LED lighting retrofit for interior lights

[dsrtgrls]

Originally Posted by Msmoto

Having changed all thirty or so in my 09 Int, I found a curved carpet knife worked well to ease under the edge of the puck lens without scratching anything. It is easily pried out and removed. Another method I have used is a tongue depressor, sharpened, which can be wedged under the edge of the puck lens. The wood does not scratch for sure, but sometimes the sharp edge will not last long. Good luck.

i see the glass lens,then a ring of chrome, then another ring of chrome. do you pry between the glass lens and first chrome ring from the center or between the two chrome rings?

[Gene]

Between the two chrome rings. They are easy to scratch. Either grow really long finger nails, or use a thin knife blade such as on any pen knife. Once the blade separates the 2 parts a little, I inserted a screwdriver to pop out the inner part.

Some LED bulbs do not have long enough pins. I took the whole thing apart to make it all work by unscrewing the reflector so I could push the pins in, leaving it unscrewed and putting it all back together.

Gene

[Fenghuang]

Here is the link that I was talking about. I had forgotten to add it.http://www.airforums.com/forums/f447...s-17392-8.html

Larry

[Zeppelinium]

Has anyone found a source for the puck light fixtures? You can get 5 in a pack with 115-to-DC converter for about $35 at Home Depot, but I just want the pucks. There was a temporary good deal last year where you could get 6 for about $18, but that's long gone.

Zep

[Aerowood]

Rockler has 3 watt led light fixtures in their new catalog but do not show them on line. Spendy @ $46 apiece, and 1 watt at 26ea.

And Mcfeelys has some here

Puck Cabinet Lights, 2 W LED, Grass Cabinet Lights, Lighting - McFeely's

Kip

[dsrtgrls]

thanks msmoto, crawfordgene, and fenghuang for the great info on opening that clam of a puck light. as soon as the bulbs arrive from as i will attempt shucking the three. camp on

[dsrtgrls]

my fingernails were out of the question to open the puck fitures. i was able to take info from you all and came up with a system that worked. they are tough little clams. i had some old plastic store cards (the credit card type things). i took a little dremel and sanded down the corner to taper it thin to wedge it between the rings. got space enough for a little nudge with a small slotted screw driver and bingo, with no scratches. the airstream led replacements,though expensive, fit and worked great. thanks to all on this project.

[ESCAPE POD]

Just ordered replacements for some puck lights, bulbs (over dinette, kitchen sink, and bathroom) and reading spot lights. This is the source I used:

LEDs 4, Recreational Vehicles

Free shipping on orders over $30 (not hard to do!)

Will post on the results after installation.

-Jerry

[Buzzy4]

I haven't seen this source mentioned in the forums yet. I replaced all my interior G4 halogens with LEDs from here last year both overhead and the reading lamps as well. I also replaced the 12v bulbs in the bath and over the stove.

Replacement LED bulbs for your existing boat fixtures

I tried a couple of LED replacements from Airstream and found the ones from Marinebeam to be much brighter. They are a bit more expensive but worth the extra cost in my opinion.

Ed

[fotochop]

Originally Posted by Zeppelinium

Has anyone found a source for the puck light fixtures? You can get 5 in a pack with 115-to-DC converter for about $35 at Home Depot, but I just want the pucks. There was a temporary good deal last year where you could get 6 for about $18, but that's long gone.

Zep

I may be "re-dunding" here but VTS has 12v pucks for $19 bucks each....

[Msmoto]

Having converted every bulb in my 27 FB International to LED from Out of Doors Mart, the brightness is entirely adequate and I rarely have all of them on. Plus it appears the cost is about half of that on the marinebeam site. Those must be absolutely fanastic. But, I am about to turn traitor and go to a big class A motorhome so .... Sorry, full time in my Airstream just did not have enough room for me.

[barts]

A more reasonable source for those LED replacement bulbs:

DealExtreme: LED Light Bulbs (Page 1)

Friends on other forums report they work very well:

LED Lighting, now a practical alternative - The Home Shop Machinist & Machinist's Workshop BBS

no cheap warm white yet, though.

- Bart

[ESCAPE POD]

Originally Posted by ESCAPE POD

Just ordered replacements for some puck lights, bulbs (over dinette, kitchen sink, and bathroom) and reading spot lights. This is the source I used:

LEDs 4, Recreational Vehicles

Free shipping on orders over $30 (not hard to do!)

Will post on the results after installation.

OK, so the LED's from the above website arrived two days ago. I forgot to take pics last night, but just returned from the Airstream with a mini-review. All in all, I'm really pleased with the change to LED, getting pretty much the same light without having to use (and listen to) the genset as often. Sue and I tend to boondock a lot, so that's a consideration. The following photos show the LED's in place. What I have NOT replaced as yet are the 5 halogen puck bulbs in the middle of the coach. Have to "pace" myself in purchasing the LED's. Each one cost ~$12 on average. I ordered "warm" light LED's for all but the reading lights (went with white light there). The only surprise I had was how much the light fixture LENSE cover for the dinette dimmed the LED. I've included the same view with the lense removed to show how much light is blocked by the lense cover. The bottom right photo shows just the two reading lights illuminating the dinette. The pic of three ceiling lights shows the halogen puck in the foreground, and the LED's over the bed area. Pretty close match in light produced IMO. The LED's over the dinette and in the shower cast a "colder" hue, which is OK, even though I ordered "warm", and the bulbs were labeled "warm". The website was prompt in its shipment, and the bulb prices were definitely competitive. Hope this answers some questions, but feel free to throw some more my way!

Cheers,
Jerry

[Dan@LED4RV]

Originally Posted by ESCAPE POD

OK, so the LED's from the above website arrived two days ago. I forgot to take pics last night, but just returned from the Airstream with a mini-review. All in all, I'm really pleased with the change to LED, getting pretty much the same light without having to use (and listen to) the genset as often. Sue and I tend to boondock a lot, so that's a consideration. The following photos show the LED's in place. What I have NOT replaced as yet are the 5 halogen puck bulbs in the middle of the coach. Have to "pace" myself in purchasing the LED's. Each one cost ~$12 on average. I ordered "warm" light LED's for all but the reading lights (went with white light there). The only surprise I had was how much the light fixture LENSE cover for the dinette dimmed the LED. I've included the same view with the lense removed to show how much light is blocked by the lense cover. The bottom right photo shows just the two reading lights illuminating the dinette. The pic of three ceiling lights shows the halogen puck in the foreground, and the LED's over the bed area. Pretty close match in light produced IMO. The LED's over the dinette and in the shower cast a "colder" hue, which is OK, even though I ordered "warm", and the bulbs were labeled "warm". The website was prompt in its shipment, and the bulb prices were definitely competitive. Hope this answers some questions, but feel free to throw some more my way!

Cheers,
Jerry

This same company has the Warm White in the same size as the Bright White Airstream carries. This Large Bright White seems to be popular because of the amount of light it puts out. They almost have the same part number.

Here it is at Airstream in Bright White.


Here it is at LED4RV in Warm White.


What is interesting is. They say that 9 out of 10 Women prefer Warm White over Bright White on their home page. I have let to find a woman that liked Bright White. I wonder if it is 10 out of 10????


Fix

[Boondocker]

I finally found a source for the "elevator" bulbs used in the Tradewind couch and reading lights. These have a real long neck and were a pain to find. Better yet they are warmish. I have been using them for about a month now. Clearly, they do not put out near as much light as the old bulbs, but they do put out enough. The old ones really were a tad to bright for my taste.

In the overhead lights I have replaced 3 of the four bulbs with LEDs and left the fourth with a regular bulb. My thinking is I can turn on just the LEDs when boondocking or when I dont need really bright lighting and the fourth bulb when I do. One of the old style bulbs does put out a bunch of light. The light off these bulbs is cold though, which I am not crazy about. I will most likely look to replace them when the money flow is better.

[hhendrix]

Can you put dimmers on LED's?

[usLEDsupply]

yes you can dim leds but you have to use a PWM dimmer. if the led has a driver circuit (little circuit boaard with some black chips on it) then you won't be able to dimm it

[Zeppelinium]

A good PWM dimmer is the 7150, data shown here:



These LED lights from Superbrightleds use that 1.5A LED driver:



The interesting thing is that they are dimmable. The LEDs ignite at 5.6V and have the intensity of a night light at approximately 7.0-7.5V. Full intensity is reached at 9.6V and remains constant up to 16V. If the input voltage is increased beyond 16V, the LEDs dim slightly up to 40V (that may have been an artifact of the power supply).

The 7150 PWM driver says it's a constant current device. In this application it looks like it's constant current between 9.6 and 16V. I haven't done the experiment, but I think if you remove that chip resistor at the top of the component side (R820 and labeled R1) and replace it with a [remote] pot, you will have a nicely dimmable light. I'd actually replace it with a resistor (about 1.1 ohms, for a total current of 300 mA a minimum R) and a pot (maybe 15 ohms, which looks like that would result in 25mA total current at max R) so that you'd always have a minimum resistance for Rsense. The 7150 data sheet provides sufficient info to compute exactly what R value you need (it takes several clicks to get view or download the data sheet). Note the reference to 200m ohm below is milliohms, not megohms.



The power I used for this test was DC (I expect that's what you'll be using in an Airstream). You can see on the component side that 4 rectifiers in a bridge circuit allow this light to operate on AC or DC and the DC polarity doesn't matter.

Zep

[Mexray]

Decided to bite the bullet and get some 1003 LED replacements for our last unconverted fixtures...after a review of this thread, I went with the 18 LED units from LED trailer lites...

LEDTrailerLights.com - RV LED interior ceiling light 1141 1156 1003 warm white

I used them in the three-bulb bath fixtures, and I'm very happy with the results -

The 'warm white' color is quite near the incandescent #1003 bulbs, and the output (without measuring) appears every bit as bright...

In the pic below, the 1003 bulbs are in the LH fixture and the LED's are in the RH side - you can see a slight color difference in the overhead end cap surface, but isn't really all that noticeable after the conversion...

Ray

[Mexray]

more pics...