rabbit0102030

Before I show you the finished product, let’s begin with the write up. Here are some suggested tools that are needed to do the job. The following items should be handy to perform this mod a Glue Gun, a drill, electric tape, a marker, a brush, a shop vac, pliers, and some drill bits.







Now let’s start removing the lights. Pop the trunk and remove the black plastic cover that hides the reverse light housing, it comes off easily by pushing up on the bottom of it and then sliding it out of position as shown in the following picture.





Next remove the connecter and remove the following two nuts. You can remove these easily with a pair of pliers.





After removing the nuts, you can pop the light out by pushing in on the plastic clip and pushing out from the inside.





While you’re at it, also remove the following three plugs from the trunk, this will give you access to the third brake light, without removing the whole trunk lid liner. Be sure to get a good hold of the liner from two sides of the plug and kind of wiggle it out, if not you take the chance in breaking the liner plug, not a biggie since you can probably pick these plugs up for cheap, but why spend money on a simple plug when you can save it for something better!





Now that you have the lights taken out, first thing we have to do is take the reverse light bulb out and then remove the rubber seal. Removing the bulb is easy, twist it counter clock wise and pull it out, to remove the rubber seal pull the seal off by putting one or two fingers on the inside of the seal (side closest to the bulb) and pulling it up.





If you try and pull up from the outer edge there’s a chance you can tear it. Once the rubber seal is off lay it aside with the sticky side up. Now, let’s mark the spots and get ready to drill. Depending on how many LED lights you want to put in, depends on how many holes you’re going to need, I used 6 LED lights per reverse light (See illustrations for spacing





(The more LED’s you use the more you have to pay attention to the spacing between each, the spacing here may not be exactly accurate, but works well, and looks great)), and I picked them up at Pep Boys. I used the following lights pictured here:





These LED lights come with a small black housing; you can take it off as you won’t need them.





Use the following sized drill bit (13/64) to create the holes, this will create the exact size you need and the LED will fit nicely in the hole. Be careful when drilling the hole, you only want to put enough pressure to drill through the back side of the light, too much pressure and you may drill into the lens cover. After drilling all of the holes, use the shop vac to suck any shavings from inside the light out, a good shop vac will suck everything out in 2 secs, quick and easy. Now open up your package of LED lights, the LED lights come with what seems like 10 feet of wire, but you are only going to need about 5 or 6 inches. Cut all of the LED lights wires to about a 6” length, from the wires you cut save one of the longer pieces. You’re going to need this wire to connect all 6 LED’s to your third brake light.







Make sure to splice the ends of the wires, before putting them on the Reverse light, now place an LED into the hole created and use the Glue Gun to place some glue on the LED. Make sure to put enough to cover the back of the LED, so that the glue is touching the housing, this will ensure the light does not come out. Do this to all of the lights you will be installing.





Once completed and dried, take the longer wire you saved earlier, and connect it to all of the shorter wires from the LED’s, using electrical tape wrap the spliced wires together. Finally, bundle all of the wires together by using the electrical tape to wrap them together. See the illustrations for what the wires will look like when wrapped together.

Make sure that as you wrap the wires together they are wrapped to the center of the reverse light, this way when you put the rubber seal back on; it covers all of the LED’s nicely without having too much wiring in the way. Don’t forget to put the reverse light bulb back in. Again see the illustrations. Do the same steps to the other reverse light. Now that we are all complete in putting the LED’s in and wrapping everything up, we can now install the light back into the trunk.





Place the light into its location and slide the new LED wiring into the opening to the left or right, depending which light you’re putting in first.





Slide all the wiring in, lift the trunk liner up so that you can reach underneath it and unplug the third brake light plug, while your in there, reach for the new wiring you slid into the trunk. The wiring should be within reach, if you have large hands find someone with smaller hands, they should be able to reach under and into the trunk lid frame to reach the wiring. My hands fit well, so I had no problems reaching for the wiring.





Splice the third brake light wiring and plug the black wire from the LED’s to the Black wire of the third brake light, connect the red wire from the LED’s into the blue wire of the third brake light. See illustrations below.





Test the connection before wrapping any wires with electrical tape, have someone press the brakes lights for you or use a stick to wedge it between the brakes and the seat so that you can verify that it works correctly. Once satisfied, wrap the spliced wires with electrical tape, and plug the third brake light back in.





Follow the steps in reverse order to bolt the lights back into place and put the plastic covers back on. Don’t forget to put the liner plugs back in. Your trunk should look like the illustration below. The finished lights will look GREAT!





And the finished product should look as follows:







Until next time, happy modding...

txptrees_balt

Hey rabbit, do have photos on your LED mods? Would really like to see some. I have a few ideas on how to convert mine and like to hear others ideas on the conversions.