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4.2 Rav4 Light Bar - prototype run

19K views 56 replies 9 participants last post by  crazyypilot 
#1 ·
Just gauging some interest here. Based on the last few threads there has been some:

http://www.rav4world.com/forums/95-4-2-d-i-y-modifications/88152-cool-custom-parts-rav.html
http://www.rav4world.com/forums/87-4-2-accessories/84302-bumper-light-bar.html

I have spent some time designing and tearing apart the front of my Rav to come up with a bolt on lightbar that will not require any cutting or modification to install. It should be installed with the bumper removed, but I have designed it in a way that it may be able to be installed with the bumper on the Rav...it will just take a bit of persuasion. I will determine that once I have the final prototype for fitment. For now I have been cutting out some brackets and doing some test fitting.



This is what the light bar will look like. There are still a few things I will be tweaking during the fitment process.


The lights pictured are Hella 500/500FF series: Susquehanna MotorSports - Auto Performance Product

The reason I am building a light bar as opposed to a bull bar, is that I never plan on using my Rav to nudge another vehicle...and the bull bar actually reduces your ground clearance/entry angle at the front of the Rav. I just wanted more lighting and this light bar will allow for exactly that without any compromise. It will allow for four lights up to Ø7-3/4".

The mild steel frame is CNC cut, TIG welded and will be coated with a high quality paint. I've built lots of parts in the past but usually in one time group buy formats until I move onto the next product to develop. Some of the parts I have produced have been resold for more than the original owner paid for them, just due to it being a rare and limited part! So don't sit on your hands if you are considering buying one! The intro group buy price for the light bar will be $225USD + shipping (estimate $40~ish).

This light bar is 100% Canadian designed and manufactured with the material coming from a nearby Canadian steel mill.

Anyone interested? I'm only going to begin a build if there are at least 10 people interested.
 
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#2 ·
sweet. the light must be great now!
 
#5 ·
Thanks! The top bracket is the first prototype, the one below had some tweaks to it (based on the fitment of the top bracket), I will have 2-3 more prototypes I believe before I am 100% satisfied. The bar that the lights mount to will probably only need to be built once as the design of that is quite simple.

The lights will add significant bulkiness to the packaging, so I have not included the lights so that way the owner can choose what lights they want to use. FYI Hella 500FF aren't the best lights out there, but they are the best bang/buck. A set of four Hella 500FF lamps are around $150~ish.

Conrad you know I will be getting one

1. How does it mount( maybe a cad drawing to illustrate(

2. How does one take the bumper off?
Cool! Well lets hope there is enough interest and we can get this off the ground! :D

1. I didn't model the crash bar or bumper to save time, I just took measurements and designed off that, however here is an idea of how it will go on.




It clamps to the existing crash bar seen here in Sensei's post:
http://www.rav4world.com/forums/867069-post8.html

2. I found a procedure on this forum how to do it...but there were some glaring issues on how to do it. Lots of "leap of faith" by tearing off clips... lol. When doing it I found ways to remove pieces like how Toyota or a bodyshop would actually do it, it's actually quite easy but may be intimidating to most their first time. Now that I've done it I could probably have the entire front of the Rav removed in 20 minutes only using a phillips screw driver, narrow slotted screw driver and a 10mm socket. When selling this light bar I would do an actual procedure on the proper way to remove everything if one wanted to.

All the mounting hardware is behind the bumper so there is no way for someone to just walk up and remove a few bolts and take it...some lights on the market come with (or you can buy extra) security hardware to make it difficult for someone to remove the actual light housing too. So the light bar is designed to be theft proof, it makes the install a bit trickier but I'd rather make the one time install a bit tougher than have someone remove a few easy access bolts because of a poor design and take a few hundred dollars in lights.

The gist of the design is done, just a few little tweaks with some of the brackets. One being the bracket that the lightbar is mounted to will be a bit longer to allow for a bit more room between the bumper and the back of the housing of the light. But how the light bar is installed and what you see is virtually what it will be. I should be finalizing the design this weekend. If there are enough interested people then I'll begin producing them and ordering the appropriate packaging and materials.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I'm very interested in this and am glad you're going this route. One small design question I had relates to the fact that the light bar extends in front of the bumper (feel free to shoot me down).
1) Have you thought about running the brackets a little higher so the bar/lights sit atop the bumper? My mind would be a little more at ease if the light bar was above the bumper and extended only as far as the bumper?
2) Do you think the light mounted on the lightbar would be more likely to interfere with the headlights if mounted higher? I wonder if there's even enough room to squeeze lights up there?

Again, I'm really excited to see you move forward with this and you can pencil me if things continue to progress.

By the way, I've been lurking on this board ever since I got my Rav but just recently made an account. Thanks to all the great members like Conrad I have learned enough to actually post meaningful content. Stuff like this is what makes communities like R4W awesome.
 
#7 ·
I have thought about moving the lights higher in the initial design layout, however I didn't due to the housings shrouding the OEM headlights slightly and the chance for more prominent vibration. Also the location in the center of the bumper is the best compromised location to either install aftermarket fogs or driving lights. Typically you want driving lights inline with the headlights and the fog lights as low as possible, in this case the light bar allows for a compromise of both. Allowing someone to run both in the same area without overly compromising one set of lights over another.

I've been on automotive forums for at least 10 years, I have been a moderator on a few and I still moderate the Engineering/Fab forum on CelicaTech when I have time. In all honesty I just try and help out people where I can, because I always soak up information where I can too. Sharing information will only benefit us all! :D
 
#8 ·
I like the current design because as far as I can tell it is designed to require no modification at all to the stock bumper. This is a very good thing. I would not be willing to drill cut or modify my front bumper in any significant way, in fact I am still pissed off about having to mount a Virginia front plate when I moved away from Arizona.

Edit for after thoughts
In fact I am also envisioning a similar but beefed up bracket exiting through the lower bumper hole acting a a serious recovery point. But maybe the stock ones are better than they look and so far I have not needed a recovery point on the front at all. I am thinking just one of the brackets that clamp around the real steel bumper would be more than adequate to hold my 2000L 6led light. I have even been considering a suction cup based gopro camera mount to hold the light as it is about that size and weight.
 
#10 ·
Yes that was one of the main criteria, absolutely zero cutting or hacking up of the Rav.

Not sure if I would want any major stress on the crash bar (except when in an actual collision)...but I have not looked at the OEM recovery point as a weakness, or if it needs to be beefed up.

Conrad
Will the steel you use be able to be rhino lined, and the bolts that you use will they be galvanized or something to prevent rusting like most aftermarket ones do (hence why I want to rhino line one )
Actually I have produced a lot of underbody braces in the past and I have used rockerguard paint that works really really well. This will be coated with the same product. The hardware will be galvanized at a minimum, yes.
 
#14 ·
I snapped some photos with my wife's point and shoot over the weekend when I got the brackets mounted to the crash bar. I just painted the brackets with black paint (dries in 10 mins) to allow me to get it on the car in time to put the Rav back together. I don't have time to leave the front end off to have the rockerguard paint dry, especially on a prototype. :lol:

The center to center spacing for mounting the lights is 8.4", so there is plenty of room for some large lights. The limit will be how deep they are (before coming into contact with the bumper).

There doesn't seem to be much interest on this so I hope some others want to jump on board once some photos come up. :D
 
#15 ·
Hardest part is done. Here are the final prototype brackets.




Rockerguard spray will be used instead of paint, the bend line tabs might be changed and the bolt clamping the mount to the bumper will be shorter (it's just what I had kicking around in the shop).

The light bar then slips in through the hole in the bumper and is bolted up in four locations behind the bumper. Super clean. :D
 
#19 ·
Well my local source for the Hella lights didn't come through so I have ordered them. Once they are here I can finalize the light bar, however I'm assuming they'd be quite close to the model mocked up so I may have a bar ready to bolt on prior to the lights arriving. :)
Thanks for all the updates Conrad. Whether we get 10 people or not, thanks for sharing all this. If you remember and it's not too much to ask, please snap a picture without the lights mounted too. Good luck!
 
#22 ·
Yes it definitely speeds up the prototype process. Wish I had a light bar on today, we are having an awesome blizzard right now (especially for the winter we've had). Still expecting the package this Friday. The plan is to have this built and wired up by the end of the month (this month is extremely busy for me right now).
 
#25 ·
Due to a new lower cost chip the Cree xt-e led is now only 3 dollars a device. I will spare you all a bunch of electrical neediness but if any one is intrested I could easily provide a parts list and a ton of links. I think for about 300 bucks one could do 10,000 lumens of 75+ cri 5000k neutral white light.
 
#26 ·
The future will be LED's without a doubt. Good to hear that there are lower cost versions coming out!

crazyypilot, they are Hella 500FF Fog and 500FF driving lights. Locally everyone wanted a bit over $100CAD for a pair and they had to order them in. I just ended up just ordering it through Amazon and it was $180CAD shipped to my door.

Fogs: Driving:
The cutoff of the fogs is really quite good and the driving light have a good center spot with a bit of peripheral scatter (kind of how a high beam would be on a car). This was just when I hooked them up to a power supply in my garage, shut the lights off and waved them around. Haha.

Also the center to center distance for each mounting hole is 8.281", so you could fit some seriously large lights. The only limiting factor will be the depth of the light housing itself, the Hella 500FF are quite shallow. I haven't determined the spacing of the back of the light to the bumper itself. Now that I have the lights I will double check it to my 3D model of the lights I sketched up and ensure they are 100% correct. Then tweak the model of the light bar after a few measurements of the Rav.
 
#28 ·
Here are the LEDs pre soldered to aluminum boards.
Cutter Electronics

Optics here - available in a lot of beam patterns to play with.
Cutter Electronics

Excellent high quality constant current electronics here :
Hyperboost Technical

And yes Cree is a US company and yes you really do have to source them from Australia to buy small quantities (less than 1000) of the latest and greatest.

Of special note is that these new silicon carbide bases LEDs are rated at a temperature of 85c so keeping them cool is not as much of a worry as it once was. If they run cooler than a scorching 85c they will make even more light and may last beyond 80,000 hours(as if your car will last beyond 80,000 hours). I usually like 40c - 55c as a design target.

With this set up you could run about 15 LED and optic but with a DC-DC step up voltage regulator to go from 12V to 48V 3A output current and the above constant current board you could run 25 of the above leds.

A housing is easy just glue the optics to the leds with something thats not super glue. Wire them in series. Then slide them into 3/4" OD x 1/8" thick square aluminum tubing. You should use a thermal epoxy like this
Arctic Silver, Inc. - Thermal Adhesives and Epoxies
or you can use thermally conductive double sided tape to stick down the LEDS to the aluminum housing and give good heat transfer.

You can easily add grooves for cooling by just ripping the tubing with an ordinary table saw. 6000 series aluminum is actually softer than some grades of wood. Each led will need a few inches worth of tubing for proper cooling. I would make the bar about 4' long. Just drill 10mm holes for the light to exit the box tubing. A 1/2" x 1/8" bar stock inside the box tubing may also be beneficial to move the optic closer to the opening and so you can wire every thing up and glue it all in place and then slide it in. Silicone adhesive like RTV is a good way to keep things water tight.
 
#30 ·
Ah I thought we were talking something like this: Vision X 12" Xmitter LED Light Bar!

LED lighting is still very expensive right now and if those light bars came down in the future I'd replace the Hellas in a hearbeat. However building your own LED setup would be tough to make things look clean, ensure that it is waterproof and also to have the beam pattern you want.
 
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