Updating & Upgrading the Emergency Vehicle Lights
Can you really ever have enough lights on your vehicle? Of course the answer is yes, but how do you know when you’ve reached the top of the mountain? Big vehicles call for big lights. While it’s true that LED’s continue getting smaller and brighter as the technology behind them advances, size does matter. When you look at a typical police car or SUV, the size and shape of the vehicle dictate that lights must be small to fit in the grille, around the license plate or inside the vehicle. Rarely do police departments want to drill holes into the bodies of their vehicles because doing so greatly reduces the trade in / resale value of the vehicle. Whereas larger emergency vehicles such as fire trucks, ambulances and even large wreckers will almost always have much larger lights affixed to the sheet metal. These vehicles do not normally end up in the consumer aftermarket and they have a large amount of surface area to protect. This is the primary reason you will not find small grille lights around the perimeter of a fire truck, nor will you find large lightheads the size of a small tablet on a police car.
When Project Responder was first conceived, the prevailing technology in warning lights at the time was halogen and strobe. LED’s had just started being introduced and were just beginning to be adopted. I originally chose to go with strobes around the perimeter because they are very bright, have a sharp pop and draw substantially less power than halogen lights. The lightbar back then was still halogen. Over the years as LED technology improved and prices dropped, I replaced the Tomar strobe light heads with Tomar LED lightheads. They were direct replacements requiring no modification to the truck other than removing the strobe power supplies. For many years, this was a satisfactory solution. Now, here we are, twenty years after the project began. Just like computers, LED technology is increasing exponentially. Sizes and shapes of LED warning lights have evolved and become more specialized. All of this was taken into consideration when Part II was undertaken in earnest.
The options available now are almost endless. Sometimes it’s challenging to figure out what to do because there are so many ways in which to add warning lights to a vehicle today. Small, large, horizontal, vertical and combinations thereof. Warning lights with scene lights. Scene lights with puddle lights. Sequentially flashing lights. It can almost be overwhelming. I decided to keep it relatively simple but very functional. I also wanted to showcase several different styles of lights as well since this is a show vehicle. One thing I tell my business clients is that whatever you buy now in the way of warning lights, they won’t be obsolete in six months, but there will most likely be something new on the market in the next year that you’ll wish you could have had when you were upfitting your vehicle originally. Fortunately for me, I have the ability to keep up to date, within reason. For example, I started Part II in 2017. In the two years which ensued, Whelen Engineering released a new series of lights branded “SurfaceMax™”. They have an entirely new method of mounting and light reflection from anything which they previously produced. The C7TC, a newer cutting edge design of their sequentially lighted turn signal was released and immediately I had to have a set for my truck. So the 6″ oval stop/turn/tail lights which were installed four years prior were removed and replaced with these new lights.
Several other changes were made as well as lightheads were swapped, replaced and upgraded. The large 9″x7″ scene lights in the rear were replaced the same size light heads which have warning and scene lighting in one. Dual head TIR LED lights were replaced with single color linear models. The old rectangular lights were replaced with more modern curved models. This is just the start. I still have a few months to finish up the complete lighting system. But for now it is taking shape very nicely.