I needed to do something with the lights in my Suntrekker a couple of years ago: the fluorescent tubes were going black at the ends and getting dimmer and dimmer. (The blackening is, I'm told, quite common as the tubes age and is made worse by running them at less than a healthy 12volts, which sometimes happens on a cold night with a tired battery). I looked at the cost of new fittings with LEDs which, being pretty much broke and unemployed at the time, was a bit scary.
So I got some LED tape from Ebay:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw ... e&_sacat=0
I stripped out the tubes and the little driver circuit from inside each fluo fitting, but kept the switch. The problem then was that the tubes were held in place by a plastic moulding inside the fitting which wasn't going to work with LED tape, and if that was removed, there was nothing to attach the LED tape to: I needed a material that was thin and ideally white or reflective, to replace the back of the light fitting and attach the LED tape to. After a bit of thought I used plastic cut from margarine tub lids. It was white, light-weight, highly reflective, and free.
I just glued that into the back of the fittings, stuck the LED tape to it in a sort of flattened spiral, soldered the pads at the end of the tape to the wires on the switch, and put the whole thing back on the van ceiling.
The lights are now far brighter, and consume a tiny fraction of the power. They don't get warm and don't interfere with the radio as the fluos used to! And they don't care if the supply voltage drops a bit. I think the whole job took about an hour and cost me about £4. The only things not re-used were the tubes - which were worn out anyway, and went to recycling - the drivers and the tube-holder mouldings, which were made from marge-tub-type thin plastic anyway. And I'll never need to replace a tube or bulb again!
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