Halogen Replacement With LED's

[popgun33]

I have a 2010 Flying Cloud with about 35 halogen fixtures. What is the best place to order a quantity of LED replacement bulbs and what would the model number of the bulb be?
Newby,
Dave Williams

[carver 1]

LED4RV Just tell him what you have and what you want to replace and he'll do the rest.

>>ron<<

[txtwin]

If you don't mind searching, then Amazon. Your manual should tell you the bulb information.

[GeocamperAS]

2nd for LED4RV
They are an online company but will answer phone calls if you have questions.

[field & stream]

3rd for LED4RV You will need different LED's for some of the different fixtures, and Dan can help you with that. We did this project ourselves, and it is very worthwhile.

I suggest the warm lights for more comfortable lighting. Plus, we had our dealer install a dimmer which looks stock and really helps manage the amount of light.

[Alphonse]

Both Amazon and LED4RV are good options. I used both.

Make sure you understand the colors you want by doing a trial or two before you set into the full monty. Also understand that there is a significant difference in quality of LEDs. I avoided Ebay for that reason. Lots of the chinese stuff is complete garbage. You want a consistency of appearance from the lighting in the small confines of a Twinkie. So buy good stuff and all the same color.

[greenflag]

Out Of Doors Mart also has LED modules to replace your halogens.

Out-of-Doors Mart MORE Airstream Parts on-line than anyone!!! And we accept PayPal.

[gecko]

Hi Dave-
I did a complete retrofit three years ago on our 2010 International 28', and worked with Dan Brown when he was still at Out of Doors Mart. I followed him over to his new company LED4Less, but either is OK. Both are very responsive to phone calls and can tell you what bulbs to order for which fixtures. Your main cabin lights use bayonet "bulbs" (really a flat round plate with LED's mounted on it), but your bathroom lights, for example, use a different kind of bulb, and they'll know which ones.

The "white" bulbs are apparently strongly disliked by most women as being too harsh (according to a couple of Airstream dealers and the bulb selling guys). We started by doing the main cabin lights in white bulbs (they are noticeably brighter) but I bought some "natural" filter material (comes in rectangular sheets) from a stage lighting company and cut out a bunch of individual custom round filters using a drafting compass tool. This softened the light a bit, while keeping it still brighter than the "warm" or "yellow" bulbs. They were easy to add since we were already removing the fixture covers to replace the "bulbs" and they're meant to be used with very hot stage lighting, so no fire hazard with the cool LED's. The yellow bulbs are actually the same as the white ones, but it looks like they eyedroppered an iodine colored dot on each rectangular LED on the plate. These work fine for overhead lighting, but when used for under cabinet lighting (like in the galley counter area and over the gaucho), if you have sensitive eyes you can actually see a spotted yellow pattern on the surface onto which it shines. I found this quite unpleasant, but eventually accepted it!

Airstream and the guys can also sell you complete new fixture which were not available when I first did the upgrade. These are probably more expensive than just changing out the bulbs--if I remember correctly, the bulbs were less than $15 each, and may have been closer to $10, and the LED complete fixtures are around $30-35. We were definitely able to negotiate a volume discount when doing the whole coach at once.

The year after I did the upgrade, Airstream started featuring LED in all new coaches. And then we saw the dimmers--and had to have 'em! So I worked with our Airstream dealer to add two dimmer switches, which look factory installed--one to control the main cabin lights, and a separate one to control the three fixtures over the dinette. The challenge was that the dimmers did not work properly with the individual bulbs! Some research by the dealer techs revealed that if we purchased one full factory fixture for each circuit, that would take care of it--and it did.

The difference in energy consumption is remarkable. Our 14 (?) main cabin lights used to draw 14 amps/hr with the halogens, and now they draw 1.4 amps, instead--fully 10% of the old draw! The downsides are (1) they are not as bright as the halogens (close) (2) the aforementioned pattern visible on some surfaces (3) pricey! (4) we had challenges with those bulbs that were not fully inside a fixture (like the lamps on our Ocean Breeze on either side of the Gaucho) because they might get bumped into and weren't as robust as the halogens that they replaced. Both out of door mart and Dan at LED4Less are very good about replacing bulbs should they quickly become defective (5) still find the replacement bulb for our outside fixture to be too weak to be useful--going to research to see if they have a brighter one now available (one with more LED's)

A remarkable change, especially for boon docking--almost like adding another battery to your battery bank! We think nothing now of keeping all the lights on all evening if we feel like it.

[Bhkh226]

I bought all mine from Amazon. I sure wish I knew how to copy and paste Amazon on my iPad. But if you put the following in their search engine it will take you to it. I paid $10.99 for 6. They work perfect. I have not tried "led4rv" so I can't help you there. But I think the price was right at $10.99

Amazon..... LJYLED G4 3014 smd 24 LED
Hope it works for you

[artwester]

I've had excellent service from Colonial in getting the correct led bulbs for my Classic 31D '05

[BoldAdventure]

Paying $14 per G4 bulb is a rip-off. But people keep recommending that's what people do. Amazon, Ebay, these bulbs are cheap. Cheap enough to buy 50 of them and still not have spent $100.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by popgun33

I have a 2010 Flying Cloud with about 35 halogen fixtures. What is the best place to order a quantity of LED replacement bulbs and what would the model number of the bulb be?
Newby,
Dave Williams

Hi, Pearland. I'm next door in League City.

Along the lines of what BoldAdventure said... there are more expensive and less expensive ways to do this job, and it's your preference as to how much external assistance you want and how much you want to pay.

About 14 months ago, my husband and I did a DIY retrofit on the cheap. It worked out to be about $3.50 per LED instead of the $15 each we would have spent by ordering from Airstream or a few other sources. We have an Interstate Class B, but it's all Airstream-installed equipment in terms of the internal fixtures.

We had to make a minor modification to account for a diameter difference, but over a year later, we have no complaints. I published some pointers here:

THE INTERSTATE BLOG: INTERSTATE LIGHTS, PART 1: HALOGEN TO LED IN THE CEILING

[klattu]

Superbrightleds.com

https://www.superbrightleds.com/

[Americal]

Just replaced most of my bulbs with led. Ordered from M4 products, I had seen them recommended on this site by a couple of people. I went with the cool white, the brightest. Some people do not like these but I wanted all the light I could get.
G4-HP3W-CW bulbs for reading lights over bed. These point straight down.
1156-24-5050-CW for bathroom lights
G4-6-5630-side-CW for the ceiling lights.
I can't find my receipt but I think I paid around $10 for the ceiling lights the other bulbs may have been a little more. I am going to guess around $250 to replace all the bulbs. When you start counting all the bulbs, there are lots of them. Seems like they had a couple of different quality of lights for the ceiling lights, I went with the most expensive. I haven't replaced the bulbs in the cabinets yet to save a little $ figuring they aren't on much anyway.

[NC Camper]

M4 Products also has a very helpful page that shows comparisons of cool, natural, and warm LED lights in different surrounding. M4 LED Color Ranges and Base Cross Reference This might help you decide what will work best for you.

(P.S. They also have some interesting YouTube videos!)

[BoldAdventure]

Originally Posted by Americal

I can't find my receipt but I think I paid around $10 for the ceiling lights the other bulbs may have been a little more. I am going to guess around $250 to replace all the bulbs.

I spent $30 on the same job. Sorry you spent so much money. 1 1/2 years, no burned out lights. Plus spares.

I have posted about this repeatedly on this forum. Not to be a nag. All the lights come from China, all of them. No matter where you buy them. I spent about $75 sourcing various lights, including the $14 LED4RV lights.

What I discovered while sourcing is I can get both the $10 and $14 ones for about 1.50 in bulk on ebay straight from the source.





But if you think $12.50 markup is worth someone answering the phone or responding to an email per bulb, by all means folks.

I should just stop posting about this topic. But every time I hear someone spent $200++ on light bulbs, jeez. I feel compelled to keep mentioning this.