Well, I had a bunch of wiring repair to do on my 580CK Backhoe, the headlight switch fell apart and there were a lot of little wiring difficulties. After getting a new switch from Tractor Supply and getting it in, running a new wire to the front for the headlights and doing a little degreasing. Duckworks and my local Milfordpower.com both sell a par 36 housing that takes an H3 bulb. The best conversion kits seem to come from Xenonempire.com as far as reliability biased on cost. The lamp housings were $13 each and the kit was $60 for two ballasts and H3 converted S1 bulbs. So under $100 I mounted the ballasts right behind the eagle with two long bolts, a thick piece of silicone sheet covers up the eagle mounts and gives a little cushion, the two bolts run through an aluminum strap to hold the ballasts snug. Each ballast has an 18" wire that leads to the bulb and a 20 some inch 12v harness. Looking from the bottom up well the results over the typical 4411 bulbs is pretty startling Tractor seat view, just a 1/10th second exposure, no flash, trees quite plainly defined to 200 feet out. View from off to the side a bit, the conversion doesn't put the light out as neatly as the sealed beam, it goes everyplace but there is a lot more of it. http://www.tiger-mtn.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=804&g2_serialNumber=2 Overall, if you have older equipment, I'd suggest this for any serious night operations.
Another reason I went with xenon is that they only draw 35 watts each versus the 50-100 for the super bright halogen sealed beam lamps.
Very nice, I put HID's on me bike love them!
Cool!
Very nice! Thanks for posting, I am just about to put some new lights on my Case 580K, and I think HID will make a better choice by the looks of it.
Its a little bit of a trick finding the par36-H3 housings, but they're around and mostly from india.
Thanks for the thread and pictures. Just bought the oldest 580 CK, and the roughest one, in captivity. Even the holes for the non-existent light are rusted through. I'm sure your post will come in handy when I get to that point. Thanks again, packratc
I suppose I was lucky mine was only parking lot service. The holes are good as are the metal rings that the rubber retainer slides onto It does make working at night a bunch better and I feel better working near the street when you look like a space ship. I have one of the rubber mounted floodlights on the control tower and added a guarded Hella Ultrabeam lamp on the dipper aimed down right at the bucket. Great for night time work.