10-16-2012, 10:23 PM
While I was in Albuquerque, I discovered that my passenger side yard lights were not working. I opened them up today to find that the bulbs in both of the yard lights had exploded. As we are traveling with Don Bradner, he volunteered that he still had some strip LEDs left from redoing the porch light on his Blue Bird Wanderlodge. I removed the broken bulbs, then removed the screw holding the ground wire to the body. I cut the power wire as close as possible to the bulb holder then used pliers to bend the bracket that held the bulb holder in the light fixture back and forth until it broke free. We soldered new wire leads of the strip LEDs since it was the end of a 5 meter length of LEDs. Since the LEDs needed to be facing the lens and I wanted them to be as close as possible to the lens, we cut down a Coke carton to get two strips of cardboard to mount the LEDs on. We folded the LED strip back and forth to get 4 rows of LEDs inside the light fixture, removed the backing paper and stuck the LEDs to the cardboard. I then used a small (red) ring crimp end on the negative lead to secure it into the same hole as the original ground wire and used a blue crimp on connector to join the positive wire to the existing positive wire. Since the gaskets were shot, I applied clear silicone caulk into the chrome light fixture base where the gasket had been, inserted the cardboard with the LEDs on it into the lens and screwed the lens in place. Tomorrow, I will cut off any excess silicone that was pushed out by the lens. The result is a brighter, whiter light that provides more consistent illumination than the previous bulb did and use significantly let current without the heat. In the photo below, note the consistent line of illumination at the base of the coach from the two fixtures. This was certainly not the case with the original turn signal bulbs in these fixtures.
