The Prado’s now 20-year-old lights are quite adequate for driving round cities, and even the darker suburbs, but I soon found their limits when off road, and more especially on unlit backroads.  I have tried a number of lighting options, but have now settled on the configuration of a LED lightbar and two standard halogen driving lights.

With a very wide spread and spot centre beam, the lightbar is absolutely brilliant on off-road tracks, with its very wide beam giving almost daylight visibility regardless of which direction the track is heading in. 

On this trip I found that on the more remote section of SH2 between Napier and Wairoa and on the backroads of the Wairarapa the light bar was excellent for giving me a sense of the surroundings, a benefit that slightly outweighed the irritation of reflection from the fairly limited number of roadside signs. 

However, although it has a better reach than my standard headlights, it is of little use on more major roads because it gives back dazzling glare from the reflective signs that seem to litter the side of the road, effectively blocking the longer distance view. 

Heading down the rural parts of SH2 I found that the halogen driving lights gave an excellent boost to the standard full beam, with the spot beam picking up the cat’s eyes and roadside markers, while the spread beam light gave some additional roadside vision without too much reflection from roadside signs. 

Unfortunately, nearer major centres with their proliferation of road signage I had to go back to just the standard vehicle lights to avoid dazzling signage glare. 

While I have often coveted the modern LED driving lights so popular in Australia, with their 800m+ lighting claims, in practice the design of these lights to also pick up any animal dangers off the side of the road means that these lights are likely to cause me the same problems as the light bar, making the halogen lights a better option at the moment.