The problem is so bad there is a guy who is making a small business out of fabricating and selling custom visors for light bars: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/roof-mounted-led-light-bar-glare-solved.377416/
Some people even paint their hoods black.
I plan to add a low voltage cutoff to turn it off before the car is unstartable. I could add PWM dimming based on temperature, but it has enough heat dissipation to operate at 100% even in the worst case scenario (100F) weather, so I probably won’t bother. Maybe the next version.
Most definitely. It seems to run much cooler than my prototype tests on the kitchen floor. It was on for a couple of hours in ~90F when I took those night shots and I was surprised that it barely got warm to the touch. I’m going to borrow a large battery charger and test it on the car inside the garage so there’s no air movement and up the current as much as heat will allow. I’ll rerun the power with at least 10ga too.
So far so good. I saw Gore vents mentioned on somebody’s website, read Gore’s paper on the root cause of condensation, and bought one on eBay for the heck of it. Maybe it works, maybe it’s a placebo.
I picked the XP-G3 for the most lumens per watt, with the desired beam pattern with a 20mm Carclo lens. I spent a lot of time on Carclo’s website comparing beam patterns and LEDs. The XM-L2 is too fat. The XP-L HI is too expensive.
No, it draws about 25A, so probably no more than the rear window defroster.
You can definitely hear the idle change when switching it on an off, but that’s it.