Light bar vibration

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Cannett

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Hi. Bought a 2018 navara pickup and it has a light bar fitted just above the window on the roof bars.
Once I hit 60-70mph there is a loud vibration that travels through the roof. Could the light bar be the problem. Or has anyone else had a similar problem.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated before I remove the light bar.
 

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mate had a ladder rack with an extension that went forward over the roof. the wind would hit it and deflect down causing the the roof to sort of ripple and vibrate. we just cut it off, and all was quiet. a good bet that is whats happening to you!
 
Thanks.
mate had a ladder rack with an extension that went forward over the roof. the wind would hit it and deflect down causing the the roof to sort of ripple and vibrate. we just cut it off, and all was quiet. a good bet that is whats happening to you!
Thanks for the reply. I thought that would be the explanation. Probably just take the light off.
 
The light isn't legal for road use anyway. Remove it and save the hassle when plod decides they're bored and need to do something different.
Based on ‘pickup’ and ‘60-70mph’ I’d guess US vehicle. Light rules may apply differently, but yes, in Aus lights for road use cannot be above the leading edge of the bonnet (hood) afaik.
 
Based on ‘pickup’ and ‘60-70mph’ I’d guess US vehicle. Light rules may apply differently, but yes, in Aus lights for road use cannot be above the leading edge of the bonnet (hood) afaik.

I should have picked up on that myself, and the use of the "miles per hour" as well. Thanks for the "pick up" LMAO!!

Well I went to check up on the legal specifics and guess what I found ... in NSW we now have VSI64 which covers forward facing lamps, and they've specifically mentioned the height of the driving lamps as:

Height: not specified but the light emitted must not reflect off any of the vehicle’s surfaces into the driver’s eyes. Pairs of lights must be the same height.


So it turns out that my initial response was incorrect in light of this document - linked for anyone interested. We can now have lights on our roof!

What's more - read it - a light bar (containing an unspecified number of LEDs) is counted as ONE LIGHT. You're allowed 4 of them. 4 light bars each drawing 500 watts ...

Hope they start selling bigger alternators.
 
Height: not specified but the light emitted must not reflect off any of the vehicle’s surfaces into the driver’s eyes. Pairs of lights must be the same height.

So it turns out that my initial response was incorrect in light of this document - linked for anyone interested. We can now have lights on our roof!

That must be the doc I’ve seen before, or very similar. I recalled that you can’t put them in a position that could cause injury to a pedestrian (in front of the bull bar, above the bonnet line) which probably what in misinterpreted as nothing on the roof.

Interesting bit about DRL’s too. Seems they are supposed to turn off when the headlights come on. But I’ve seen quite a few modern cars where they seem to stay on.
 
Hi. Bought a 2018 navara pickup and it has a light bar fitted just above the window on the roof bars.
Once I hit 60-70mph there is a loud vibration that travels through the roof. Could the light bar be the problem. Or has anyone else had a similar problem.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated before I remove the light bar.
Could be the radio antenna as mine used to hit the roof if I was going to fast. Just lifted it a bit after leaving the garage for a decent trip
 
Are you sure about that 500 watts rating Tony? The reason I'm asking is that such a light bar would have a nominal current draw of nearly 36 amps at 14 volts, which would require an Anderson plug or similar, with cabling similarly sized, which I'm a bit sceptical about.

Mate that was a moderate light bar that people had been putting on their roof. Here is one example. If you want crazy try this one. 1260 watts ... that's your entire alternator output in ONE LIGHT. You need 0 gauge cable for it.

See, I don't understand why people put 1600W audio amps in their cars, with gold connectors and 0 gauge cabling. 1600W will consume the average Ford Falcon's 70Ah battery completely (assuming 100% charge, and they never are) in under 30 minutes. Ok, so Falcons have a 110Ah alternator, so if you can keep the revs up so the alternator is at peak production, you're only losing 20 amps per hour to the amplifier (and that's not accounting for ANY other electrics, including the rainbow dancing lights mounted under the car, or even the electrics required for running the motor itself (spark plugs don't spark from nothing and the ECU draws too). You get to drive around (at peak revs) for about 3 hours.

But if 1260W isn't enough, and 1600W isn't enough, that's ok. Here's a 2800W unit. Just in case.

But I wanna know where to buy a 300A alternator, because that's what I'd need to use just ONE of those light bars (233A for the light bar, and about 40A for everything else, including the caravan).

The world is crazy.

Now the wattage quoted might not actually be as high as stated - but when you're looking at this unit or that unit and how you might install it, those are the numbers you have to go by. And I'm not going there!
 
Mate that was a moderate light bar that people had been putting on their roof. Here is one example. If you want crazy try this one. 1260 watts ... that's your entire alternator output in ONE LIGHT. You need 0 gauge cable for it.

See, I don't understand why people put 1600W audio amps in their cars, with gold connectors and 0 gauge cabling. 1600W will consume the average Ford Falcon's 70Ah battery completely (assuming 100% charge, and they never are) in under 30 minutes. Ok, so Falcons have a 110Ah alternator, so if you can keep the revs up so the alternator is at peak production, you're only losing 20 amps per hour to the amplifier (and that's not accounting for ANY other electrics, including the rainbow dancing lights mounted under the car, or even the electrics required for running the motor itself (spark plugs don't spark from nothing and the ECU draws too). You get to drive around (at peak revs) for about 3 hours.

But if 1260W isn't enough, and 1600W isn't enough, that's ok. Here's a 2800W unit. Just in case.

But I wanna know where to buy a 300A alternator, because that's what I'd need to use just ONE of those light bars (233A for the light bar, and about 40A for everything else, including the caravan).

The world is crazy.

Now the wattage quoted might not actually be as high as stated - but when you're looking at this unit or that unit and how you might install it, those are the numbers you have to go by. And I'm not going there!
Sorry Tony, but I'm going to call politician level bullshit on those ratings. Like everything else in life, if it looks too good to be true it very likely isn't and, at the very least, needs closer examination.

Giving the examples even a cursory glance reveals they have insufficient cooling capability to deal with the heat they would generate at those power levels and, where that's shown, the supplied wiring would melt instantly if the required current was passed through it. I strongly suspect they're doing what audio amplifier manufacturers have been doing for a very long time; just pull some ludicrous figure out of their arse (the so-called "music power"), only vastly more exaggerated. Incidentally, amplifier output in anything other than watts RMS is complete nonsense.

Let's take a closer look at that "2800w" bar, because it's a particularly easy one to use as an example and where even the price should immediately raise an alarm about the claims. Take a look at the supplied wiring kit. Seriously, can anyone imagine using such thin wire to carry 200 amps? Does the fuse holder look large enough to house a 200+ amp fuse? No. The picture shows it's supplied with a 30 amp fuse (green) and that gives it a maximum rating of 420 watts, based on a nominal 14 volts. The same again for the relay, which shows a 40 amp rating right there on its cover. So where did that figure of 2800 watts come from?

What it boils down to is that the only way such ratings could possibly be real would be in an alternative universe, with completely different physics, and where our reality simply doesn't apply.
 
Sorry Tony, but I'm going to call politician level bullshit on those ratings. Like everything else in life, if it looks too good to be true it very likely isn't and, at the very least, needs closer examination.

(snip)

What it boils down to is that the only way such ratings could possibly be real would be in an alternative universe, with completely different physics, and where our reality simply doesn't apply.

I agree - no argument, it's often sellers who have no idea even how to write our numbers (I've seen lights advertised as "over 1000,0000 lumens" or they're just pure exaggeration - one of the lights I looked at had "38,800 lumens" listed in the specs, but was advertised as 388000 lumens. Add a zero and hope for the best? Do that with my income please!

Most of them seem fairly cagey about specifying the amps used. However, if I'm shopping for one of these, I'm going to look for one within the capacity of my system - which is down in the (actual) 100 to 200 watt mark (8 to 16 amps). I can't seriously look at a 2800W unit and calculate the amps and even hope that I'd want to use it. You're spot on about the heat and cabling required too, but I've often found even auto-electrician supplied cabling to be inadequate.

So ordinarily, I'll not even look at things like a "50 inch light bar" anyway, because traditionally they've had a LOT of 3W LEDs fitted. One was a 4-row with 40 LEDs per row, so that's what, 160 LEDs at 3W each = 480 real watts. Usually they're 3-row, and now 5W per CREE, so that's a mere 600W.

That's doable - if you wanted - 50 amps though, so you'd want at least 4Ga cable if not higher. And I wouldn't want it on my roof - that's the sort of thing you'd want as close to the battery/alternator as possible.
 
I forgot to pick on the wire supplied with the "2800w" light bar. I wouldn't use that size for more than 5 amps, let alone anything that justifies a 30 amp fuse. ;) My light bar, rated 10.4 amps at 14.4 volts, came with a "free" cabling kit, so I kept the relay and threw the rest in the bin. Instead, I popped over to Jaycar and grabbed enough of this cable for the job on hand, plus a bit to keep in my spare cable tub. It also happens to be an excellent size for pins in the Deutsch connector to match that used on the light bar and which I use extensively these days.
 

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