What's the Candlepower output of the HID?
Hella does not rate it's lamps in candlepower and you
should beware of anyone who does because it's a misleading measure of lighting power.
Where is the measurement taken at? Right next to the bulb? Three feet in front of the
bulb? Six inches? With or without a reflector? See my point? There is no industry standard
for such a measurement so a manufacturer can really make his lamp look good with a really
meaningless number. The real test of a lamp is where the light goes - is the output useful
to you. At 300 feet, the HID 35W Rallye 4000 MotorSport is three times as bright as a 100w bulb in
a comparable lamp.
Doesn't the HID draw a lot of current?
The Hella HID is a 35W lamp - which means it draws about
2-3 Amps when lit. There is an initial surge of about 15 Amps for less than a second to
kick it off, but then it rapidly tapers off to the 2-3 Amps.
Don't these lamps run hot?
Actually, there is very little heat involved. The
technology runs cool -- one reason for the long life of the bulbs and the big reason for
the efficiency. In a Halogen, most of the energy is converted to heat, not light. Just the
opposite in an HID. There is little heat generated by the gas discharge. Most of the
energy is converted to light - a highly efficient light source.
Suppose I burn out a bulb. Aren't they expensive?
My list for the capsule is about $101 - but the rated life
is a conservative 2000 hours. As compared to a few hundred hours for a high wattage
Halogen. The reason a halogen fails is because of vibration affecting the hot filament -
it's basically a mechanical failure - like if you continuously bend and rebend a piece of
wire, it eventually breaks. An HID has no mechanical filament as the light is from a gas
discharge - hence, vibration has no effect on the life. Heat is also a factor on the life
of a bulb - little heat in this case.
They use 28,000 volts to start. Is the technology
SAFE?
Because the Hellas are used on the road in
Europe, they had to meet the conditions/qualifications of the German TÜV - their
equivalent of our DOT. Safety is a big factor for them - so the Hella design contains the
RF field normally generated by this technology and also has built in protection to shut
the lamp off in the event of a crash and damage. The ballast associated with any HID, when
it first turns on, sends out a 28,000V signal to the capsule to start the gas discharge.
Then it tapers off to about 40V to keep it going. If it detects the discharge shutting
off, it sends the 28,000V signal again. So if you are in an accident and damage the lamps,
you'd have 28,000V sitting on your front bumper! The design used by Hella detects this condition
and shuts the lamps down. Others may not as they are only designed to run in the US where
auxiliary lamps are not regulated.
