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This was a pretty simple project. We wanted to replace the overhead lighting in the pop-up camper with some new LED lighting. The overhead lights run on DC, which is either supplied by the battery or by a converter that provides DC when the camper is plugged into "shore" power (AC, 110 V, 30 A). This means that the job is an easy wiring job, just two wires, but the mechanical part of the job is the trick. I did disconnect the battery and made sure the camper wasn't plugged in, and I checked that there was no power by trying to turn on the old lights before beginning - no reason to be too cavalier, I even wore safety glasses so that rivet heads wouldn't poke me in the eyes.
-The old overhead lamps are installed in the ceiling not using screws, because that would be sensible. Instead, they are installed with some proprietary Coleman/Fleetwood pop-rivet. Why, you may ask? If only I could answer. OK, so a more important question is then: how do you take the old lights off if they are riveted to the ceiling? Answer: just drill out the stupid rivet. I put a couple different bits on my cordless drill, and just drilled the heads or bodies of the rivets, I didn't care what was left. Once decapitated, the rivets can't support the lights, and they can be pulled easily off of the ceiling. I pushed the remainder of the rivet back up into the ceiling.-I disconnected the wires, which were connected with wire nuts. Easy, just twist.
-After the old lights were removed, I placed the new lights up on the ceiling such that the new light hid the old holes where the rivets were. I marked the mounting holes, and then set the new lights aside while I drilled pilot holes for the mounting screws that came with the lights. I am not particularly concerned with a "seal" in the ceiling, as I don't think the rivets were providing even a water-tight seal before. -Once the pilot holes were drilled, I wired the new light. They are DC, but the new lights don't care what's positive and what's negative, so you I just attached one lead wire from the ceiling to one wire on the new lights, and did the same with the remainder.-Then I screwed the new light fixture into the ceiling with the screws provided.The new lights provide very bright LED illumination, but they do so by consuming an order of magnitude less power, which can come in very handy when you're camping on battery alone without "shore" power. The lights and the water pump are the biggest (if not only) consumers of power for our camping trips, so energy efficiency will hopefully help.
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