Asked this question 9 years ago...

...and never got a reply. Can anyone help now?

Sup gang. I have 2 HELLA 1000 Black Magic's behind my grill and one has blown. Now I know what the stock bulb replacement is (H83130001) but I was wondering if there is a better, brighter, whiter light than the stock one? I have seen the modifications to them to get LED's in them but I don't want to go that route. Just need to know if anyone has used another bulb that is better than the stock? Thank you.

 

Looks like that's an H2 bulb. Hella often changes suppliers for their bulbs, as they do not manufacture in house, so I generally wouldn't recommend buying "hella" bulbs.

-Virgil- over on candlepowerforums repeatedly recommended this Narva +30 intensity as the best stock wattage option. The +30 is in reference to an increase in some test point intensity versus a standard bulb of the same type. It's not necessarily more light output, but generally improved filqment position vs a standard bulb


https://www.narva.com.au/products/4...-halogen-headlight-globes--blister-pack-of-1-

High wattage veraions were usually not recommended, especially in shallow lamps, like your blacl magics. Daniel Stern offers some narva and Flösser 100w H2 bulbs, if you were still interested. You may need to upgrade your current relay/wiring setup to handle the extra wattage drawn.

With halogen bulbs, a well fed bulb will usually be in the 31-3200k range. Halogens only make about 15% of their total putput in the blue-indigo-violet range, meaning that any use of a blue tint/filter to try and see a noticeable color temperature change, reduces output significantly. Hellas black magic lamps were not known to be very high performance to begin with, so I would caution against furthering decreasing thier utility by chasing high color temp bulbs.

 

I also have the same lights behind my grill and love them. I acutally just had one burn out after 10+ years of use and replaced both with Hella branded H3 lamps I got from Amazon. Be careful with messing with higher wattage lamps. The housing is plastic and will probably melt if you generate too much heat.