Favorite under-car, under-hood worklight?

I agree, the various headlamp types can be very handy. Especially now with the better broad spectrum led bulbs and LIPO batteries. Their weight and size is rapidly becoming vanishingly small.

That's what I like about the cap version. It feels like, well... a baseball cap... so it feels natural on my head. I forget it's there. Simple to keep on your head when you need to venture out to the store. Few people ever even notice the LEDs.

I kept meaning to ask you about it, but kept forgetting. I assume that swollen spot on the bill on the left side is the on/off switch? If I were a hat wearer, I'd have been seriously interested in it.

foxtrapper wrote: Ok... Though I don't see how you could burn your head or set carpet on fire with one. Are we talking about the same thing? I'm talking about one of these:

I have one of these with an LED screw-in bulb.. It's awesome! I had CFLs in it before, they held up better than the incandescences, but the LED is the ticket.

I have a headlight that I use a lot but I need to get a better one like some shown in this thread. I also have a bunch of those lights that bigdaddylee doesn't like. I got mine on sale at Lowe's for $1.50 each and they seem to work very well. The hook and magnet are nice but I usually just lay a couple on the floor under the car and have plenty of light.

Perhaps not the intent of the thread, but whenever I'm in a junkyard I look under the hood of 80s & 90s Chevy pickups for this option.

Little light with a mag base on an 8ft. retractable spool.

On a country road with a flat tire, it's a beacon!

LED Headlight

I use one of these at work, not cheap but it works better than any of the LED with 3 AAA battery powered ones I have at home.

foxtrapper wrote:

Datsun310Guy wrote:

foxtrapper wrote: I still keep going back to my old incadescent bulbed trouble light. It throws more light, in a more usefull spectrum, than any other light I've used.

that was my favorite too - burned my forehead a bunch, melted carpet once, and the final was when room temp coolant spilled and blew it up. Then I decided to stop using that light.

Ok... Though I don't see how you could burn your head or set carpet on fire with one.

If you are under a cramped car and you can't see you get your head close and sometimes touch the metal base which gets hot.

I never started a fire - I left it lay on my sisters 1977 Toyota Corolla and after a while the metal got hot enough to melt a 2" diameter into her carpet. She was pissed.

foxtrapper wrote: I kept meaning to ask you about it, but kept forgetting. I assume that swollen spot on the bill on the left side is the on/off switch? If I were a hat wearer, I'd have been seriously interested in it.

Yep. That's the switch. There's one LED dead center on the edge of the bill that points forward and two in the middle of the underside of the bill that point down more. The switch goes 'forward' 'under' 'both' off. I got it at Lowes on a whim and I've been amazed at how useful it is. Unlike the head lights that often take a bit of fiddling each time you put them on to aim, the cap is instant. I had it with me because I was camping Sat night.

I like to have enough light as I can possibly get. In my garage I have a bunch of track lights that I can aim under the hood when I am working and in addition use a mix of an Energizer head lamp, a craftsman LED cordless, one of those freebie HF LED lights, and a HF corded florescent. I've thought about trying an LED rope/strip light too.

I have this day-dream of embedding LED strip lights into the floor under/around my lift. The tricky part is by Code, and electrical device permently mounted below 18" above the floor in a garage needs to be Class I, Division 1 rated and that gets expensive really fast.

In reply to Ian F:

Why permanently mount them?

I'm pretty sure everyone on this board who owns a garage or shop has existing code violations. Cest la vie.