10 Watt Halogen light bulbs

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Look at it this way, 13 volts is almost 130% over their rated voltage.  The filament is susceptable to breakdown based on time and the total amount of current it has had in it's life.  It is running hotter than designed whch accelerates the breakown even more.

I other words, yes it will cause early failure and especially if also exposed to vibration.  The vibration will cause the bond between the crystals of Tungston to fail since the bond has already been weakened with the high temperature and exessive current flow.
 
Look at it this way, 13 volts is almost 130% over their rated voltage.
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I'm confused. How is 13v 130% over 12v?  It would have to be 15.6v to be 130% of 12.

Nor would I assume that 12v is the exact rated voltage of the bulb. Vehicle systems normally run at 13.6-14.3v, and even a 12v battery is 12.6v.  That's not exactly a secret in the automotive world.  And probably none of those halogen manufacturers are quoting a design life in hours at any specific voltage. Their engineers may know the values, but you probably won't find it in the retail package.
 
Yes I have fat fingers, and the percentage is wrong.  The bulbs are designed for a constant 12 volts, NOT for automobile systems but for a transformer controlled house wiring.  Auto systems are very noisy with lots of spikes etc. and are quite destructive to electronics.  The early sold state electronics was somewhat unreliable because of this.  I remember one problem we had where the output transistor was failing after a few hundred hours.  We finally traced it  down to spikes in the system.  It was easier to stop the spikes in the electronics than to get them removed from the autos. The SAE would not change the criteria, specifications.  I understand that later they have but this was almost 50 years ago when Rockwell was just getting into truck electronics
 
SargeW said:
Well, I think Gary is on to something about finger prints on the bulbs.  None of the ones I replaced have blown again. So for the time being I will replace the JC10's with like bulbs and see if they hold up. If not then t he LED's will get a serious look.
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Don't have a coach... however did change all of our bulbs in our 5Ver last year, went to LED, cool blue.  They were like $5.95/each, if I remember right it was like well over 30 bulbs.  We are super happy with result, they only take 1/11th the amp of regular bulbs.  However, many have stated they do not like the cool blue effect and go toward more warm, yellowish.  Best to try them out first before changing all.  I kept all the old bulbs and figured I would change out if I needed to... however went the entire year without feeling the need.  While on the battery or genset, we now can just leave the thing lit-up end to end without worry.  Also, I hear ya on the finger print thing, have over the years always used a rubber glove or just washed hands prior to changing bulbs, when they get hot the oil from skin makes them get even hotter.
 
We have the same bulbs in our 13.1 voltage coach, and have yet to burn out one of those hot running bulbs. 
 
We used to have several G4 pin base 10W halogens. They lasted ok - at least a couple years of use, but the suckers were so hot, and sucked so much amperage that I got rid of them. The one over the coffee pot used to keep the coffee warm, though. Now I have to re-heat it!
 
FrontrangeRVer said:
We have the same bulbs in our 13.1 voltage coach, and have yet to burn out one of those hot running bulbs.
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And with this, everyone is going to be different due to wiring variations. Check the voltage at the lamp and see what it is.

JJE: A burned out filament is unrelated to the glass, thats a myth. See my earlier post
 
Gary RV Roamer said:
The one over the coffee pot used to keep the coffee warm, though. Now I have to re-heat it!
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Now that's a warm bulb!  Isn't a lot of the cost of changing out the JC10's in changing out the fixture? Or do they fit in the same one as the halogens?

The measurement at the lamp was 13.0 volts. That was taken by sliding the bulb out a bit and touching the probes to the legs of the bulb. 
 
SCVJeff said:
And with this, everyone is going to be different due to wiring variations. Check the voltage at the lamp and see what it is.
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Nah....don't care....I've never had one of these bulbs burn out in our 6 year old coach is all I am saying.  My voltage in our unit fluxuates just like Sarge's....and yours.

I agree with Gary...these suckers are HOT, as I've burned my fingers as I ran my hand under the kitchen cabinets looking for the off switch and ran my fingers across the hot burning glass!  Gary, what did you replace these lamps with???

 
You can get LEDs that plug right into into the G4 base - and will be perfectly happy at 13v. I have 6 of them now.

http://www.rvledbulbs.com/category-s/46.htm

I also replaced one halogen fixture with a similar LED fixture and it cost about the same amount.  However, I bought the fixture from a friend at a good price and installed it myself, so not sure of the price trade-off.
 
FrontrangeRVer said:
Nah....don't care....I've never had one of these bulbs burn out in our 6 year old coach is all I am saying.  My voltage in our unit fluxuates just like Sarge's....and yours.

I agree with Gary...these suckers are HOT, as I've burned my fingers as I ran my hand under the kitchen cabinets looking for the off switch and ran my fingers across the hot burning glass!  Gary, what did you replace these lamps with???
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Huh? Are you serious? The voltage at the lamp is exactly what matters.

Read This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogen_lamp
Scan down to "Effect of Voltage on Performance"
Then to the bottom where they talk about the effects of handling glass and the related failures.

I've seen WAY too many failures of both types on stage lamps costing $50-$100+ each. When the lamp expenditures increase over $8,000 annually on one stage, you go figure out why (in our case someone re-tapped the transformer). Touching the lamp will NOT cause a filament failure unless the glass fails and out-gasses. That is caused by lamp contamination.

Short-life filaments are due to over-voltage above lamp design spec. .. period.
 
Ok Jeff.  ;)  After all this, I really am serious that I still don't care what my voltage is since I haven't had a lamp burn out in 6 years of ownership of our unit.  This might be good info for Sarge though, who is having the bulb burning out problems.

Must be that my voltage on my 2006 model doesn't fluxuate.  ;D
 
Well, I suppose that it is possible that the failures are not voltage related, and are more connected to being handled without gloves when being put in.  None of the ones that I have put in so far have burned out again. And I don't usually use them much. The ones over the sink get used the most by the DW and I have replaced one of them so far.

The other lights that I have are the little push in reading lights, that are a PITA all by themselves. 
 
The installation instructions for those Silverstar Halogen headlight bulbs, say to not touch the glass with your bare fingers when installing.  These things are a toss up how long they last.  I've never touched the glass when installing, and have them last from 2 months to a year or so.

I believe these halogen G4 bulbs are similar in respect to longevity to those Silverstar Headlight bulbs....hit or miss
 
SargeW said:
Now that's a warm bulb!  Isn't a lot of the cost of changing out the JC10's in changing out the fixture? Or do they fit in the same one as the halogens?

The measurement at the lamp was 13.0 volts. That was taken by sliding the bulb out a bit and touching the probes to the legs of the bulb.
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I have a voltage/lamp life/output calculator produced by Sylvania.  Using it shows a 12v lamp burned at 13v will produce 129% light, 113% watts, and 35% life.  Don't know what the normal life of the lamp is, but 35% is a lot shorter!

The method used to determine lamp life is about as far from the way RVers use lamps as possible.  Lamp life is determined by running a large number of lamps at their designed voltage (always on and not in a fixture) and when half of them burn out that is the design life.  Fixtures, the number of times the lamp is turned off & on, vibration, and as mentioned, in the case of halogen lamps, touching, leaving oil from the skin on the surface, all have an effect on life.
 
FrontrangeRVer said:
The installation instructions for those Silverstar Halogen headlight bulbs, say to not touch the glass with your bare fingers when installing.  These things are a toss up how long they last.  I've never touched the glass when installing, and have them last from 2 months to a year or so.

I believe these halogen G4 bulbs are similar in respect to longevity to those Silverstar Headlight bulbs....hit or miss
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And if you look at the back of the card for both the SilverStar and SilverStar Ultra, it shows on a scale of 1-5 that life expectency is a 1. At least they're up front about it.
 
vermilye said:
I have a voltage/lamp life/output calculator produced by Sylvania.  Using it shows a 12v lamp burned at 13v will produce 129% light, 113% watts, and 35% life.  Don't know what the normal life of the lamp is, but 35% is a lot shorter!
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Jon, is that chart avaliable on the Internet? I had that back when we were arguing with the electricians about who would like to pay for our failed lamps due to the higher voltage they decided to gift us and haven't seen it since.
 
Not that I know of.  Mine is dated 1996, Item L-708 called Incandescent and Tungsten Halogen Lamp Rule.  I've tried to find another one over the last couple of years & no luck.
 
According to Wolfram Alpha:

"lm  (lumens) and  W  (watts) are not compatible units, so cannot be compared"
 
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