ARB Solis Light Install With An SPOD - UPDATE
We made a recent addition to the front of our Jeep; a pair of ARB Solis Lights. Rather, I made the decision, as Kym felt we already had enough light; we’ve been running our Baja Designs light bar for years and are very happy with it, which has never failed us once. However, I wanted to add a set of spotlights set low on the front bumper to partner with the roof rack-mounted light bar to amplify our lighting capabilities. We often travel in remote, rough conditions at night and can never have enough light. Why go with ARB? We are long-time ARB fans and run a lot of their gear, from our front bumper to our OME BP-51 shocks and dual compressor. We have been checking out the Solis’s for months and finally pulled the trigger when OK4WD gave us a great deal on them at Overland Expo East.
One of the aspects that initially drew us to the ARB Solis is the value. We will only use quality products as we depend on them to get us home safely. As we already had the Baja Design’s light bar in place and we were looking to augment it, we weren’t necessarily looking to break the bank. With their lighting, ARB seems to be looking to fill the mid-priced quality light segment of the market. As a comparison, Baja Designs LP6s is currently running $474.95 on the Baja Designs site for one light and no wiring harness. We paid less than this price for the pair with included wiring harness. After some research, I did find some similar products from both KC and Lightforce that had similar price points to the Solis.
The ARB Solis lights come in 7” and 9” variants. We went with the 7’s and feel they look right sitting on the ARB Stubby Bumper. They come in both flood and spot-beam patterns. Often people will go with one of each, but we chose to put on two spots to partner with the flood-type pattern that we get from the Baja Designs light bar.
Lighting is important to us. We often have long travel days and get into camp after dark. While there is often limited traffic on remote roads, it doesn’t mean that you are the only one on the road. In the dark, obstacles, and wildlife can appear quickly. We depend on our lights to safely get us to camp and back home. Our JW Speaker LED Headlights and Baja Designs light bar have treated us well, but as the saying goes, you can never have too much light.
The Solis lights are a new release and have been redesigned from the ground up after years of in-house development with ARB’s lighting partner OSRAM. This new version upgraded the number of included LEDs from 32 to 36 and provided a variety of other improvements and innovations.
Product Specs:
2 - 36 Osram LEDs. (6 X10w & 30 X 4w)
Raw Lumens 18,178LM.
Effective Lumens 9,546LM Spot, 8,333LM Flood.
Color Temperature: 5700 Kelvin.
Distance @ 1Lux –3386ftSpot, 729m Flood (Single light).
6° full beam width Spot.
11° full beam width Flood.
50,000+ Hour LED life span.
Operating Temperature -40°C to +65°C, -40°F to +149°F.
Input voltage 10-30V DC.
Power draw 165W.
Current draw 12.4 Amps @ 13.2V.
The packaging is top-notch, and the product comes well protected. The box includes everything you need to complete the installation, including a wiring harness, mounting hardware, and red and black bezels for your specific color choice. Our product arrived in perfect condition.
The first impression that you get when you pick up the light is that it is solid and feels well-made. The fit and finish are top-notch. The attached wiring pigtails utilize Deutsch connectors, which are solid and weather resistant.
The ARB Solis lights are a beast, and feel solid and well built. The fit and finish is also top notch
The entire rear of the light is made of solid metal fins meant for heat dissipation, which the Solis lights are known to do well. Intelligent active-thermal management for the Osram LED driving light is also incorporated into the lights and has been optimized by ARB’s designers. The mounting brackets are rock solid, and mount the lights securely to your vehicle. The included bracket lowers the light’s mounting position compared to previous ARB driving lights to limit light bounce on any terrain you can find. The lower position also allows for more mounting positions and fits more aftermarket bumpers. From a construction and packaging perspective, the lights are very impressive.
One of the unique features of the Solis lights is that they are dimmable and offer adjustable light intensity. The included wiring harness includes a dimmer switch with five intensity levels.
The included wiring harness includes a control panel to operate and dim the Solis lights
While intriguing, I already have this capability with my sPOD BantamX. This, combined with the included wiring harness, offered the only aspect of the product that I didn’t like. While I appreciate the high-quality wiring harness included with the kit, I only wanted a way to connect the lights to my sPOD. The wiring harness is complex and looks to tie into your existing high beam wiring harness and access to power and ground. This complexity makes it impossible to utilize the wiring harness to tie into an existing switching panel. The Deutsche connector has four wires, which is not as straightforward as wiring the wires directly.
I called ARB USA to see what they said, and at least from the person I spoke to, you had to use the included wiring harness for the lights to work properly as they have a lot of functionality built in. I couldn’t imagine that to be the case. Next, I called OK4WD to see what they had to say. While understanding, they didn’t know how to customize the harness to get it to work. Finally, I called sPOD, and they couldn’t see why I couldn’t bypass the harness and wire them directly as the sPOD provides all of the abilities that they tout the wiring harness to have.
I found this entire experience to be frustrating and a complete waste of time. How can ARB not expect their customers to utilize their own switching product, whether sPOD, Switch Pros, or Redarc? When I called, it was like they didn’t even know what I was talking about. I did my research online and only ran into customers with similar problems who hadn’t found a solution. ARB does now offer a wiring patch to integrate Solis with their ARB Lynx system. They should expect their customers to use other competing products as well.
So I just jumped in and decided to cut the harness as it seemed to be the only option. What is the worst that can happen? I have to buy a new one? First, I mounted the lights on the bumper, used the existing harness to run the wires from the lights as close to the sPOD as possible, and cut away the rest of the harness.
This is what was left of the harness after I cut the leads to the lights from the main harness
Since I plan to use the lights combined and never separately, I next merged the two sets of leads into one. That left me with a set of red, black, yellow, and green wires. I bought similar color wiring from a local auto parts store for continuity and ran a wire for each all the way to the sPOD, soldering the wires and protecting them with heat shrink.
Next step was to merge the two leads into one to integrate them in the sPOD
Lastly I capped the wires with fork shaped U-Type wire connectors.
All wires were properly soldered, heat shrunk, and capped with forked u-connecters for mounting
Now came the challenging part. The sPOD has a positive and negative post per switch, and I have four wires. I figured that I could safely assume that red is power and black is ground, but what about green and yellow? I couldn’t find anything in the ARB documentation or online, so I was left with what I do best and guessed.
The final wiring configuration that I used to wire the ARB Solis lights to my sPOD
Through trial and error, I finally figured out the combination that worked. I was wrong with my first few guesses so for anyone wanting the cheat codes, they are red and green combined on positive and yellow and black combined on negative. I also heard from a follower of our blog that they found another solution from an ARB shop:
Black - ground
Red - battery positive
Green - Spod/Switchpro
Yellow - leave disconnected
I have not tried this myself but believe that it should work as well. I have been using the first method mentioned above for over ten months now without issue.
The final install is clean and well protected
Once combined, I wrapped the remaining wires in a wire loom and routed it around the airbox. Install complete.
Performance
According to ARB Intensity Solis lights throw light farther down the road than can be seen with the naked eye. A single ARB Intensity Solis Spot provides 3386ft, a 30% increase in light performance over the current ARB Intensity specifications. The single ARB Intensity Solis Flood provides 729m of light performance with up to a 131ft spread on each side of the vehicle. Light color has been updated (made warmer) to reduce eye strain over long driving periods improving driver comfort and reducing fatigue.
Light is thrown 4797ft in a dual spot configuration like what we are running. The ARB Intensity Solis optics were designed in-house by ARB engineers to optimize for light quality. ARB engineers refined the optic to capture the most light, removing flat spots on the optic face, controlling the beam, reducing stray light, and maximizing the potential of each LED.
Just the JW Speaker High Beams
JW Speaker High Beams Plus Baja Designs Light Bar, and ARB Solis Lights. The final addition of the Solis Spotlights provides even further light distance up the middle, as the lights are mounted close together on the front bumper. In the picture above, you can see the tree right in the middle of the end of the road, now fully lit.
Together the Baja Designs and ARB lights provide an impressive amount of light. As we had hoped, with the combination of them, we get the best of both worlds, significant width with the light bar and even further depth of light with the Spots. We are very happy so far.
We have been using these lights now for over ten months and so far we couldn’t be happier. We have now utilized them multiple times, and the performance has been superb, as expected. We can travel in remote, rough conditions as easily if we attempted it in the full light of day. The distance that the ARBs achieve is unbelievable, and you often don’t realize how far they reach until you light up a distant mountain or tree. Combined with the Baja Designs light bar we are able to deliver the perfect combination of wide and far.
We have used these in various conditions, from snow to rain and heavy levels of dust. All without failure. We couldn’t be happier and can’t recommend them enough.
