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2 East Locust
Street, Ground Floor, Fleetwood, PA 19522, 9AM-7PM, M-F Eastern Time
Toll Free 866-480-2159, Phone 610-944-3233, Fax 610-944-3234, e-mail
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Hella |
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2 East Locust
Street, Ground Floor, Fleetwood, PA 19522, 9AM-7PM, M-F Eastern Time |
Hella Bulb Help |
| Quick Index of Subject Matter. Click Below to Go Directly to That Subject |
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| Assessing The Beam Control of Your Lamps | Identifying Halogen Replacement Bulbs |
| Bulb Life | Light Output |
| Determining Which Bulbs are in your Car | Light Color |
| Do I Need to Upgrade My Wiring? | Relay Circuits |
| Halogen Bulbs | Xenon Bulbs |
| Yellowstar Bulbs | Extreme XY Xenon All-Weather Bulbs |
| Higher Wattage and your Wiring | d |
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What is Bulb Output There are two aspects to rating the output of a halogen bulb, light output, which is measured in Lumens and is proportional to wattage, and light color which is measured in temperature, degrees Kelvin.
Halogen bulbs differ from Incandescent bulbs in that the gas in the globe is under pressure. The globe is thicker to contain the pressure. Having the gas under pressure allows the filament to burn hotter to produce more light and a whiter light while still having a reasonable life. The pressure causes the Tungsten atoms, which are thrown off of the filament by the heat, to return to the filament.
Halogen bulbs are available in Standard and higher wattage versions. Just as in the lamp next to your easy chair, a higher wattage headlamp bulb will produce more light. The relationship between wattage and Lumen output is not linear. The product of a light bulb is light and heat. Since bulbs are not 100% efficient, the amount of heat also increases with a higher wattage bulb. Only standard wattage bulbs are legal for highway use. Upgraded bulbs are sold for off-road, or racing purposes only. A high wattage bulb has a life less than half that of a standard wattage bulb. Many are manufactured with a target life of 50 hours!! The additional heat from the higher power consumption weakens the filament substantially - then the normal vibration in an automotive environment takes it out! Rallyists use bulbs with wattages as high as 160, but they replace them before every event if they're smart.
Higher Wattage and your Wiring The rated output of an automotive lamp is figured at 12.8 volts (the output of a typical alternator), not at 12.0 volts as you might expect. If you loose 5% of the voltage due to voltage drop through small wiring or corroded connections, which gets you to 12.2 volts, you are only putting out 80% of the rated luminous intensity - for a 100 watt lamp that’s only 80 watts equivalent!! Typically, if you keep output of your bulbs at 100W or lower, you will have little problem with meltdown of the Original Equipment wiring or controls as long as the wiring is in good shape and all connectors in the circuits are clean and free from corrosion. Bulbs over 100W can cause melting of the connector, overheating of the wires and failure of the headlamp switch and dimmer switch. You do not want to replace the dimmer switch on most cars as it is very labor intensive and will cost hundreds of dollars for parts and labor. Higher wattage bulbs have a significantly shorter life due to their high heat output.
Do I Need to Upgrade My Wiring? Before you spend the money for upgraded bulbs, you might want to evaluate your wiring. First, with a good Voltmeter, measure the voltage output of your alternator. With the engine off, clip the leads of the Voltmeter to the alternator and tie them back so they don't get tangled in the belts or the fan. Start the engine and run it up to about 2000 rpm. Note the voltage and shut off the engine. Now move the Positive Voltmeter lead to the back of the bulb - you'll have to pierce the insulation to do this. Leave the ground lead where it was. Now start the engine again and turn on your lights. Note the voltage, shut off the engine, remove the test leads and seal the punctured insulation with Silicon RTV. If your voltage drop is over 1 volt, you have some repairs to make even before you upgrade your bulbs. Look for loose or corroded connections, loose or corroded fuses or relays. Repair any problems.
After you get your wiring up to snuff, measure the voltage at the bulb again - then decide if you want to upgrade your wiring with relays and a battery source direct to the battery. If you are dropping over 1 volt, your wiring or a connection somewhere is starting to act like the heating element in a toaster oven and you need to upgrade your wiring. For more information on relays and how to wire them, click here.
Assessing The Beam Control of Your Lamps Bulbs are only the light source for a lamp. With the exception of the H4 bulb, which has a shield in it to create the low beam cutoff, they have nothing to do with beam control. The beam shape is completely controlled by the lamp.
Before you invest in higher output bulbs for your head lamps, you should assess the quality of the beams produced by those lamps. Park your car at night about 25 feet from a vertical wall with the low beams on. If the beam has a nice crisp horizontal transition from dark to light, then you may consider the upgrade. If, on the other hand, the pattern is poorly defined, just a blob of light, all higher output bulb will do is dazzle oncoming traffic and cause a dangerous situation. As a benchmark, an E-code sealed beam replacement headlamp has a transition zone from light to dark about 2" high at a distance of 25 feet. Most composite (aerodynamic) headlamps cannot meet this standard although many of the newer vehicles (about 2000 on) have free form lamps and are much better. A free form lamp has a clear lens with little or no fluting.
If you find that your headlamps are not suitable for upgraded bulbs, your least expensive alternative is to add auxiliary lamps to supplement the headlamps. Clear fog lamps can help the low beams while driving lamps will enhance the high beams. For a complete list of Hella Auxiliary Lamps, Repair Parts and Accessories go to http://www.rallylights.com/hella/Auxiliary_Lamps.asp . A more ambitious approach is to fabricate your own headlamp conversions using our 90mm modules. For a complete list of 90mm Modules and Accessories go to http://www.rallylights.com/hella/90mm_modules.asp . There are also 50mm modules and 120mm modules that are designed to be used in just such an application.
Regular halogen light has a yellow tint to it, which makes things look dingy. The color temperature is around 3000 degrees Kelvin. Xenon gas is used in both halogen bulbs and HID Capsules. These are two completely different technologies and should not be confused. For more information on HID lighting, click here.
The presence of Xenon gas in the halogen gas mix acts as a heat dissipater to allow the engineers to use a hotter filament and there for get more lumens from the same wattage, as well as increasing the color temperature of the light (that is: whiter) put out. The whiter the light, the better you can see colors and contrasts. An HID lamp approaches the color of daylight (4300K). It is obvious that if Bambi is standing in the middle of the road, at the extreme limits of your lights, you would rather light him up with a white light than a yellow one.
As engineers add Xenon to the halogen gas mix, it gets whiter. The industry seems to have standardized on three levels, +30 which raises the color temperature to about 3200 degrees Kelvin, +50, which takes it to 3250 degrees and Extra White, which raises the color to about 4000 degrees. These levels have to do with the actual length of the filament used in the bulb, not a percentage of Xenon. Engineers have found out that more than 5% Xenon in the mix returns no further benefit and in fact increases the possibility of arcing from one coil of the filament to another, which is why it is used for High Intensity Discharge (HID) capsule technology. Other manufactures have different names for these levels, but physics effects all manufactures equally and at this point in time, with the exception of Halogen Infra-Red (HIR) technology (which of course still obeys the laws of physics), no one has anything unique. General Electric patented this new technology in 2000. Their intention was to create a bulb that emits about 3/4 as many lumens as an HID capsule at a fraction of the cost, especially when taking into account the ballast necessary for an HID system. The technology was licensed to Toshiba for automotive use. The technology involves a specially shaped quartz globe which has multiple layers of semi-reflective materials deposited on the inside surface of the bulb. The coating reflects a portion of the Infra-Red energy emitted by the filament back to the filament causing it to glow hotter and produce more light, which escapes through the uncoated forward portion of the globe. Even though the filament runs hotter, the bulb produces about the same amount of heat or a little less than a stock bulb. The use of the word brighter is misleading. It means brighter in the same sense that using Cheer detergent makes your laundry brighter. It makes little, or no more light, often less, just a whiter light. A negligible increase in lumens (7-10%) may be expected in the +30 and +50 Xenon bulbs, the blue coating on some High Wattage bulbs will negate this increase.
The High Wattage bulbs use either a quartz bulb impregnated with a blue tint, or a blue coating on the bulb. They say that this to block out some of the spectrum which causes eyestrain. It also gives the light a blue tint, which is invisible to the driver, but visible to oncoming traffic. Some people find this blue coloration objectionable, others think it is "cool".
A Yellow Star bulb is a coated bulb that emits a yellow color - this is commonly called an "all weather" bulb because the yellow/amber color makes it significantly easier for on-coming traffic to see you in bad weather. The color is toward the warmer end of the visible light spectrum and has a longer wavelength which does not diffract as much as cooler colors therefore causing less eye strain.
Recent changes in the Ecology laws of most European countries have caused the manufacture of Yellowstar bulb to cease there. This is due to the chemicals used to produce the yellow coating on the bulb. Almost all Yellowstar bulbs and similar bulbs from other manufacturers are now produced in Asia, Hella has opened its own factory in India.
Extreme XY Xenon Yellow All-Weather Bulbs An Extreme XY Xenon Yellow All-Weather bulb is a coated bulb that emits a yellow colored light - this is commonly called an "all weather" bulb because the yellow/amber color makes it significantly easier for on-coming traffic to see you in bad weather. The Extreme XY Xenon Yellow bulbs are not as Yellow as the YellowStar bulbs. The color is toward the warmer end of the visible light spectrum and has a longer wavelength which does not diffract as much as cooler colors therefore causing less eye strain. The Extreme Yellow bulbs have been produced because Dichroic Amber Bulbs (like the YellowStar Bulbs) have chemicals in them that are no longer legal for use in Europe and Hella will not develop new bulbs that cannot be sold in Germany. The use of Xenon gas in the mix of Halogen gases allows the use of a hotter filament to make up for the loss due to the Yellow coating on the bulb itself. More
importantly, there is less reflected light or feed-back from rain, fog and
snow, allowing you to see further down the road. Adding Xenon
the Halogen gas mix will give a brighter Yellow light for even better performance.
The generally accepted life of a standard wattage bulb is some 200-300 hours. Of course, some are going to burn out sooner and some are going to last your lifetime -- and that is within the standard distribution of failure for bulbs and is NOT the result of a manufacturing defect. There are "Heavy Duty" and "Long Life" bulbs available which will get you a much longer lifespan - of course you pay more for them and they are available only in standard wattages and a limited number of styles.
With a couple exceptions (our Optilux Standard Wattage Bulbs and Hella High Performance Xenon Blue Standard Wattage Bulbs for instance), no manufacturer warrants bulbs as there are too many variables in the normal operation of a bulb that can take it out prematurely. For example, any anomaly in your vehicle's electrical system can shorten the life of a bulb dramatically. A marginal regulator can put out too much voltage or allow voltage spikes to sneak past. Turning on your lights before you start your engine and vice-versa, turning off you lights after to stop you engine can shorten the life of a bulb. If a standard wattage bulb lasts less than 200 hours, is that evidence of a "manufacturing defect?" Sorry, although the rated life of a standard wattage bulb may be 200 hours, some are going to burn out sooner and some are going to last your lifetime -- and as stated above, that is within the standard distribution of failure for bulbs and is NOT the result of a manufacturing defect, but the result of standard manufacturing tolerances. A short life may also be a direct result of the condition of your charging system and the way you use your lights. |
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Determining Which Bulbs are in your Car If you are not sure what type of bulbs you have in your car, consult your owner's manual, or use the handy database that our friends at Osram-Sylvania have made available to us. Just remember to come back to us to buy the bulbs.
Identifying Halogen Replacement Bulbs There are two series of Headlamp bulbs used in the US - One is the European series of bulbs known by the designations H1, H2, H3, H4 and H7. The other series is the 9000 series of bulbs designed for use in composite headlamps. So how do you know which your headlamp uses - If your owners manual is of no help and the dealer can't tell you the type of bulb, you may have to pull them and read the numbers on the bulb base. If you have a US composite headlamp, look at the lens of your headlamps and you may find one or two HB designations molded in the glass/plastic. Generally the designations are near the associated bulb. The equivalencies are as follows: |
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HB1 is a 9004 |
HB3 is a 9005 |
HB4 is a 9006 |
HB5 is a 9007 |
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The oddball is the HB2. In the US it is a 9003. Everywhere else it is an H4. There are some slight differences in the construction tolerances, but without the proper instrumentation, you'll never know the difference. |
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The 9004 and 9007 are dual filament bulbs so you will have one one bulb per side. These bulbs provide both a high and a low beam. |
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This is the H4. A very common dual element bulb providing both High and Low beam elements. The internal shield is under the low beam filament and by reflecting half the light, helps provide the characteristic sharp cutoff of a European lamp. In some recent vehicles, one element is used as a High beam and the other as a Fog beam. In this application, there is a second bulb for the Low beam. |
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This is the H7. This is a relatively new bulb appearing first in 1995 BMWs and Mercedes. The H7 is becoming more popular in late model applications. It is very common in VW products. Upgraded bulbs are hard to find because there are so few in use (relatively). The market is simply too small for a major bulb manufacturer to develop and market derivatives. This particular bulb is a Hella High Intensity Plus (HIP), now discontinued. In the light used for this photo, the bulb appears Blue. It is a coated bulb that may look different colors in different light. It depends on the dichroic effect at the boundary of the different layers of coating to influence the color of the light. This particular one puts out a white light with a sometimes orange halo. Now that you know more about bulbs than you ever wanted to, you can go to our bulb pages and pick the bulbs that give you the view of the road that you want. | |||
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