Has anyone converted their interior 12v bulbs to leds? If so what have you found to give the best light ? Did you change the entire fixture or just the bulb?
We changed out all of our bulbs for LEDs the day after we bought the trailer. Which is "best" depends on what kind of light you want; we put warm whites in most of ours, bright white in kitchen work lights. We found bulbs at a good price on eBay and we're very happy with them.
__________________
ellen and ken, 3 dogs and Adventure Cat
2012 Mini Lite 2109S
2005 GMC Sierra 2500HD Duramax/Allison
We changed ours to LED,Low battery draw,No Hot Bulbs! The LEDs came from "Cabin Bright" his name is Joe,and he is a Vender at the Goshen FROG Rally! Youroo!!
We changed out all of our bulbs for LEDs the day after we bought the trailer. Which is "best" depends on what kind of light you want; we put warm whites in most of ours, bright white in kitchen work lights. We found bulbs at a good price on eBay and we're very happy with them.
Has anyone converted their interior 12v bulbs to leds? If so what have you found to give the best light ? Did you change the entire fixture or just the bulb?
Thanks.
We changed all our incandescent bulbs with Bright white LEDs, I like to see what I'm looking at. I purchased the 36smd from ebay. Like these, the double sided tape works very well, had them for a few years now with no issues at all. https://www.ebay.com/itm/10Pcs-Festo...JZErNc&vxp=mtr
__________________
Larry Collins { PM }
2006 F150 Supercab 5.4 Flex Fuel
2017 H-D FLHTK Ultra Limited
EZgo TXT and ClubCar Precedent golf carts
2009 Forest River Salem 30QBSS
U.S. Navy Veteran
I have also changed all mine out. Much more light output. Each regular light draws around 1-2 amps. Each led replacement is about .1-.2 amps. And, your fixtures will not get cooked by the heat. Just make sure the LED you use will fit.
eBay or Amazon is a great source. Cramping World wanted about $8 per bulb when I did mine in '14. They may have come down a bit now they are getting more mainstream. I paid about 75 cents apiece when I did mine.
I added 3 cheapie motion sensor to some 4 color led strips (R,G,B,W) under the cabinet base boards, stairs and bathroom to aid my stumbles in the dark. I can change the colors for fun. I added a day-night sensor onto the white portion of the multi-color strip. The sensor I added has a daylight off and time delay to turn off at night. These came in 16 foot rolls. I cut the strips to my needed lengths (they show you where they can be cut) and had to solder wires to connect to the sensors.
I am also going to add a couple of remote controllers to some of my interior lights. My bedroom light switch is on the fixture and is hard to reach. I will be wall mounting that remote, with a second at the bedside. The main coach lights are on the base of the stairs, which is great when you are first climbing in, but is a bit hard to reach when standing inside. I will be posting pic's when done with that mod.
My point is, despite the rambles, use your imagination with LED's. They now have direct replacement bulbs for just about every incandescent lamp. The old lamps almost always have a number on them that you can use to cross reference to LED. They are cheap, plentiful, and easy to use in creative modifications if you can solder. Some of the newer stuff has connectors that eliminate the soldering.
__________________
1987 Starcraft Nova tent trailer, purch. '87, sold 8.14
2013 Crusader 290RLT bought new, 8.14 lotsa mods!
2001 Ford F-250 7.3
Loving wife, R.I.P., 6/6/19
and Mason the always dirty dog! R.I.P, 2/19
We changed all our incandescent bulbs with Bright white LEDs, I like to see what I'm looking at. I purchased the 36smd from ebay. Like these, the double sided tape works very well, had them for a few years now with no issues at all. https://www.ebay.com/itm/10Pcs-Festo...JZErNc&vxp=mtr
I always recommend buying one and trying it before you buy them all. Some of the inexpensive knock offs use inferior RF components that generate a lot of RF noise and and will interfere with TV and Radio. Also bright white is usually too harsh for living areas except maybe kitchen.
I have also changed all mine out. Much more light output. Each regular light draws around 1-2 amps. Each led replacement is about .1-.2 amps. And, your fixtures will not get cooked by the heat. Just make sure the LED you use will fit.
eBay or Amazon is a great source. Cramping World wanted about $8 per bulb when I did mine in '14. They may have come down a bit now they are getting more mainstream. I paid about 75 cents apiece when I did mine.
I added 3 cheapie motion sensor to some 4 color led strips (R,G,B,W) under the cabinet base boards, stairs and bathroom to aid my stumbles in the dark. I can change the colors for fun. I added a day-night sensor onto the white portion of the multi-color strip. The sensor I added has a daylight off and time delay to turn off at night. These came in 16 foot rolls. I cut the strips to my needed lengths (they show you where they can be cut) and had to solder wires to connect to the sensors.
I am also going to add a couple of remote controllers to some of my interior lights. My bedroom light switch is on the fixture and is hard to reach. I will be wall mounting that remote, with a second at the bedside. The main coach lights are on the base of the stairs, which is great when you are first climbing in, but is a bit hard to reach when standing inside. I will be posting pic's when done with that mod.
My point is, despite the rambles, use your imagination with LED's. They now have direct replacement bulbs for just about every incandescent lamp. The old lamps almost always have a number on them that you can use to cross reference to LED. They are cheap, plentiful, and easy to use in creative modifications if you can solder. Some of the newer stuff has connectors that eliminate the soldering.
Thank you that’s great info it gives me some new ideas.
I always recommend buying one and trying it before you buy them all. Some of the inexpensive knock offs use inferior RF components that generate a lot of RF noise and and will interfere with TV and Radio.
So you have seen 12V DC LED bulbs that have DC to DC converters in them? I have yet to see this. All the ones I see run unregulated 12V. Only ones that produce noise that I have see are 110V LEDs.
I do agree on buying one bulb though first for light output and color. I always buy the warmest bulbs I can buy which is 3000K or less.
I always recommend buying one and trying it before you buy them all. Some of the inexpensive knock offs use inferior RF components that generate a lot of RF noise and and will interfere with TV and Radio. Also bright white is usually too harsh for living areas except maybe kitchen.
Greetings Flybob, I have heard others say there could be interference with the cheap knockoffs, I have never had an issue ( knock on wood ) with the el cheapo's however I did with my headlights for my F150, they where the good S7's everyone was bragging about. So I installed the rf emi filters and that issue is gone.
The bright white or zion are bright, no questions there, but I like it. I agree that you should have a good idea before you run out and buy a bunch of them, it's easy to look around and see what color range you like best. I have the bright white / zion in everything from the camper to the festoons in my vehicles.
Happy Camping!
__________________
Larry Collins { PM }
2006 F150 Supercab 5.4 Flex Fuel
2017 H-D FLHTK Ultra Limited
EZgo TXT and ClubCar Precedent golf carts
2009 Forest River Salem 30QBSS
U.S. Navy Veteran
So you have seen 12V DC LED bulbs that have DC to DC converters in them? I have yet to see this. All the ones I see run unregulated 12V. Only ones that produce noise that I have see are 110V LEDs.
I do agree on buying one bulb though first for light output and color. I always buy the warmest bulbs I can buy which is 3000K or less.
Greetings Babock, I know for a fact my 06 F150 headlights ( 12V ) did screw up my radio in cab. I have the led foglights as well, but they don't interfere. The S7 LEDs are a direct replacement for my oem bulbs. So some 12V led do make noise.
* Correction: The direct replacement LED is the H13, not the S7. Sorry about that mis-information, Not sure where the S7 go now...
__________________
Larry Collins { PM }
2006 F150 Supercab 5.4 Flex Fuel
2017 H-D FLHTK Ultra Limited
EZgo TXT and ClubCar Precedent golf carts
2009 Forest River Salem 30QBSS
U.S. Navy Veteran
So you have seen 12V DC LED bulbs that have DC to DC converters in them? I have yet to see this. All the ones I see run unregulated 12V. Only ones that produce noise that I have see are 110V LEDs.
I do agree on buying one bulb though first for light output and color. I always buy the warmest bulbs I can buy which is 3000K or less.
Yes . I have seen several that caused major interference. A quick search of Rv LED interference will show many others.
Has anyone converted their interior 12v bulbs to leds? If so what have you found to give the best light ? Did you change the entire fixture or just the bulb?
Thanks.
Both of our travel trailers used the 1141 incandescents. I replaced the lights in the 2002 with "corncob LEDs" which have the same socket base as the 1141s--it's called a BA15S which stands for "Bayonet, 15 mm, Single contact on the bottom." I used warm whites from Amazon. They were somewhat expensive and seem to provide a little less light than the incandescents. Corncob image attached below.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that the older you get, the more light you need. Your eyes don't focus as well, so you need bright light to contract your irises for a sharper image. (In cameras, it's called decreasing the aperture to increase depth of field at the expense of shutter speed. Your eyes work the same.) Sadly I found that not all LEDs are as bright as 1141 (or 1156) incandescents.
In the 2009, I put in corncobs from eBay or AliExpress or NewFrog (can't remember). They were insufficiently bright and I replaced them with corncobs with more LEDs. (The corncobs are sold by specifying the number of chips and size of each one, e.g., 68 LEDs, 30x50mm. The LED mountings are described as COB (chip-on-board) or SMD (surface mount device) which are two names for the same thing. The brighter LEDs were better, but produced so much heat that the mountings scorched and fell apart. One actually discolored the clear lens of the fixture.
Then I switched to the flat style as shown below.
Four neat features with this style:
They come with a bi-pin plug and mating adapters for BA15S, for European fuse style lamps, and for "921" style fixtures
LEDs have polarity, unlike incandescents. Nothing happens when you plug them in backwards. Cars are always + on the base center pin and - on the shell. On a travel trailer it could be either way. If it's wrong, just reverse the bi-pin connector
It's real easy two splice two LEDs to one socket connector to double the light from a given fixture
They come with double-faced foam mounting tape making them easy to mount in any fixture with a flat plate. For the commonly used concave fixtures I put three or four more layers of foam mounting tape among the edges to conform to the fixture shape
They finally are bright enough
So far the only drawbacks have been:
They run a little hot; not seriously hot
If you double up too many and turn them on at once, you can wind up drawing more current than incandescents. Fortunately we have the typical fixtures that switch off/1/both and just don't switch too many to both at the same time
We used these in the pure white and they worked out well. Also available in warm white if you like the more traditional yellow tones. Note, these bend easily when trying to install, but none broke. I found that the front edge of a kitchen spatula with the spatula inverted made install easy. There is a lip on these bulbs where the disc meets the contact elements. One hand to align the bulb and the spatula in the other to seat the bulb.
LED's are definitely worth the money and effort vs the incandescent bulbs in a trailer. I'm right now logging current draw on everything running off 12V in my TT using a Victron Battery Monitor. I currently have EVERY LED light inside my TT turned on, all 12 of them, and the current draw right now is a whopping 4.3 amp. The .3 amp is from the LPG Leak Detector. The inside of the trailer is nice and bright but not a single fixture is even warm.
With the LED's you can feel far more comfortable when turning on a light when you need it and not have big worries of not having enough battery left to run the furnace all night.
FWIW, the furnace (a Suburban) just kicked on and it's drawing 3.2 amp.
Trying to create a log showing what each item draws. Partly out of curiosity and partly because I don't have anything else to do this afternoon.
Next step is to turn the converter back on and see how long it takes to return battery bank (240 amp capacity) to 100%
__________________
"A wise man can change his mind. A fool never will." (Japanese Proverb)
"You only grow old when you run out of new things to do"
2018 Flagstaff Micro Lite 25BDS
2023 f-150 SCREW XLT 3.5 Ecoboost (The result of a $68,000 oil change)
We used these in the pure white and they worked out well. Also available in warm white if you like the more traditional yellow tones. Note, these bend easily when trying to install, but none broke. I found that the front edge of a kitchen spatula with the spatula inverted made install easy. There is a lip on these bulbs where the disc meets the contact elements. One hand to align the bulb and the spatula in the other to seat the bulb.
I used something similar but they weren't bright enough. Wound up replacing two of those with four of the flat 48-LED PCB types. They came with several adapters, including the 194/921 type you illustrated.
I always recommend buying one and trying it before you buy them all. Some of the inexpensive knock offs use inferior RF components that generate a lot of RF noise and and will interfere with TV and Radio. Also bright white is usually too harsh for living areas except maybe kitchen.
Also make sure the current lamps don't have offset pins. If they do you need to ensure you replace them with LEDs with offset pins. This is a DC polarity thing.
I replaced all mine with knock-offs and some didn't work. One set over the dining table had to be genuine branded from the RV store, the knock-offs kept blowing fuses. The two lamps in the centre pendants I can't find a working replacement for. I don't understand why, but apparently the socket fitting must be a knockoff itself. Rotten thing (being a pendant) is going to be awkward and expensive to replace to make it work for LEDs.
Youroo!! 
I purchased the 36smd from ebay. Like these, the double sided tape works very well, had them for a few years now with no issues at all. 
Linear Mode
