Tag Archives: repair

An LED obsession

Posted on by

I LOVE LED lights.  I really LOVE LED lights.  The combination of bright light vs low power usage make them a no-brainer in an RV.  I have always wanted to have LED's throughout our trailer but their cost has made it prohibitive.  No longer.

OUTSIDE LED's

My first foray into transforming the trailer started in the summer of '06.  We were heading to the WBCCI International rally in Salem, OR.  I had seen some people put LED's in their taillight in a thread on Airforums.  I gave it a go.

I bought some of these:

 

Taking them apart gives you this:

 

So I take the lenses off of the trailer:

 

I wire them to the connectors and mount the LED platter to the housing.  The way I did this was use wire nuts.  I siliconed the wirenut to the housing and the platter to the wirenut.  (I don't have a photo of this but you will see something similar later on.  I then buttoned them up (this should be an animated GIF):

I

 

I did the 'high' brake light also (another animated GIF):

 

I also did the license plate light.  Here it is all done:

 

INSIDE LED's

Once again a couple of threads at Airforums served as reference and a way to pass on information.  This thread and this thread.  I knew about SuperBrightLeds but felt they were a little pricey.  I found another source, www.ledwholesalers.com.  I just purchased a single bulb to try it out.  These are 1141 replacements:

 

I first tried this test bulb in a fixture.  Here are the representative shots (I used warm white instead of bright white):

I was pleased enough with the results that I ordered bulbs for the entire trailer and replaced them.  However there were a few bulbs outside that I needed to retrofit also.

These were the outside step lights and the torch (I call it the neighbor light because all it lights up is the neighbor's RV).  I replaced those with 1141 equivalents but this time I got them in a more circular pattern, like a normal bulb.  I also got these in bright white since they are outside.  I got these bulbs, and some for my truck, from an eBay seller (ushd) at a very reasonable cost.  Here is their eBay store.

Here is the step light:

 

Here is the torch:

 

Here they are all on:

 

One other thing that I did with the flat 1141's was put them in the backup lights:

 

Here are the backups at night.  It is hard to tell in the photo but they are now bright enough to actually see something behind the trailer.  Previously they were only good to warn people about the trailer moving.

 

In conclusion, I put in LED's for many reasons.  Power savings, decreased heat, reliability, increased output and I think they are COOL!

We have yet to see about the power savings.  Our trip to Yosemite will help prove it.

Finally, some life!

Posted on by

Yes, it has been a while since I have posted or we have planned to go somewhere.  Both are happening now!

We are going to Paso Robles this weekend with our WBCCI unit, and another one for a joint rally.  It will be held at Wine Country RV.  We are using this as a great excuse to get out with the trailer.  We like Paso since it is pretty close to us and we are familiar with the town (lots to do).  We also have not been out with our WBCCI unit for about 3 years and we can reconnect with some of them.

Just because we have not had the trailer out does not mean it has been quiet in our RV life.  The tow vehicle, our F250, has given us some grief.  You may remember the problems we had with it on our Albuquerque trip and the transmission issue.  About 1 month after the trip the truck started surging at idle and it threw a code.  The code was for an ICP (Injection Control Pressure) valve.  As this was happening, I had the batteries run down to the point where it just had that clicking sound when starting.  Once I got the batteries charged, the truck started running rough and threw another code!

Wow!  Two at once!  The code mentioned something about an injector had low pressure.  I know that injector repairs are EXPENSIVE!  I decided to attack the ICP problem first.  A trip to Ford and about $200 later, that was fixed.  But the truck still was running rough.  I lived with it for a few more weeks.  Now it was time to take it to a local diesel shop.

The first thing they saw was the batteries were very low and were not holding a good charge.  Diesels are very hard on batteries, hence the reason for two in our truck.  They need a minimum voltage to start correctly.  These were having problems with voltage and they recommended I get them replaced.  I still had 1 month left on the full Diehard replacement so I hauled them both to Sears.

Their tests concluded the batteries were fine, naturally.  I tried to convey the information, from the diesel shop, that batteries in diesels are under a different set of requirements and the standard automobile load test is not pertinent.  After a day or two of ‘discussion’ the Sears manager was willing to warranty replace one battery but I had to purchase the other outright.  I can live with that.

I took the batteries back to the diesel shop.  They installed them and started looking for the injector problem.  It was gone, it cleared up after the new batteries were installed.  We deduced that the fuel injection control module (FICM) is very susceptible to low voltage but once the fresh batteries were put in, it relearned its program.  Fantastic!  Plus the shop only charged me two hours for easily four hours of their time.

So was that it?  No!  Next I started hearing a squeal when the A/C compressor would kick in (defroster).  I wasn’t sure if the belt was just slipping (preferable) or was the bearing going out on the compressor (oh no!).  It turned out it was the belt tensioner.  It was fixed in place and not movable, as it should be.  Hurray, another repair!  The tensioner’s are pretty pricey, about $180!!  So we replaced the belt at the same time, it was due at 90K miles.

The truck seems to be running good now (knocking on wood – my head) so we will test it out on this trip.

Our extended warranty expired in August around the same time we paid the truck off.  It seems that the truck knew the warranty expired.  However all of these repairs did not reach what our payment used to be so we are still ahead of things.  I am just curious if the people that determine these warranties are the same ones that make the actuarial tables for life insurance?

I will post about the rally after we are back, maybe even during.