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Old 04-10-2018, 10:57 AM   #1
mskeyspirate
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LED bulb swapout ?

Looking to swap out my Passport stock light bulbs with led's. My question is not about cost, or power consumption, it's about how to convert bulb brightness. For example....over our bed, is what they call a "reading light". I want to go much dimmer with that light output. How do I know what bulbs to buy ? How do I know what the numbers on the standard auto bulbs mean as far as how bright the bulb actually is ? And how that number relates to brightness, or light output when it comes to a new led ? Hope that you're able to understand my question here. And as always...thanks in advance for the help. It's always appreciated.
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Old 04-10-2018, 01:33 PM   #2
gkainz
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I ended up just ordering different sample bulbs from amazon direct from China via different vendors and got a variety of COLOR rated bulbs (I think that's the right term? warm white, bright white, cool white? with corresponding K scale numbers), installed them and let DW tell me which ones she disliked. Then ordered more of the ones that didn't get voted off the island. They're cheap from China... or were?
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Old 04-10-2018, 02:50 PM   #3
sourdough
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Someone will probably know more about this but our effort was sort of trial and error.

In doing research on them there are several sites that will give you pictures of the various color ratings side by side so you can see the differences. Those are helpful but nothing is really like having them in front of you so I bought the 2 colors I thought we might like; warm white and cool white. Warm white was too yellow and looked dim to us so we went with cool white and have been very happy. The bright white is actually blue to me and just didn't look right.

Once you pick the color there are different sizes of LEDs for more brightness. I used primarily the 3528 LEDs but the brighter 5050 bulbs were placed over the kitchen counter and island as well as a couple of reading lights.

For comparison you can buy small 2 packs. You get them in 2 days from Amazon Prime so you could have new lighting in short order. I would suggest exchanging ALL of the lamps; inside and outside. It makes a lot of difference in power consumption and the heat from the fixtures.
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Old 04-10-2018, 03:50 PM   #4
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There are some dimmable LED fixtures which you could use for the reading lamps. We intend to replace our standard fixtures with these...
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Old 04-10-2018, 04:33 PM   #5
travelin texans
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Hope you have better luck with this tHan we have!! I started replacing the halogen bulbs with leds from various sources going into all different fixtures & fortunately I didn't discard the halogens. My 5er is 5 1/2 years old with most of the original halogen bulbs, the only 2 leds left are the ones over the bed & they have about 1/2 of the diodes burnt out.
For us it was a costly experiment on the inside, but I replaced the tail lights with red led fixtures & also removed the backup lights & wired them to red led stop/turn tail light fixtures & am very pleased with them.
Read on this forum & any other about led awning lights, led indoor light fixtures or nose decorating leds that last about a month & been replaced time & time again.
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Old 04-10-2018, 04:56 PM   #6
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One BIG mistake many people make with LED's is buying the wrong voltage. There are 12 VDC LED's available 10 for $9.99 and there are 12-18 VDC LED's available 10 for $9.99.

Seems like either should work, but in reality, the converter in our travel trailers operates at 13.6 VDC and will overheat 12 VDC LED's causing them to fail in short order.

Moral of this "story" is to pay attention to what you're buying, color (tone), brightness (lumens) and voltage, 12VDC vs 12-28VDC.
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Old 04-10-2018, 05:00 PM   #7
sourdough
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We too have gone thru a lot of LEDs. Our major problem was buying 12v only vs the 12v-28v. That resolved 90% of the problems. I still have a few that lose diodes and, in the 5 months we were in FL, I had 2 3528s burn up and leave a black spot behind them in the fixture. Unfortunate but beats the HECK out of the heat, melting, failure and browning of the original incandescents. I just carry a box of spare 3528/5050 bulbs and we're good
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Old 04-11-2018, 05:29 AM   #8
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Lots of good advice given, I would only add this; I've Amazon reviews very helpful. I look at the products with the most positive reviews then read thru them.
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Old 04-12-2018, 07:48 PM   #9
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I used some of these from amazon they have all types of socket adapters Click image for larger version

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