LED Lighting Conversion

[NRL]

Originally Posted by jage

Oooh, and I've got some LED boards, I could do the double on the outside lite. Did you just wire them together? Keep the socket or hardwire?

My little apple-plastic men have jumped out of place on occasion.

Yes, I just wired them together to see at first. Or rather I spliced into the existing one; LED with bulb adapter. It uses a non-significant amount of voltage I left it that way. I did unscrew the base for the old bulb though to make it fit.

[Seattle]

Originally Posted by Scalf77

Another option for LED replacement lights.

For those of you that wanted to do this upgrade but didn't think you could be as creative as John or Jage in the mounting area. I found a similar solution that does not need special mounting at http://www.ledlight.com


Left to Right
Part No 74545 S25 12 SMT Forward Firing LED light
Part No 36754 S25 12 SMT Long Stem LED light
Part No 63824 S25 12 SMT Side Firing LED Light

The http://www.ledlight.com/s25-12-smt-forw ... light.aspx is a perfect replacement for the reading lights. It comes in standard led super white, but also a warm white bulb also.


The http://www.ledlight.com/s25-12-smt-long ... light.aspx is the same but on a longer stem. The lights will come out almost to the end of the reading light. This causes the viewing angle to be larger. The regular length is closest to what the incandescent bulb throws off.

For the outside light they have http://www.ledlight.com/s25-12-smt-side ... light.aspx It comes in a zero or 90 degree offset, so you need to check your existing fixture, I would suspect that they are the same, the 90 degree offset is what work on my van.

-greg

Greg,

Did you have to reverse the polarity to have these work in the reading lights? I ordered mine, they don't work but ledlight.com indicated I should reverse the polarity. I will check tonight and see if I can get one to work. Any issues with this recommendation?

[Scalf77]

I apologize as I have been on the road the last three weeks. All of my lights worked out of the box, I did not have to reverse the polarity.

-greg

[NRL]

Hi Guys,

Just finished up another LED project getting rid of my last favorite Fluorescent light and replacing it with LED's.
The requirement was, it had to be as bright if not brighter then what the florencent light was; it is the main cabin light. The Thin Lite Fluorescent had a two way switch that enabled me to switch between red and white Fluorescent, and I still wanted the same feature so I modded it by yanking the tubes, but keeping the ballast in case I ever wanted to go back (probably not after I got it done).

The LED's I used were from superbrightleds.com and the two units I used were (4) Red 4210-RHP6 and (8) warm white 4210-WWHP6, and 8 Festoon Base bulb Sockets.
At first I wired them in series for each bank, but quickly found out that it was quite dim with each one I added in series (DOH!), then I wired it so that each led festton got 12v individually; and then they were bright.
In the end, I was quite happy with the brightness, it seems to be as bright if not brighter and definitely way less voltage then what the Fluorescent ballast was sucking up. I do need to go back and clean up and tape up the wiring a bit but it was truely unavoidable once I got it tested and working; I just wanted it to be done.
Here are the pics, sorry, I missed the pic with the Thin Lite Cover back on but its nice, not going back to Fluorescent Lights..

[Roonie]

it would be great to list the steps you did to change them out.... did you get rid of the ballast for example? For those of us who want to do this project as well but haven't yet the steps would be great to follow.

Thanks in advance.

[NRL]

Originally Posted by Roonie

it would be great to list the steps you did to change them out.... did you get rid of the ballast for example? For those of us who want to do this project as well but haven't yet the steps would be great to follow.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry, went on vacation but I'll try to get to some kind of steps published. I did leave the ballast in just in case I was going to revert back but it's disconnected.

The LED's worked out great on my vacation. Definitely overall used a lot less energy.

[patrick51]

Yes I too would appreciate the steps.

[NRL]

Originally Posted by patrick51

Yes I too would appreciate the steps.

I looked for super bright LED's with the same type of thin-lite light housing but they all didn't have more lumens then what the flourencent lights were producing, until I found these used together from superbrightleds.com (4) Red 4210-RHP and (4) warm white 4210-WWHP6 with 8 Festoon Base Bulb sockets.

These bright LED light bulbs will not be connected in series as I have seen some LED's connected.
Each LED Light bulb will get it's own 12volt. The reason is, if you connect them in series, the light output is not at 100%, it gets divided up; you will see it get dimmer and dimmer until it doesnt work at all as you add more leds. So thus, each LED bulb will get 12volts straight from the 12v source..

Tools and Supplies needed: Voltmeter, Crimper and Electrical connectors (male and female) (20 pak), red wire 14 or16 gauge, black wire 14 or 16 gauge, LED Bulbs, LED festons, zip ties (20 pak)


1. Unscrew your light housing from where it's screwed in

2.cut red and black wire to remove light housing so you can work on it but make sure you have room to reconnect it with new electrical connectors.

3. Remove Housing White Covering

4. Remove fluorescent white bulb

5. Remove fluorescent Red Bulb (if you don't have red bulb, skip to )

6. Remove Ballast, will need to cut wires. (see previous pic posted)

7. Pull red and white wires with connectors off Rocker Switch that turns on and off light but make a note where red wire 8. was and white wire was. Remove all wiring. (see previous pic posted)

8. Use voltmeter to test which terminal points on rocker switch turns on the light.

9. Set voltmeter to continuity setting so when you have the voltmeter attached to the terminal points 10. (where red wire and wire wires, figure out which

two terminals turn on the lights

11. if you only have a one way switch you only need to do this probing once to find where positive and negative terminal is. (red wire goes to positive, white or black goes to negative)

12. if you have a two way rocker switch, you'll need to find which pair (red,white wire) turns on(white light) when you switch it one way, and the other pair (red,white wire) when the rocker switch is switched the other way (red light).

13. To secure the festons on to the housing, mock up the 4 festons on each side and mark where the holes need to be drilled.

14. Drill hole pairs evenly across on the bottom of the light house where fluorescent light bulb was going across. if you had two fluorescent light bulbs, it would be six holes (see diagram)

15. Each feston has a electrical connector (one for positive and one for negative), doesn't matter which is which, mock it up by connecting a estimated amount of wire that can reach from each feston to the rocker switch. Use Crimper to connect between interpoints.

16. Mock the whole thing up and connected it all up per diagram. Use the Crimper to add connectors and to connect the appropriate wires.

17. Temporary connect 12v to the source wires exposed on the back side of the housing, to test the rocker switch to see it works, red leds, white leds.

17. After testing and confirmation that it works, lock down the festoons with zips ties or your choice to secure it to the thinlite housing. I used zip ties since I didn't want to deal with nults and bolts to secure the festons.

18. Connect source 12volt power (red/black or red/white) to the wires that will be powering the leds. Try the rocker switch again to make sure it still works.

19. Permanently screw back in the Thin-Lite Housing.. your done. Enjoy.

[billwilson]

Folks
futzing around with Wilson
FINALLY getting around to the LED conversion
and i am lazy to search too much here today

i have two style bulbs, one long one with the big fat double ender

all the other "puck" lights have the smaller two prong

the fatties are in a flourecent style fixture, there are three on each side

the puck lights bulb goes in the side, not straight down







Questions:

1) cool white or warm white?

2) on the festoon fatties, do i get one row of led or two?

( Part #4211-WW6, $1.95, current draw 18ma. In the outer bulb I used 4210-WWHP6, $14.95 current draw 163ma. These bulb fit in the original fixture with no modifications. )
the above is from another post here, i think the numbers are correct
only diff is i have two rows of 3 Festoon bulbs


3) on the side pin / two pin deally, which ones have yall used

website, pics and partnumbers would be nice

also thoughts on warm or cool white

little buggers arnt cheap and hate to drop over a $100 on the wrong ones

bw out

[Kzinti2]

I compiled this table from superbrightleds.com data. The last two columns are lumens per milli-amp (a measure of light efficiency) and dollars per lumen (a measure of cost efficiency). Non-LED comparison data is at the bottom. Enjoy!