Flourescent to LED

[booster]

Lots of folks have done LED replacements in their vans, us included, but I never had seen any good replacements for the Roadtrek double 12" flourescent fixtures. Most claims of brighter really didn't look right in person, the dirctionality and distance wasn't right, etc. Our 07 C190P has 3 fixtures, one front in the aisle, one rear in the aisle, one on the lowered area over the bed. All were cool white, and we hardly ever used them. They used more power than we liked for normal lighting and always seemed to be too bright for normal in the van stuff, and too dim for details like DW and makeup.

There was a recommendation on the Yahoo board to look at Cabin Bright replacements, whom I had never heard of.

http://www.cabinbright.com/shop/the-.../fled12r-144x/

Good specs, good information, so we decided to try them. I ordered two of the 5500* for the front fixture (makeup light) with no dimmer. I ordered one 4100* and a dimmer for the rear aisle fixture. Also got one 3200* and dimmer for over the bed.

Here is the double fixture



Single fixture with dimmer



One with the diffuser on



They wired easily and only took about 10 minutes per fixture. The double fixture is much brighter than it was with the flourescent, which was a surprise. The single on full bright was perhaps a bit less bright the two flourescent bulbs. The dimmers work very well, even down to the low low end of brightness.

They are claimed at .375 amps per strip, but I measured closer to .6 amps when on shore power, and .44 amps at 12.3 volts of battery. I checked with Cabin Bright about that and found out they are rated (like most things) at the nominal 12v or 12.0 volts and they pull more amps at higher volts, and are brighter. The flourescents were at .6 amps per tube and actually pulled more amps at lower voltages.

They aren't the cheapest around, but look to be the best I have seen. The dimmers are very spendy, but very good ones, and I think worth the cost as we will use them on very low settings a lot. Service was great, nearly new company and very responsive.

I think we will be very happy with them.

[JohnnyFry]

I agree that this is a very desirable upgrade. I used LED strips from Inspired LED because these are the same that I had used in my kitchen remodel and I was very happy with those. I used 2 strips of 9.5 inches in each fixture and found, as you did, that they were brighter than the original tubes. I measured about 37mA for each and am very happy with the result.

A dimmer might be desirable, what brand did you use?

[booster]

Originally Posted by JohnnyFry

I agree that this is a very desirable upgrade. I used LED strips from Inspired LED because these are the same that I had used in my kitchen remodel and I was very happy with those. I used 2 strips of 9.5 inches in each fixture and found, as you did, that they were brighter than the original tubes. I measured about 37mA for each and am very happy with the result.

A dimmer might be desirable, what brand did you use?

The dimmer came from Cabin Bright also. The sheet with it says it is a PCA electronics dimmer EPL 1012.

Are you sure you mean 37ma? That is 1/10 of what ours pull.