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DavidAnderson said:
Would like to say hello...ive spent HOURS searching and reading on here tonight....im trying to find a brighter bulb for my 4d maglight. I know maglight makes one, but they want $4 for the bulb, reasonable, but $12 for shipping. Are there any sponsors on this site who have them at a decent shipping price. One more thing, any good priced cr-123 lithium batterys. I go through 2 a month. Thanks in advance.
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It's not unusual for n00b to not specify enough useful information. From the looks above you are looking for the very lowest cost options to get a brighter 4DM*g? If you are not considering runtime, then you can get a few higher wattage bulbs (lamps). Will you be using 1.5v alkaline, or 1.2v rechargeable NiMH D-cell? In otherwords, is the bulb going to be seeing 4.8v (1.2v x 4 D-cells) or 6v (1.5v x 4 D-cells).
4D-cells, 65mm lenght x 4 = 260mm. 5 x 50mm lenght for C-cells is close enough that for a dollar or 2 you could cut a section of 1in. dia. PVC pipe, slip it into the 4DM*g (but then again, you could have just bought a 5 cell M*gC light to begin with) and run C-cells for less runtime because of significantly smaller C-cells with less capacity, but then you have 5 x 1.5v or 5 x 1.2v NiMH batteries and can run higher wattage bulbs that are available for these higher voltage mods.
Does color of light output make a huge difference? Because if it is not important then you can get higher output with same yellow color light. But if you want whiter light, then either Xenon bulbs or, overdriving the lower voltage bulbs is what you want.
My recommendation for inexpensive bulb upgrade only, without great loss in runtime would be to use a 6w/1a 100 lumen bulb with 1.5v D-cell alkalines; or for whiter color light, overdrive a 5.2v/.85a 85lumen bulb, which will output about 100lumens when being overdriven, but still consume under .9a giving longer runtimes. You could use a 200 lumen 6v 10w bulb, but at 1.7amp current draw, the battery life is reduced more than half, and you might run into the plastic M*g reflector melting/blistering/bubbling problem if you run the light for extended periods.
Reflectalite halogen bulbs
$6.30 per bulb, w/$3.20 per order shipping from England (bulbs are reportedly made in Japan).
See this thread:
M@g Light Outputs...
Is the life of the bulb important, if you use this flashlight for extened periods of runtime or turn it on and off a lot, bulb life could be a consideration. If you overdrive a bulb that is already rated for short life span, consider the cost of replacing the bulbs more often.
