Originally Posted by NobleForums' post='963494' date='Aug 3 2009, 12:51 AM

You're welcome.

From what I've seen, stock wiring tends to be overbuilt by a bit. TENDS, not always. This, you can go up by a little and not have to worry too much. Going up by a lot will tend to cause problems.

In the old days, people used to "upgrade" their 55w H4 bulbs to 100w. This would often melt wiring. However, the 85w choices seemed to work without destroying anything.

These days, with the complexity of car electrical systems, I think it's probably safer to limit overwattage bulbs to 10w or so. For instance, taking a look at the 55w H7 above, you can expect 1450 lumens or so. However, you can probably safely go up to a 65w Osram H7 bulb that puts out 2100 lumens, almost 1/3 more output. If you're not comfortable with going up 10w, you can go with Osram's ultra high efficiency model, the NightBreaker +90, which will give you a bit whiter light and close to the output of that 65w model. Unfortunately, Philips doesn't make a Xtreme Power +80 bulb in that size (testing shows the Xtreme Power tends to put out just slightly more light than the NightBreaker). My guess would be given a lens designed for an H7, you'll actually get more usable light in the area that is supposed to be illuminated out of one of these 2100 lumen bulbs than from a 3200 lumen HID installed in there.

Side note... for my Angel Eyes, in place of the stock 35w H8 bulb, I'm using an Osram NightBreaker 55w H11 bulb. Despite the huge 57% increase in wattage, I've thus far seen no error messages nor problems with heat or wiring. While this is probably not wise to try for every application, it seemed to work here, at least so far. I keep an eye on it just in case though.