Replacement LED Bulb

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Our Morocco has three round LED reading lights in addition to the larger LED lights. They look like this:

Recently one started flickering then after a while stopped working completely. The bulb had failed but it is an odd design with no identification markings and I wasn’t able to find a replacement online.

There is a much more readily obtainable LED bulb which is similar in diameter with pins the same distance apart. This is the MR11 GU4.

The only problem is it is slightly longer than the original bulb but it is possible to overcome this.

The light unit is easily removed. There are two small slots in the side and if you introduce a small screwdriver into one of these it will free the unit.

The wires are easily disconnected. The inside looks like this.

The white part retained by two screws is where the bulb pins are connected. The unit is easily dismantled, the outer ring pushes forwarded and then the swivelling part can be separated from it.

The front of the unit just pulls away, revealing the bulb which pulls out from the front.

There were two bits of frosted glass in ours and if you remove these you can just push the replacement MR11 bulb in and reassemble everything. The problem with this is the bulb is retained only by the friction of the contacts as it protrudes too far forward for the glass to be replaced. This could work but I feared it might fall out the next time we drove over a pothole.

The solution it to move the bulb further back into the unit.  If you look again at this picture:

You will see a black “saddle” with two holes going over the top. This is easily cut off, I used the wire cutters on a small pair of pliers.

To move the contacts or bulb holder further back I used two 4mm nuts as spacers, the existing screws were long enough.

And with the new bulb fitted.

Viewed from the front.

All reassembled.

I used only one piece of glass, you could probably use two if you fitted longer screws but one is sufficient I think as unlike the original bulb this one has multiple LEDs, not a single one. I used a 2.4W warm white bulb which is very similar in brightness to the original. The original is a brighter white but the warm white is perhaps less glaring.