Community Forums

gemini5362 · 03-09-2015, 03:56 PM

my 2cents worth. I am a big fan of LED lights. IN my rental houses I have been replacing a lot of the fixtures between renters. I have them in kitchens mostly and it lights up a kitchen better than the flourescent bulbs that were in there. I tried the LED strips that are being talked about on here. In a 12 inch fixture I did the single bulbs 4 strips of them. I did not like the light output. That area of the coach is relatively small and looked dark. Because it was a test i just cut the wires to the ballast and spliced the LED lights in. After a couple of months of testing them I went and bought new flourescent bulbs and wired everything back to factory specs. There was a lot more light out of the florescent. I very rarely boondock so I am plugged into shore power most of the time. If other people have had different results I would love to hear about it because my experience in the motor home has been pretty poor.

I did not try the replacement tubes they look like they would work better but the high power 18 inch ones I looked at were 68 dollars a tube with 2 tubes per fixture. I did not want to try them that badly

gemini5362 · 03-09-2015, 04:12 PM

I have not tried these but someone might want to give them a reply and see how they work

http://www.ledlight.com/4_5050_3_chi...oles_ncnr.aspx

Mr. Dave · 03-09-2015, 05:27 PM

I've replaced many of my old lights with led. Using product from M4. Here's a link to replacement tubes for florescent light fixtures.

http://www.m4products.com/tube-lights/

Dave and Young
2003 Revolution 40c

Sent from my iPhone using iRV2 - RV Forum

CarlAda · 03-09-2015, 06:54 PM

I'm also a big fan of m4products. For the fluorescents in my previous coach, I installed Cabin-Brite lights. Very bright and huge improvement over the fluourescent tubes. Reasonably priced.

EasyPace · 03-09-2015, 07:08 PM

M4 products x 3. I have replaced my fluorescents with M4's natural white LED 18" fixture and have been very pleased with the results. Good quality and great color. I have also changed most of my other fixtures over using their warm white coloured LEDs. I learned about M4 from How-To RV Videos From Long-Term Full-Timers - TheRVgeeks

Mr. Dave · 03-09-2015, 08:05 PM

Glad you mentioned RV Geeks EasyPace. That's how I found out about M4.

I've also replaced all my smaller lights with bulbs from M4. Great products.

Dave and Young
2003 Revolution 40c

Sent from my iPhone using iRV2 - RV Forum

mdpuff · 03-09-2015, 10:49 PM

I am a huge fan of LED's also and have changed over all the lights in our coach to LED. Even installed the double 5050 LED light strips in the florescent fixtures and love them. Have changed almost all the bulbs in our S&B over to LED as well! Ordered all my bulbs from China off E-bay and couldn't be happier! Have done lots of experiments with LED's and learned allot so I know what to look for in an LED. Check out what I have done in my florescent fixtures. The bottom pic on the right is the old florescent bulbs.

T Gibson · 03-10-2015, 08:49 AM

mdpuff: I noticed on one unit you soldered on the end and the other you soldered 2-3 LEDs down. Didn't know you could solder any where else other than the end? And do you need a low volt solder gun?

BennieH · 03-10-2015, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deandec

When I can LED modify my 18" $50.00 ThinLite fixture for about $2.00 vs trying to source the exact same size and lumen dedicated LED fixture, it seems quicker and just as effective.

As instructed by others on this forum, I used the Superbrite 5050 LED strips from Amazon which are about $10 for 15m. That will replace 10 florescent bulbs and takes about 10 minutes each fixture.

Same thing I've done to 2 motorhomes. Wife loves the light better than the old tubes.
I replaced 20 florescent lamp tubes in our current rig and it was under $50 and a couple of hours of time. Well worth it.
Also replaced all of the incandescent lamps with LED's as well.

gewilli · 03-10-2015, 04:45 PM

Super night led from eBay.

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mdpuff · 03-10-2015, 08:37 PM

You can solder anywhere along the strip. Just found it easier to solder in between rather than the end as there is more surface to solder to. I just used a plain old soldering pencil good and hot so you spend as little time actually holding it on to do the solder, used a little soldering flux and worked like a charm, just a couple seconds and done.

After I installed them I hooked up the ground wire and turned on the light then tried to spark the positive wire and every time I touched the wires the light flashed on but I could not see a spark!! Maybe if it were totally dark there may have been a faint spark but I couldn't see one. I have 5 fixtures that I upgraded and I'd bet money that all 5 on now takes less power than just one of the original fluorescents! Brighter and whiter too!!

gemini5362 · 03-10-2015, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdpuff

You can solder anywhere along the strip. Just found it easier to solder in between rather than the end as there is more surface to solder to. I just used a plain old soldering pencil good and hot so you spend as little time actually holding it on to do the solder, used a little soldering flux and worked like a charm, just a couple seconds and done.

After I installed them I hooked up the ground wire and turned on the light then tried to spark the positive wire and every time I touched the wires the light flashed on but I could not see a spark!! Maybe if it were totally dark there may have been a faint spark but I couldn't see one. I have 5 fixtures that I upgraded and I'd bet money that all 5 on now takes less power than just one of the original fluorescents! Brighter and whiter too!!

Those looked good and i might try the double led strips one of these days. One of the things i noticed is that it does not appear that yours are the waterproof version. If not I would recommend anyone that does this do what he did and not get the waterproof version. The hardest part of the install was getting the sealing gel off of the solder pads to solder the wires to them.

mdpuff · 03-10-2015, 10:24 PM

You definitely got that right! You "Do Not" want the water proof LED strips especially the ones with the silicone gel covering, real pain to dig through to do any connections, solder or other wise. The double row strips give you twice as much light as well, only way to go in my opinion.

Mr_D · 03-10-2015, 10:45 PM

I bought reels of the LED's from Amazon. Did get one defective one that I bet was a return and sent out to me as one light near the very end was out. The reel had been wound backwards from the others I bought. I used the warm white as the wife likes only that color. I used four strips in each Thinlight and removed everything I didn't need. Kept only the lens, backplate and switch. Wife never noticed the difference.
With the Magna we have all the halogen puck style lights, going to cost a fortune to replace all 60+ of them. Have only had the newer rig for less than three weeks and the DW already burned a cookie box due to the high heat the halogens produce!