Originally Posted by Merriwether
Right, well, if you're going to overvolt *that* much then, yes, you can greatly increase the lumens/watt efficiency (which is what I assume you're saying in talking about increasing the "watts of light" of a 20W bulb).
Even with drastic overvolting, though, I doubt you could really get 50 lumens per watt out of a halogen light.
Now, L&M say their HID lamp will last 700 hours before replacement. You may say you don't believe this, but as I mentioned on another thread I've had my HID lamp for ~250 hours of use, and it's doing fine. But anyway, let's just be very conservative and say that the L&M lamp will give out at 400 hours, not 700 hours.
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Still, I haven't figured the cost of labor in putting together these halogen lights, which is unfair since one *could* make an HID light, too. I've also assumed that the price of halogen bulbs stays the same during what would normally be years of use. Then there's the hassle of replacing the halogen bulbs every few weeks.
More importantly, though, after working through this one would have to ask why not just get (or make) a more heavily powered halogen system with bulbs not so drastically overvolted.
yes if I overvolt it's better to do more then less.
I can ask how much since the guy measured the bulbs I use.
a HID bulb life is really dependant on how much it is turned on and off. that wears a bulb out. the gap in the arc gets bigger and bigger each time it is turned on.
you can build a HID but it is pretty tricky as the ballest is hard to make. you can use a automotive HID foglight as the basis. then you get more light then a bike HID. but it is more work then I would want to do.
I only need a runtime of about 1 hours so I use a 35 watt bulb and it works great without overvolting. but it does prevent me using larger capacity smaller batteries. I have to use sub c cells that are only 3.0 ah where I could use 4/3 aa at 4.8ah if I used a smaller bulb and overvolted. but I would not want to have to replace the cells and all. I get enough runtime for my needs.