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I am moving into a Townhouse and it has one wimpy garage ceiling light. I am thinking of getting one of these units and was wondering if it would help showing defects on the horizontal panels of my black car?
https://www.google.com/search?q=as+s...obile&ie=UTF-8
bcgreen -Quote:
Originally Posted by bcgreen
Hope you guys are still all safe and good up there..
In my experiences with lighting and working on the sides of vehicles, nothing will ever work as good as having lights horizontally on the walls or on stands to really see what you are doing.. Especially on black/dark vehicles that absorb the light and do not reflect it as well as brightly colored vehicles..
Yes, there is some light that comes down from the ceiling, but it will never be able to illuminate the sides like having lights behind you from the sides..
One lame ceiling light of course will never be enough for much out there, for sure..
This is why I have 18 - 4-ft.long, 2-tube shop lights in the ceiling of my 2.5 car garage, and some nice ScanGrip lights on rolling stands to see the sides of vehicles correctly..
Dan F
For quick, easy, and something you can move around if needed, I`ve found the Barrina LED T5 lights to be fantastic. I just daisy chain them and run them around the car while I`m working on it.
In may 2-car garage when we moved in there were simply 2 regular single build lights in the ceiling.
I went and pulled the smaller receptacle out and re-wired each of them with a double plug outlet.
This allowed me to now run 4 - 4` tube lights.
I think you could do something similar with the newer cheap LED lights and have better lights coverage.
I WAS thinking of getting one or two of these to replace some 100W incandescent light bulbs in my own garage, but not for detailing purposes but for general illumination. I also know that they make "stacked" LED lights that put out 5,000 to 10,000 lumens of bright white light that fit into a traditional light bulb socket fixture and take 15W to 25W of electrical power, depending on the brightness and number of lights in the "stack". Those, too, have come down in price.. The winged LED light that you referenced may be better suited to your needs for general illumination because you can "point" one of the wings in the direction of an area that needs such lighting, especially if you only have one light socket in your garage.
I agree with Stokdgs that you need some type of LED lighting that is perpendicularly-sourced or pointed at the horizontal surfaces of a vehicle.
Even less-expensive (AKA cheap) LED work-light that can be adjusted in its intensity (AKA, brightness) is a good start for "seeing" swirls, flaws, etching, scratches, waterspots, etc (AKA imperfections) in the clear coat/paint. What those LED work lights REALLY show is how much correction is required to perfect a surface and what looks good in "regular" light is quite bad when illuminated by a LED work light moved to various angles. Quite frankly, it also "magnifies" how well your buffing machine works and your detailing skills concerning pad choice and compound or polish used. It is almost to the point of being frustrating. It is also the reason professional detailers have multiple manufacturer`s compounds and pad types to try to obtain a "perfectly corrected" finish, and yes, sometimes it is trial-and-error experimentation. Having information from the experiences of professional detailers in this forum on what works for a particular vehicle`s clear coat and color is a big help, and yes , there can be differences within the same vehicle if it has been painted by body shop, but maybe with a different clear coat and paint than the OEM finish.
This is more-than-you-really-wanted-to-know, BUT sometimes an improvement or addition in detailing equipment may mean you need to also improve your detailing methods or get additional training to acquire new detailing skills.
I went up to Ohio a couple months back to help my buddy rewire a `65 Falcon. It was the only car in a 3 car garage during this time and they replaced one of the ceiling lights with one of those while I was there. I`ll agree with the others that it provides a lot of general illumination but for detailing you`ll need some type of lighting that is directed at the horizontal surfaces.