Headlight Test and Shackles
Headlight Test
There is a head spinning amount of options on the market for LED headlights for all sorts of vehicles, and for LMTV there is no difference too. You can find headlights that will run in the neighborhood of $600/set and as inexpensive as about a 10th of that price too. With a price that cheap it was too tempting not to give them a try. So we hunted down a pair from the good ol’ Amazon, and after a short bit, and some electrical modification we had some new lights in. These are the lights that we chose to go with. I really liked that they had a turn signal built into the light.
You have a few options for adapting the headlamps to work on the military plus system. The easiest is to order an adapter, there are plenty out there and this is just one option that we found.
Or the other option is to cut and splice the military plug system onto the new lights wiring harness, this is the option that we went with and it worked out pretty well for us, a little multimeter magic here helps to get the high, low and ground wired correctly.
One other thing that we did to get these lights to fit completely right was change out the 3 mounting screws that hold the bezel in place with longer stainless steel bolts. This new light is slightly thicker, and the original screws were just a touch too short and hard to get engaged.
Low Beam with the turn signal on.
Low Beam with the day time running lights on.
Highs, wahoo!
Low Beams - nice even pattern
High Beams - note the 2 hot spots at the bottom of the pattern
Low Beam
High Beam
So far after having the headlights in for almost a week I am really pretty happy with them. They are worlds brighter than the stock headlights, and add a slightly cleaner look to the front end of the truck. Really the only complaint I have about them is that on high they have 2 really bright hot spots, one of them points low, and other points either far up the road, or high into the trees above. I still need to spend some more time aiming them to completely the right spot, so this hot spot complaint might go away. The low beam has an amazing bright and very even beam pattern, plenty of light to brighten up the road ahead and also a good amount of the side to light up the shoulders. Below are some photos of the lights and driving with them. The comparison photos were taken in manual mode on my camera, no settings changed other than switching from high beam to low beam.
Shackles
Perfect snug fit.
Last but not least on this post is shackles, and tow straps. It seems like many of these trucks that people purchase either Via Govplanet.com or from an individual don’t come with the shackles on the truck anymore. You can order shackles from many surplus website or the like, but they tend to be really expensive, in the range of 40-60 per shackle, and if you’re buying 4 of them, that adds up really fast. So naturally I started hunting for other options, and came up with a good one. Temco 1 1/8 D ring Shackles fit the mounts on Peanut perfectly, even with a little extra room for some 1 1/4 ID rubber fender washer picked up from the hardware store so that the shackles won’t rattle around on the mounts. The Measurements to pay attention to is the pin for the shackle can’t be larger in diameter that 1.25” and the spacing between the two sides of the shackle at the pin cannot be narrower than 1.77” otherwise they wont fit. Also keep in mind that the shackle should have a Working Load Limit or WLL of at least 9 tons. Another little helpful trip is a strong magnet between the shackle and bumper so that it doesn’t swing back and clank against the bumper, the magnet will help prevent it from swinging away. The Shackles mated with a 30’ x 30000lbs rated tow strap has us fully ready to pull just about anything.
- Brian
