I have retrofitted almost every incandescent and fluorescent light fixture in, and on my 12 year old motorhome. Everything from storage compartment lights, patio lights, headlights and tail lights on the outside; to stove top, bathroom, closet and dining lights in the interior. The only interior fixtures I hadn’t tackled until now are the multitude of halogen puck lights located throughout my motorhome. They are in the ceiling, over the galley counter tops, over both sofas and in the bedroom. There are 28 of these lights total. So many, that I have put off retrofitting them simply because of the cost, as replacement LED’s for these fixtures are expensive. I considered replacing each puck fixture with a completely different LED fixture, but I could not find a fixture that would fit in the same hole as my existing pucks. I also looked at surface mounted fixtures, but again, I couldn’t find anything that would give me the light I wanted, while covering up the existing holes. I finally decided to just replace the halogens with LED’s.
It came time to pull the trigger and retrofit all of the puck lights with G4 style LED’s. Not only are the halogens power hogs, they create a deal of heat. I purchased some LED’s on eBay several years ago, but I didn’t have good luck with them, most of them failed prematurely. Since then, I have made it a point to buy quality LED’s and have only purchased from three suppliers; SuperBrightLeds, Jirah LED and M4 LED. Jirah and M4 and are both run by fellow RVers, so they are very RV friendly.
I ended up buying this project’s G4 LED’s from M4 for several reasons: M4 had exactly what I needed at the best price; M4's G4 LED’s have a high lumen rating; M4's LED’s are confirmed dimmable. I wanted dimmable LED’s, as all of my OE ceiling puck lights are on dimmer switches. In anticipation for this project, I replaced my factory dimmer switches two months ago with LED compliant dimmers manufactured by ITC. These were identical to my OE non-LED compliant dimmers. I purchased the dimmers on Amazon for $25 each. They have since skyrocketed to $38 each. I needed three of them, so I’m glad I bought them when I did. ITC part #21005-DB.
Neither Jirah nor M4 have sales or promotions per se, but M4 does have an annual Black Friday event, so I decided to wait until Thanksgiving to buy my LED’s. I ended up saving 15% on my order. Not a huge discount, but better than nothing.
I knew from experience that I would have to remove the metal bulb reflector in each puck light, in order to accommodate the new LED disks. What I didn’t realize (stupid me), is that the location of the light socket would also be an issue.
Plugging in the LED disk into the socket with the socket in it’s original position would put the disk off-center. This would not only affect the light output, but the aesthetics.
I quickly found that I would have to alter EACH AND EVERY puck light in order to proceed with my retrofit. I took a deep sigh and got to work. I ended up cutting slots in the sides of each puck fixture with my Dremel, so that the socket could be moved away from the center of the puck housing, to accommodate the larger LED disk. Of course the sockets could not be relocated without cutting the existing wiring, so each puck light had to be cut and then re-wired as well.
After dry fitting my first light, I found that the LED would not seat flush inside the puck. This is because there are a series of notches and tabs inside the puck housing. I took my Dremel and shaved those raised areas, which helped a great deal. The LED disk however had a tendency to drop, since the socket could now move freely as it was no longer attached to anything other than the LED disk. I applied a liberal amount of silicone to the back of the LED disk and pressed it deep into the puck housing. I held the LED in place overnight with masking tape to prevent the LED disk from dropping. This worked most of the time, but a couple of the LED disks had to be re-affixed with silicone the following day. The light sockets and the LED disks were not polarity sensitive, this helped speed up the rewiring process.
The size of my caulking gun made it difficult to apply silicone to the back of the LED disks after they were installed, so I purchased a small squeezable tube. This was much easier to handle and it provided more than enough silicone for the entire project.
I took my time on this project of 28 lights and completed it over the course of a week. I’m retied, so there’s no rush anyway.
Some of you may be wondering why I didn’t just install a smaller LED disk, one that wouldn’t require a modification of the puck housing. The fact is, I did. Last year, I installed several smaller disks from M4. While I still had to remove the halogen bulb reflector, I was able to install them without modifying the puck or cutting any wiring. The smaller disks however don’t provide the same lumens as the larger ones...210 compared to 600. They just weren’t bright enough for my liking. They may be ok for others, so they are definitely an easier installation option. I’ll most likely list the smaller disks I removed in the iRV2 classified section, as I have no use for them.
After I started this project and figured out the work involved, I decided to document it in case other members with similar lights were considering the same project. It wasn’t difficult, just time consuming.
The LED’s I used for this project are M4's part #G4-18-5630-side-NW. Retail price was $12.99 per disk, but I paid $11.04 plus tax, thanks to the Black Friday sale. Shipping was free. The pins for this LED are 4mm apart. I went with the natural white appearance, which equates to a kelvin color of 4500k. They put out 600 lumens which is pretty bright, so I like the fact that they are dimmable.
All in all, this project was more work than I anticipated, but I’m happy with the results. The interior of my RV is now 100% LED.
Linear Mode
