I beat the crap out of my bars. I had a 12 inch on the very front of my bumper on my polaris. I literally pushed a viking forward a foot and realised it was my light bar that made the contact.
They lense is made from poly. It's basically indestructible. The brackets are made from very mild steel. What does that mean? Engineered weak spot.
I rolled my Honda. landed on the nose of the bumper and bill of the roof. My bar snapped off because 1700+ lbs.
Bar still works great. Brackets were a couple bucks on Amazon.
Anyways, long story short, I've had many bars and I can tell you worrying about them breaking should be the last thing on your mind. You WILL break an axle before you break your bar. I've beat the snot out of mine. I've crossed rivers deeper than the steering wheel with the bar a foot under. Had my rig parked outside in -20 f. Mounting location makes no difference to structural longevity. The LEDs will burn out before you break these bars. I promise.
Here's what I've noticed. We have about 5 sxs between my group. Steel roofs are awesome for light bars. The Honda plastic roof is amazing for what it is, but rigid it isn't and the wiggle sucks. It's so annoying I don't even use the light. I'm gonna take it off.
I've tried it all, get a 52 inch straight bar 300 watts with cree or Philips LEDs. and 2 1.75 inch roll cage clamps for about 20 dollars. 0 wiggle, very cheap, no holes in plastic, and you can get your hood off without removing the bar.
Just my opinions, but I have done it all. Alaska is dark 80% of the day in winter. I have light out to about 300 yards right now. You could shoot paper at 300 yards. We literally went skeet shooting using only my lightbar during December at 7pm.
If you have a plastic roof I would mount low on the rops with clamps. And anything less than 52 inch is a waste of time and space until you get into top dollar bars. A 300 watt bar only measures 160-200 ish watts. My friend is a rigid distributer. We have played with more light bars than most people could afford in their whole lifetime.
Anyways, sorry if this comes off as a rant or whatever. Just sucks seeing people spend the same amount of money and getting inferior product compared to what they could have got if they had gone through and wasted all the money I have.
And stay away from epistar LEDs. So disappointed. Yellowish color and very short range. Burned out fast. Auxbeam takes the cake for anything in the 100 ish range. Nobody else comes close. We tried nilight, bear claw, eyourlife, auxbeam, mictuning and a few off brand led pods.
Again, I've pretty much tried it all. We have a viking with a 52 on roof, my Polaris had it mounted to the hood. 52 inch on the roof of 2 Polaris 6x6s. My buddy has a 20 inch auxbeam x series on his grizzly. I have 2 52 inch on my Honda.
My opinion, low is best, 52 is best, quick disconnect wiring is best, and most importantly of all Locktite your bolts that mount your bar to your mount......... Yes It's happened. No I wasn't happy.
Anyways, good luck with your journey. If you are anything like us, it will never end until you can get a tan at midnight..... It never ends.
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And a few pics of my old setups that I tried out
