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Jon Schmidt, Team Engineer, Driver, and Co-Driver for Synergy Off-road Racing in Southern California
Over the last few seasons, we have used just about every high-end off-road racing light that is available. My primary complaints have always been that either they do not produce enough light, that they are very hard to mount and aim, that the beams are not consistent from one light to the next, and that the high frequency vibration of the bulbs causes a lot of fatigue during the race. Naturally, some lights are better than others with varying combinations and degrees of these problems and often times all of these problems exist in a given light design. Disappointed with what we had been using, I decided to switch over to the Rigid Industries E Series LED lights. After installation, I was very surprised that none of these previous problems existed in the Rigid Industries designs. We won the 2007 Baja 1000 and overall championship in no small part to the Rigid Industries lights. We ran 2 40” pencil beams on top of the truck and a couple floods and pencils up front and they gave us plenty of light, not only down the course, but closer to the truck as well which really helped with cornering at night. Fabrication of the light bar and front mounts was very simple and straight forward. Setup and alignment are so simple because you are aiming all of the lights within one 40 or 50” bar all at the same time, not individually. I had the lights aimed and locked-down in 10 minutes and they never moved or required readjusting from that point on. Our first hours with these lights proved that there was no fatiguing vibration at all which was unexpectedly beneficial, you don’t realize how much fatigue the vibration causes until it is gone. It is like your eyes and brain breathe a huge sigh of relief. The other unexpected benefit was that the individual beams and their inconsistencies were completely eliminated. In fact, you can not see individual beams at all, it is like the light is being thrown out onto the course in a big, wide sheet and does so without bright and dark spots out in front of the truck. These lights are so easy to use, they work great, are very rugged and reliable, and are maintenance free. They make the logistics of dealing with lights much less of a hassle and make it a pleasure to race at night!
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