jwilhelm

Ok, as promised, here's my first installment of a short series of "how tos" forinstalling those very cool clear lightlenses all around the car. The series will cover the front turn signal lenses, the rear fender marker lights, the third brake light, and tail lights. When finished, it'll make my satin gray 07 Mustang look a lot different. I've put in orders for all the lights and the total investment came to around $450. To start off, the first installment is for installation of the clear front turn signal lights.

To make this job a lot easier, raise each side of the car for each side's installation. This step made things a heck of a lot easier to get to things. Use a floor jack to raise the car behind the front wheels foreach side's installation, and then put a jack stand under the frame to support it and get rid of the floor jack till time to let each side back to earth. Use wheel chalks behind the rear wheels, and before raising the car, put the trans in reverse (if manual) or leave in park (if auto) and pull the emergency brake real hard. Safety stuff! [:-]Before raising the car, loosen the tire's lug nuts. Don't raise it up like I did and then have to call you honey out to step on the brake while you loosen the lug nuts and feel like a doofus in the process. I can't believe it but I did this on both sides of the car. Sue looked at me like what in the hell were you thinking about. After loosening the lug nuts raise the car as noted above. Take off the tire. Set it aside somewhere. Now, to make it real easy for yourself to get fabulous access to the front signal light fixture, on either the right or left front sides, take off the front portion of the inner fender well linings. This is real easy. You'll need only a phillips screw driver (some head) to take out three screws along the lower outer fender lining, and five phillips head snap plugs located at various spots inside the upper portion of the front fender well area. Look around carefully and you'll see all five snap plugs holding the front portion of the lining in place. When you use the phillips screwdriver to loosen this snap plugs, only turn the head of the plug counterclockwise about a half turn to release the plugs tension, and they will come right out. Don't force these items out, after you give them that half turn you'll see them come out and then you can grab them with your thumb and index finger and pull them right out. See the photo below for the fender lining, 3 screws, and five snap plugs. After you've got the front inner fender lining out, next thing to take out are the two sockets holding the light fixtures in the front lens assembly. There's a large and small socket. The large one is located on the engine side of the light fixture and the small one on the outboard side of the fixture. To take these sockets out of the light fixture, you simply have to turn them very gently counter clockwise to loosen them and pull them out of the light fixture. Simply let them hang there on the wiring harness till we remove the light fixture and replace the stock amber unit with the new clear lens fixture. Just be aware on the passenger side that the hose from the window washer tank is located here and you simply have to work around it. No big deal at all. It kinda hangs "loose" in this area. Now to remove the stock amberlens fixtures on either side, you first have to loosen two snap fixtures holding the back portion of the fixture in place. See photo below for location of snap holders and holes in light fixture where snaps go. To disconnect the snap holders you can use your fingers to squeeze the snap fixture together and then gently pull out on the light fixture to remove it. Work on the snaps starting with the top one first and then the bottom one, works pretty good in that order to get the fixture out. You can use a small pair of pliers to squeeze the snap holders together but this method just takes a little more patience and time. Just take your time and be gentle. Once the rear portion of the fixture is loose, pull it towards the inside of the fender well an inch or two and pull back towards yourself. This action disengages the front tab from the slot which the tab fits into to hold the fixture in place on the back side of the bumper liner. Again, a real easy step. After this is done, you can remove the stock fixture from the inner fender area. Grab the new clear replacement lens fixture. Take off the cover protecting the front of the lens and peel off the protective tabs covering the holes where the light fixtures go into the lens body. If you find a litlle sticky glue left on where the light fixtures go in the lens body, use a little Goo Be Gone to clean the sticky stuff off before assembling the pieces. Now, put the new fixture into the back of the bumper liner just the reverse of how you took out the old stock amber unit. Put the front tab in the slot first and then position the fixture to where the two holes in the rear of the unit go over the two snap tabs on the back side of the light fixture. Simply press the light fixture onto the two snap tabs and the unit is now in place. Now it's time to replace the stock "clear" light bulbs with new amber bulbs or new amber stealth bulbs (painted with silver mylar paint). This step will keep you very legal. The lights have to shine amber. [:@]To keep the installation very cool, go with the stealth bulbs so your light units don't look like egg yolks. Be very careful with the light bulb installation, you don't want to damage anything. The small bulb simply pulls right out, pull gently though. The new bulb simply pushes right in with a click. The large bulb in the big fixture has snaps on each side of it holding it in place. I used two small flat head screw drivers to help remove the light from the socket. Carefully insert the head of each screw driver down into the socket between the snap and bottom portion of the light fixture and gently press outward releasing each snap's tension on thebottom portion of the light bulb. Replace the large bulb with the new one. Press it too into the socket with much care. Now you can put the two light sockets back into the respective holes in the new clear lens light fixture. Put them in carefully lining up with the key tabs on the light sockets and turn clockwise to lock in place. Your finished the intallation. Not quite. Reinstall the inner fender lining the same way you took it out. Be carefull pressing the phillips head snaps back in place to ensure the integrity of the piece. Put the tire back on, takethe car down off the jack stand and floor jack, remove your wheel chalks, and you're now ready to thoroughly enjoy your new clear turn signal lenses. It's been a pleasure, and hope this account of my lens installation will help you guys with yours. There's a couple more photos below with installation features. Jack [8D]

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pperin

Great job man!! Just got mine today I will be printing this and using your post. What did you do about the colored bulbs???Thanks

optras

Looks good. I'm planning on doing this in the future, so it's nice to have a guide handy.

raubt

You don't really need to raise the car/take off the tires/remove the inner fender liners.

You can leave the car on the ground, and just take out 3 or 4 of the most-forward clips holding in the fender liner, then just pull the liner back giving you easy access to the front of the car where the turn signal housing is.

To make it a little easier, turn the car's front wheels away from whichever side you're working on (ie. if you're doing the driver's side light, turn the wheels toward the passenger side, etc.)

Lifting the car, taking the wheels off and removing the entire fender liner might make things easier to get at, but it would definitely be a lot more time consuming, and might be a pain in the *** if you don't have access to jackstands, etc etc, or whatever, or if you just don't want to deal with all that.

raubt

www.stangmods.com

or

www.silverbulbs.com (they're cheaper than at stangmods, but delivery seems to be a bit slower)

(You need two 194's and two 3157's)

pperin

Thanks alot RAU

TPony

Good how to partner!

blkv6

that looks really good. awsome how to

Chrome

Awesome, that looks in my opinion so much better than stock! After seeing that look on your car i'm gunna get me some clear break lights...thanks alot man!

StangtasticV6

Wish i would have cought this thread earlier i took the whole damn bumper off lol, didnt even think of going through to wheel well hahahah