Can you imagine what it’s like to watch a 6,000 to 7,000 pound truck race in excess of 100 miles per hour across the desert floor? Since 1994, this concept has had an official place in the most popular desert racing series. Often referred to as Trophy Trucks, or Trick Trucks, these vehicles are a far cry from the average pick up truck you may pass on the street, or even while cruising on a dirt road. These trucks are built with long travel suspensions, high powered engines, communications equipment, and tons of off road lights. Lighting, including large light bars, grille bars, chase lights, dust lights, pod lights and spots are common on these trucks, as much of the racing takes place after sundown. And, of course, these trucks need an Off Road Light Switch Panel, which is where the Switch-Pros SP9100 and RCR-Force®12 systems come into play.
Smart Touch Switch Panel
As a leader in the Off Road Truck Light System space, Switch-Pros has been catapulted into the sport of off road truck racing. Given that our smart touch switch panel systems were already proven to be a high quality and bullet-proof solution for power distribution for off road lights on other vehicle platforms, it was a seamless transition into this market space, as well.
Not only do our systems feature a smart touch switch panel (meaning that the switches are actually the brains of the system, and they send messages to the power distribution block), but they are robust with capabilities far beyond a simple On/Off toggle type function. What does that mean? Well, that means that you can press a switch, to turn on an off road light bar, or you can press that same switch and activate an alternate pattern. So, not only can you press one of our membrane style switches and activate your light bar to a steady on pattern, you can also program it to have a beacon flash, constant strobe or bursting strobe behavior. The added bonus is that these functions are all built into our power module, and no additional specialty equipment is necessary to make the fancy functions happen.
Another function that is essential to the off road truck racing community is the ability to press a momentary switch for the siren. Why is this necessary? Because trucks, flying across the desert at unfathomable speeds, need to warn others that they are rapidly approaching and need their competitors to get the heck out of the way, or be subject to a less than gentle nudge.
Just like other classes of racing, the big boy trucks have the same rules about dust lights, also know as rear amber lights. That rule says that the rear facing light MUST come on when the ignition is keyed and it cannot be turned off, manually, for the remainder of the race. Switch-Pros has created programming, which is set up in our smart phone app, to say that once the circuit is activated by the ignition source, that switch cannot be turned off for the duration of the race. That means that it will never power off, during a race, even if the driver or codriver accidentally hits the switch on the smart touch panel.
Best Off Road Truck Light Systems
What else sets us apart from other off road truck light systems? How about the number and types of circuits our RCR-Force®12 system offers? Let’s break down the configuration of that system, specifically. This system has 12 physical switches, with 17 circuits. Why do we offer this? Well, because up to 5 of those switches can be multi-function, meaning they can work like an On/On/Off switch, powering either two different accessories, or two different settings of a particular lighting accessory. Take, for example, a Rigid Industries 360 Series light, which has a colored background and white foreground lighting. Instead of taking up two separate switches for this light, you can wire up the colored background power lead to one of our output wires, and the white lighting power lead to another of our output wires. Then, by assigning both output circuits to one switch, you can “toggle” that switch through the series of colored, white and off positions. What’s even more intriguing is that you can use our app to tell the system if you want the colored background light to stay on, or turn off, when you toggle to the white foreground lighting setting. That logic is all done through our app, in the screen dedicated to that capability.
Off Road Lighting Switch Panel System
So which of the Switch-Pros systems is best? It entirely depends on the application. Here’s a simple breakdown: If you’re looking for a simple off road lighting switch panel system, and plan to power LED light bars, pods, and lockers, and you have lesser amperage you need to support, then the Switch Pros SP9100 is the ideal system for you. It is less costly, because it has fewer outputs, a smaller harness, and a lower amperage threshold, at 125amps. If you’re looking for a more robust, higher amperage threshold, with additional circuits and the ability to power fuel pumps, cooling fans, and other high in-rush accessories, then the RCR-Force®12 system is the way to go. The design is more sophisticated and is aimed at the drivers who are powering more than the average number of off road lower amperage accessories.
We pride ourselves in providing expert technical support, even before you purchase. Please feel free to phone our staff at 949-581-2991 to discuss your build plan. We can help you decide which system will best meet your needs, and even help you map out your accessories for a seamless and headache-free installation.
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