Chupacabra Offroad back in the desert out here at Superstition OHV in the Imperial Valley, CA testing out the Baja Designs light setups that we used on the ChupTurboTwins. We wanted to get out and do some light testing and check out the differences in the light setups that we used some similarities and differences to see what we thought was the best lighting pattern.

The similarities that we both used were the OEM replacement squadron pro kit from Baja Designs putting out close to 20k lumens. This is where things start to change, on Andrew’s RZR he decided to go with 3 XL pros on a front bumper putting out 4900 lumens each. Heading up to the roof rack Andrew went with a 30” racer edition light bar. This light bar can shoot a narrow beam a mile down the road with its 4-degree optics. Out back, he decided to run 4 S2 Pro’s flush mounts to be seen in the thickest of dust.

Heading over to Nicks RZR again using the OEM replacement squadron pros in the headlight spot. Moving up Nick decided to go with a 40” dual action light bar from Baja Designs with a spot combo lens. What’s nice about the dual-action light bar is that it has both amber and clear that you can turn one or the other for the dustiest of conditions you may come across. Heading out back in the rear wing you will find that Nick went with the Rear light bar (RLB) from Baja designs, Nick wanted a rear chase set up that he could integrate turn signals due to him being street legal in Arizona. For the overall conclusion of Baja Designs Products, these are the best lights out on the market! The U-Service aspect and running their LEDs at 100% capacity makes a world of difference when relying on forward projected light to get you through the night — You can always trust Baja Designs.

Transcription:

What’s happening Chupacabra off-road and today we’re talking lighting we just got our razors done Andrew and I and we just got a new light setup and had our first real time of night riding out and glamis at camp rager a couple weeks ago I really liked how they work but we wanted to go shoot a real video of night riding and then show you guys some of the differences of our lighting setups what we used and why and then also just give you better idea if you’ve got a new side-by-side for thing about adding more lighting you’re in the southwest and you’re always fighting dust what’s the best setup how you want to spend your money to get the most bang for your buck we reach out to Baja designs and they really hooked us up with a lot of their lighting products but we loaded up the trailer again and we headed out to superstition OHV area just to ride in a different environment and it’s got a lot of stuff you can find in the southwest little bit of dunes some twisty tight washes a lot of dust fast whoops and pretty much everything in between so it was a really good environment for us to go and just see how the vehicles worked and made sure that we can go drive those whoops at night about as fast as we wanted let’s see how they worked when we were following each other with a lot of dust in the air and just see you know which of our setups we preferred for what reasons and share that information with you guys so that you can make a better behind decision [Music] I’ve owned a lot of different light brands in the past vision acts some cheap stuff off Amazon and rigid and this is my first time owning Baja designs light so so far I’ve been really really impressed just with how bright they are and you get your money’s worth let’s put it that way so Baja designs lights are definitely regarded as some of if not the best lighting options for us off roaders and these lights are definitely not cheap but if you start to do a little bit of research you start to see some of the quality and the thoughtful engineering that they use is what makes them pretty much the best lights you can get so a couple of things they use a copper on their circuit boards instead of aluminum and the benefit of that is that dissipates heat 60% quicker than aluminum which is what most of the competitors use and for that reason they can run their LED lights at about a hundred percent versus a lot of the competitors can only run their LEDs at seventy percent one other technology that they have is a battery management technology and what that does is it reduces flicker at low voltage and it also protects the electrical system on your side by side which is really important as we cited by side enthusiasts keep adding more accessories to our rigs we definitely run into some constraints with our power system from our Staters and hit some limitations and we need to be thoughtful about that if we’re running all of our accessories at once so Andrew and I are both running the triple-s dynamics which comes stock with the 900 watt stator which to my knowledge is the biggest stator stock of any side-by-side so we’re pretty good off there or some other side by sides you’ve got some real constraints we need to immediately think about a dual battery kit but also our vehicle does draw a little bit extra because of the electronically managed suspension system so like I said 900 watt stator and just for a point of reference the Onyx 640 inch dual control light bar that I’m running on my razor is putting out about or pulling about 340 watts when it’s all the way on high with all the lights on so definitely need to be thoughtful when you’re thinking about adding lighting adding accessories and making sure your electrical system can push everything speaking of lighting information Baja designs websites got a lot of great information as well and they break down a lot of lighting into different zones so you’re gonna see some lights that are titled as Racer Edition and those type of lights are designed to throw out being very far out which is you know from a lot of research what they’ve learned from their years of racing and Baja on two wheels on four wheels off road vehicles trophy trucks and whatnot and for instance that’s what Andrews got on his light bar up top based on how he chose his complete arrangement of lights but there’s a lot that you can learn if you’re trying to just add more lighting and thinking about having you know some Amber’s for when it’s in the dust having some lights they’re gonna shoot out really far when you’re going fast as well as having a nice flood or a nice breath of light let’s say you’re doing and you want more peripheral coverage so if you guys been following the YouTube channel we’ve done a two-part series so far on the builds of our cheap turbo twins razors and in part two we both kind of did a walk around and talked about our different lighting setups so here’s a quick little breakdown of both of the lighting setups on Andrew in mind turbo s dynamics so moving on in the front of Andrews car I don’t think there’s gonna be many people out in the desert that are gonna be brighter than this car looks but the lights are abundant so Andrew lighting everywhere talk us through your setup so pretty much as you can see on both cars we went with OEM replacement with Bahamas Ines we think by far Baja designs is probably one of the best lights out on the market that you can buy nick has ran different brands from polaris brand to the actual rigid ram he’s gonna be able to check these out tonight while we do a little bit of night riding but we use the pro kit it comes with four squadron pros forty nine hundred lumens is a piece so that gives you almost twenty thousand lumens up in the front that’s just om headlight replacement goes right into the stock wiring you don’t have to any other mounting mechanism clean and simple install so going down to the front bumper Nick opted not to run a front bumper I ran with three Baja XL 80s which are the pro model the pros are forty nine hundred lumens as well so I got another 15 thousand lumens off on the bottom here I run what the single desk cover in the front just so people can see me coming in the dust and it really cuts through the dust when your high speeds going up to the top I decided to remount my 30-inch Racer Edition light bar up on the roof rack compared to Nick’s on his actual cage we wanted to do some different testing different light setups and see what we liked better you know give you guys more of a real review on them and why we mounted I’m here what’s better what works the best especially for different night for different night writing if you’re right in the in the dust or if you lead drives and you need something be shooting out a mile away you have it so that’s why with the racer at 30 inch light bar up on the roof rack moving along rear wings you’ll see a lot of differences between the the rear wings with Nick’s car my car I went with 4s to pros s to pros here as you can see I went with the blue and then amber they’re really bright Madigan’s little signature was I put a rare brake light in it but you’re pretty much gonna be as bright as you can get out in the back a lot of people riding in Glamis this past weekend we’re telling me to turn it off because it was too bright I don’t know it’s a good thing but I know on the dust do you want to be able to see somebody coming up in the best yeah I mean I glamorous it was crazy how bright these s2 SR and they’re amazing I followed a guy like on the Arizona peace trail with 6-8 guys ton of hanging dust with no breeze I’ve never seen anything brighter for rear so I went with Baja designs light bar with the blinkers I’m in Arizona one of the half blinkers I’ve also got a work light and I’ve got my brake lights so really like my setup I don’t think my my blinkers my Amber’s are near as bright as Andrews but bright enough to be seen on big dusty group rides so for Arizona living so moving on in front of my car a little bit less light and I got the same like I said headlight can’t love how easy install was I like how body includes a 20 amp fuse I’ve ran these with rigid and with MB core Polaris brand blown a fuse on both of them so nice extra connectors top-quality with everything and so far really really good I think I could probably even do a night ride with just these we wrote in a pack all weekend so if you guys do in a lot you know when you’re in a packet it helps with everyone’s light Iran sweep a lot as well so running sweep I love having the windshield and then I love having the dual control 40 inch I amounted opted to mount mine not on to the roof rack but tab down to the cage so I was playing with these settings a lot I can’t believe how bright it is in just the amber position I’ll my buddy had one of these light bars I got to ride in his car a couple of years ago and I absolutely loved how it performed and you know I want to be seen during the day so I’m pretty much running the Amber’s front and back all day and I think on group rides that’s gonna work really well but of course I gotta let a extra light when I need it I like the light bar up top for the peripheral one I’m doing I’m known for leading do rides and driving around in circles with my GPS so when I’m trying to figure out where I’m going um you know this helps me but I do know a lot of guys prefer down low like a typical car truck has fog lights keeps out of the dust better but so far really impressed with how the amber cut through and we’re gonna go check them out tonight so we hope those clips are valuable if you’re adding some more lights in front of your side-by-side what to think about if you want to add them up high or low in my opinion really you’re buying a peace of mind you want to buy some lights that are gonna keep you safe when you’re going on night rides they’re a ton of fun and you want to be able to know you can drive pretty much as fast as you want and not run out of light one big advantage of being seen even during the day of work your running lights is preventing an accident of oncoming traffic or whatnot or having someone not run into you from the back because they can see your amber lights through the dust so here’s some overview footage from the drone starting off with my razor and you can see my front lighting option and starting off with the low beam then the high beam then the front light bar then the front light bar amber light here’s some overview footage of Andrews razors starting off with his low beam headlight kit high beam bumper lights and then his upper light bar so right before I got completely dark Andrew and I were out spending some circles kicking up some dust just kind of getting an idea of how they worked in the dust as we got close to dark which is common a lot of guys will go out riding and all of a sudden you’re gonna lose track of daylight so got to play around and see how the vehicles felt rip them through some canyons it was not very windy at all so the dust was just lingering and it was definitely hard to see out of I definitely like the dual control on my light bar up just having the amber and after spending a few days with this light bar a few night rides I I would highly encourage you to everybody have some type of amber light that they can use just for that scenario I think it’s it’s really beneficial for a lot of us in the southwest that are gonna be riding and dust 90% of the time so we moved on out to whip Road which is a pretty high speed without trail we’re getting in speeds of upper 60s I think we’ve got almost a 70 72 miles an hour so roads pretty looped out you definitely got to pay attention but you can also haul the mail and even letting the dust clear a little bit and getting a high speed run on this trail a couple times like it’s cool to see how the lights worked I think both of us really thought that we didn’t run out of light I felt comfortable going that speed and it wasn’t the light dose holding me back was really my lack of driving ability or willingness to go that much harder so as a whole I’m pretty impressed I’m not gonna go too much faster than 70 miles an hour at night and I felt good knowing that I had plenty of light right and now run it or if I’d encountered some dust I’d have some good visibility with my Amber’s here’s a cool GoPro clip of Andrew ripping through a pretty fast and slippery trail I really can’t call this trail a wash but it’s a grooved line that’s pretty fast and you can definitely make a mistake as you’re going fast there’s big rain ruts that kind of randomly come up or you’re just sliding around and getting a little more sideways than you anticipated trying to stay into those group corners as you can see is lights are really bright throwing out a big far beam so the lights are further out then he’s going speed wise and you can see we’ve got the speed here on the GoPro he’s moving pretty good and like you guys know if you’re out in the desert a bunch you know there could have been a big storm there could have been a trail that you ride all the time then all of a sudden got a big G out or a rut from the rain or a change in condition so nice to have all that visibility knowing that you’re not gonna run into any issues or you can see them and slow down and prevent a crash or or damaging your vehicle after a little bit of that we got into a really fun tight twisty wash I love this type of riding it’s like single track on my dirt bike but it was kind of a groove trail it was soft but once you get going pretty fast there’s a couple of gotchas we had to really slow down and thread the needle we shot some drone Clips above us and you can see here you want to go through as fast as you can you can get up to about 30 to 40 miles an hour but then you’ve got to really slow down there’s a big rock we had to get over a big rock slab and just to really tie a wash which was not much wider than our vehicles so the lighting worked really well it’s nice when you do have the walls of a wash like that to kind of reflect some light and after following Andry a little bit after the dust hadn’t really cleared I thought the Amber’s kept everything bright enough where I could really see and focus on those grooves to make sure those soft grooves kept us in place or if I was going too fast and blew one out that I could slow down or correct in time so I wasn’t going to basically crash into one of those walls in the wash so I hope you guys like that footage we really want to put together a video and show you what our lights look like two different types of setup give you some type of things to think about well as I explained before you know I had some space constraints with my trailer not wanting some bumper lights I wanted to have some blinker lights that I live in Arizona and you pretty much wanted the brightest setup that he could get and had all different types of light options no matter what he’s doing if he’s leading her if he’s following and gives you something I think about no matter what type of side by side you own you’re definitely gonna want to add more lighting than what Comstock it makes it for a lot more enjoyable you know even if you’re not really into night riding you never know when you’re out on a long day ride and you just run out a like you’re having a good time you get lost who knows so again you’re buying a peace of mind you’re buying comfort you’re buying a much more enjoyable experience it kind of reminds me the first time I upgraded to radios and I could talk with my group and it made the ride a lot much more safe enjoyable you can talk with your co rider same type of feeling here you just feel comfortable knowing no matter what you’ve got some good lighting and and I can’t thank Baha designs enough they really hooked us up on a lot of these lights and the lights are amazing definitely the best that I’ve used so far I’d recommend definitely starting off with a couple squadron XL ATS and then buying some amber dust covers whether you run two on a bumper and really been able to tell the covers pop off on and off really easily you can rebuild them with amber lenses if you really like an Amber setup and it’s got a nice a transition I think almost everybody here in the southwest should have some type of amber option in addition to their white lights I really like it you know you’re able to be seen you stick out even during the day they work really well and highly recommend Baja designs we posted links in the description below to all the products that we have on both of our vehicles you can get idea of pricing sizing if they’ll fit on your custom cage or whatnot and any other information any other questions go ahead and comment below you can email us let us know what you think of this video thanks for watching we got a lot more content coming your way.