Baja Designs LP6 Pro LED Auxiliary Light Pod for LR4

[Land Rover Joe]

Tribe,

Since there isn't anyone who has posted on the Forum about this, I thought I would would share my experience and thoughts about the Baja Designs [BD] LP6 Pro Auxiliary Light Pods (Universal) installation and performance.

Bottom Line Up Front: Attached here are a couple photos about the finished product and end result - not without its own drama.

I think they look great and are super powerful, lighting up the night for sure (certainly much better than the OEM Hella Aux light's which they replaced in my case).

The first photo is a daytime close-up (all lights off), the second is a nighttime close-up of the headlights on with DRL's (BD calls this mode "Backlit"), and the last photo is a nighttime of the headlights and brights on with the LP6 fully illuminated.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

In the beginning...

So when I bought the truck (2010 LR4), I bought nearly every accessory from the dealership, including the plastic "Protection Bar" (which couldn't really protect anything). They didn't have accessory lights so I bid my time and considered my options. In 2014, I decided to take the plunge with OEM AUX lights. I wasn't (and am still not) totally happy with the heavy front bumper options and those bumpers are not legal to drive in Europe (and perhaps some US states - I am unsure). So I put a heavy rear bumper on from Kaymar but largely kept the front end as i had modified it in 2010 - but with the addition of the headlights.

Here are a couple of photos of what the OEM Hella Aux lights looked like 2023-2024. Noteworthy is that they don't stay in the correct position, no longer properly seal (so water gets in and floods the lamps), and are starting to corrode from the inside-out (including in the reflectors).

I was never impressed with their power and after a few years (so around 2018 or so), the lights wouldn't stay put and just get rattled into some useless direction.

In the third photo, you can see the OEM light mount set up and how the lights are on a bracket to raise them over the "Protection Bar" (and get them another ~2 inches of height).

Again, the OEM Aux lights, which are probably now impossible to find, were really expensive and just not bright and very functional (to me). But I stuck with them for the last decade as I bought them and didn't feel like doing something new.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

So the first step in the lighting saga is simply to break everything down and order some new lights - which you can see here.

This job was really a small job within a massive LR4 rebuild project so the whole truck was getting ripped apart anyway. In case of the engine bay and front end (shown here) - we pulled the radiator and everything out as well as eventually pulled the engine itself out.

I decided on the LP6 because I wanted the best quality and the LP9's seemed too big for the truck (they would be bigger than the headlights). I have some photos of mock-up tests I did with paper to size things up if anyone is interested.

So I went ahead and called up Baja Designs in California. Their service team was great and "buy American" along with their design and build quality reputation (apparently they are used for nighttime rally racing...which I didn't even know what a thing and would certainly not recommend that to anyone...). I went for the "Pro" model because if you are going to go big, then you might as well go all the way. One thing about the Pro is that it has a "Backlit" option which connects into the Driving Lights (DRL). More on that later but that is a feature of that light if one is interested (I didn't really understand that when I bought them but when they came in and I was tinkering, became something I wanted to try out). Some other junk I bought with these were both clear and yellow plastic protectors / filters ("rock guards"), the locking nuts, and the full wiring harnesses (the "lock out" variant, which is naturally what the factory rep recommended).

For more information about the lights and all the neato technical specs (I am not a light guy but these are good), see

LP6 Pro LED Auxiliary Light Pod - Universal - Baja Designs - Off-Road LED & Laser Lights | Automotive, Jeep, Truck, UTV, ADV, Dirtbike

Baja Designs offers high performance LED lights and light bars for off road trucks, UTVs, and ATVs. Baja Designs is The Scientists of Lighting, contact us today for more info!

www.bajadesigns.com

For those on a budget: These are not the lights for you. They are very expensive. A number of YouTubers out there have rated these lights and whatnot and there are some imitations available around which seem to be pretty good, probably the closest looking / similar are those supplied by Harbor Freight. But for me - these were ultimately worth the expense and I feel that in this case, you get what you pay for.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

And there are two very basic but essential elements to installing Aux lights with the factory bumper & cabin set-up (vice an aftermarket heavy / steel bumper): 1) Brackets and Supports, 2) Electrical / wiring.

Here you can see what things looked like when we began the process of reinstalling everything. The OEM set came with these upright or vertical brackets / supports for the lights in order to bear the weight of the lights and match them onto the frame. These are really important because of my point #1 above: the plastic bumper or grill simply cannot handle the weight and rattling of these lights. In the second attachment below, I highlight these brackets in Red. The OEM set had these brackets which would mount onto the steel bumper (frame) and bolt on directly. This requires some drilling (steel bumper) and cutting (plastic bumper bits). Nothing major but work that needs to be measured and done right the first time. The last photo shows us trying to test out the position of everything when re-mounting (and where the OEM set had been drilled through the plastic bumper.

One thing about these OEM brackets worth mentioning is that they immediately rusted. We have stripped everything, used a rust converter, and repainted. Hopefully they will last better but all the steel on the front and back end suffer. What you see in the first two attachments are the cleaned up variations (versus the previous post which was what things looked like when we started breaking everything down).

I imagine the intrepid folks out there could simply fabricate their own upright / vertical brackets as they see fit based upon this relatively basic design.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

When fitting the lights (with their brackets) onto the OEM Aux steel uprights / brackets, which you can see here, there was simply not enough height and offset to properly get the lights over the protection bar. This would probably work well if one did not have the protection bar but in my case, we needed another ~2 inches of vertical lift to center the lights properly in the protection bar space.

I therefore came up with an idea to mill a piece of aluminum to provide the necessary height. We took some 1/2 inch tubular aluminum and put a hole through it as well as got a longer/larger bolt. That seemed to work but a disadvantage is that there is only one mounting point for the entire light assembly. No issues yet but it remains to be seen if one bolt is simply not enough - the BD bracket has three bolts on their light bracket / mount.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Here you can see what things looked like once we completed that phase of the install and had the pieces of aluminum installed (to match things we painted them satin black).

FYI - I am keeping the clear plastic protectors on (i.e. "Rock Guards") the lights because I like to protect things. You can clearly see the plastic protectors here in these shots.

The headlights, for example, have a 3M PPF applied (the old one was applied in 2010 and was pretty yellow and very hard when we took it off...but it definitely did their job and I am really happy with them - so we replaced them on this build).

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Here are a few close ups of the lights on their mounts and positioned on the truck.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Then came electrics. In my case, I already had the OEM wiring harness installed from the 2015 AUX light install. The OEM harness ties-into the existing electrical system through the high-beam lights. This is because, in Europe, one cannot have everything wired up on separate switches (to prevent folks from accidentally blinding others on the highway at night). So the OEM design has a separate switch that goes into the cabin and will turn the AUX lights ON when both that switch is ON and the High Beams are ON.

That switch goes to a little relay which is on the front of the battery box (seen in the second photo with the yellow) and runs wires down to the lights. We had to tie-in that relay to the BD lighting relays which we mounted behind and next to the battery box (first attachment). that wiring harness was run under the battery box and to the lights by way of under the radiator. The third photo shows the BD wiring harness (the shiny loom) running along the passenger side of the truck and around the headlight and down to the AUX lights.

One complicated thing about wiring this set up is that the Pro series has several different switch positions on its relay. There are lots of folks out there who have explained this on the internet and other forums so it is worth checking those out. In my case, I wanted only three positions: 1) All Off; 2) "Back Lights" (DRL) Only On; 3) All On. This required finding and tapping into the Headlight DRL wire and running a lead to the BD Relays to turn ON the back lights (#2). The existing OEM AUX light wiring harness was simply run as leads from the relay. The wiring loom from the relay/battery to the OEM AUX lights was boxed up for a rainy day while the existing wiring into the cabin and relay was retained. For those starting from scratch - you will have to tap into everything (or run an independent switch of your choice) as required based upon your own chosen application.

While I would rather have independent switches...I am going back to Europe so want to be compliant and don't want any trouble. So I am keeping things as they are with the OEM set up. That said...I don't want the cabin to look like the Millennium Falcon cockpit so I will someday need to work out how to best balance all the functions while retaining some of the more minimalist styling of the LR4. But that is for another day.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Here are a few daytime shots of the lights in action once completed.

The first was when I was playing with the different positions. That is half lights on - a feature I decided not to use (this is position 2 on the BD relays).

The second is a daytime shot with the daytime running lights on [LP6 "Backlit"] (the fourth is also the DRL but in action off roading).

The third photograph is with the headlights on, brights on and the full LP6 lights on (with the LP6 lights connected to the Brights).

 

[Land Rover Joe]

And the lights when it matters...at night.

First and second shots are with the headlights on at night (with DRLs and therefore the BD "backlit").

The second and third are the headlights on with brights on and therefore full LP6's on.

That's a lot of light!

I hope this is helpful for folks and has been a complicated project which I am really satisfied with now - hopefully these things will stay strong and continue to light up the night.

Safe driving to everyone!