sure is a bitch when you're trying to troubleshoot lack of voltage. I would not recommend taking a feed direct from the truck battery like fouler suggests, that's just another unneeded invitation for murphy to show up at your party.

Since you'll be all wired up, don't forget to add the radio too - everyone needs a little gangnam style when they're setting up the spread.

[tornadochaser]

I went to school for electrical...all the wiring will be over engineered. Picked up my trailer on Friday and started in on re-wiring the factory lights last night. No way the old wiring would survive cornstalks, so the new will be in conduit sleeved through the existing grommets in the frame rails.

My LED field lighting will be off a deep cycle in the trailer, & it will be sized for 16 hours of running the lighting load. I'll have a power inverter and a power strip set up for mojo battery charging. Solar panel on top for trickle charge, plus a power port to plug in a battery charger. I've got a 6 switch panel already built with fusing built in. Music will be in the form of one of my ecallers (2 full range speakers, amp, battery all self contained.)

Watching prices on a few LED light bars on amazon that have positive reviews in regards to being waterproof. Seems like that is the biggest gamble with the Chinese stuff.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

[Trigger]

I bought some of the supposed "Asian Junk" as Fowler so ellogantly put it, it was $90 compared to the superior US made pefection that cost around the $300. Mine has been on my boat for 4 years and it's worked everytime I flipped the switch. I would gamble if it saves you hundreds like it did for me.

[get-n-birdy]

Inverters and power strip are awesome and will be very useful. Conduit is a great idea for any trailer wiring, wether it's in or out. Power port with an onboard charger is a great idea. Most people don't even remotely understand the abuse a trailer will see just on the road, let alone out in the field. Solar panels have really won me over for anything that sits with a battery in it. They're easy, cheap and a God send when you forget about something for a month. I keep old lawn mower and small car batteries for trail camera's hooked into small solar panels. Can run cameras all winter long on them with no issues.

I wouldn't hesitate to much on the lights from Amazon. The stuff I've used from them, as well as buddies, has worked very well and been surprisingly well built. Like trigger said, if you can save a little cash for a comparable product, why not. Now if it's junk to save a buck, on a completely inferior product, then hockey sticks no.

[h2ofwlr]

You all missed my point, some of it is VG, but some is crap. Be picky and look for VG reviews is all.