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Andy Dingley Andy Dingley is offline
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Default Testing H4 car bulb with multimeter


Stan wrote:

Using a multimeter, what resistances would I expect to get from a
working H4 car headlight bulb?


Zero resistance (short circuit) or as close to it as you're likely to
be able to measure with a cheap meter and simple test leads.

You might be able to see the diference when you have two filaments in
series, but you're unlikely to measure any difference between the high
and dipped beams, even though they're of different powers.

Resistance of them goes up when they're hot, but a meter won't deliver
enough power to notice this. Working resistance of a bulb is v^2/w, so
about an ohm or two. They'll be under an ohm when cold.