Where is the Troy of lighting?

LEDs come in many shapes sizes colors and brightnesses. they are typically the lowest draw, and will work best with your weakest alternators and batteries.

HIDs pull a crap ton of current to light, but are reasonable power sucks after they kick (they are the automotive equivalent of the fluorescent lights in your shop)

halogen and other "standard" bulbs draw the most current on average, but are the easiest to find at 3am in deepest darkest texas.

LEDs have few, if any, automotive plug and play housings for headlamps (lots of marker and taillamps, tho)
HIDs really need to be set in an HID housing. retro fitting HID bulbs in reflectors meant for Halogens typically results in horrendous scatter and glare
halogens are made for cars. every running light, driving light, fog light, and spot light on the aftermarket uses them.

there are always trade offs, but aiming is probably most important, followed by dispersion. wide throw lights are better than narrow focus lights, mounting lights low and aiming them flat is better than mounting them high and aiming them down (especially for glare).

Thanks for all the info folks.  So, who's got the recommendation for which bolt on, standalone kit I should be looking at?  Should I be looking at something like this:

http://www.quadratec.com/products/97050_0017_07.htm

bs

Hint

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Thanks All for the responses!  I will look forward to the instructions, $175 for 4 seems better than $250 for 2!

Thx,

bs

We had good lighting last weekend on our car, and I dont mind sharing how we did it.

we used these lights:

http://yellowandbluelighting.com/cleara … 27027.html

4 of them. Each housing has 3 bulbs in them. One is a tiny peanut bulb that we never hooked up. The other two are H3 and h7. H3 was the spot style light that went farther distance with a sharper beam, and the other is a wide and down fog style light. As a backup plan, we alternated putting the chinese HID kits between the 4, so we had a pair of halogen spots and a pair of HID, and same with the fogs. If they were too glary, or we needed more light, we could turn on the halogens.

our miata has a 60amp (i think) alternator on it, and it ran the two pair of hid's all night without issue. And those square hella's are $43 a pair, and found a guy locally selling the hid kits for $30 each.

I can sympathize with the night-vision problems. I couldn't see well at Nelson Ledges so... um... maybe I overcompensated for our night races since then. Happy with the results, though:

(picture by Ronman, one of many good ones)

Ingredients: Toyota Tundra light bar from Craigslist, including 4 lights. You'll probably be able to find a similar opportunity. For our 944 we just used square tube.
2 more Hella 500's where the headlights once were -- dirt cheap from Amazon. Durable enough for Lemons but you wouldn't do Baja with them.
Junkyard fog lights from another Neon at 45-degree angles outward as apex lights. Cheap chunks of aluminum to get them onto the bar too.

With an 85-amp alternator you shouldn't need to worry much about efficiency (the pictured setup draws 34.5 amps). Wire them all through a few relays so the juice isn't making long trips through 25-year-old Alfa wiring, including a good ground wire.
Aim them all carefully-- that's the most important part! Schedule yourself at least 30 minutes for the aiming so you can aim, drive a circle around the paddock, and repeat.
I like to stagger the angles (vertical and horizontal) of the pairs of lights to get a good spread of light down the track and out toward the apexes.

Just wanted to say thanks to all for all of the input and suggestions.  I've decided to do what any irresponsible team captain would do - assign the task to a team member.

I've pointed him at this thread.  I'll let y'all know what he comes up with.  If we blind everybody at Buttonwillow, or drive off the track in a non-illuminated blaze of glory, you'll know he didn't make the right choices.

bs

Don't over think it or kill your altenator.  Stock headlights, plus a pair of Hella 500's pointed down the track, plus a pair of Hella FF 75's pointed at the apex's worked like a champ for us.  Put them on separate switches and you can turn off the 500's when approaching slower traffic.  You can turn them on again a lap later to remind them you are still there :-)

They should force everybody to mount all the lighting ON the front bumper.  That would be more effective than the bumper of damoclese!

bs