About the Video
1979-1993 Fox Body Mustang Tail Light Lens Install
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Published on 2013-03-06
At LMR you will find the best selection of 1979-1993 Mustang tail light assemblies, lenses, and hardware. Replace the broken, leaking, or missing tail lights in your Fox Body Mustang with quality parts and accessories from LMR. We offer a wide variety of factory-style tail light assemblies and lenses for your restoration project. When purchasing new tail lights be sure and pick up new hardware to complete your project.
Transcript
Now today I'm going to show you how to replace the '83 to '93 Mustang tail light lens What we're working with here came out of a '93 coupe, and we have our replacement LX tail light lens in front of us. Now, you don't have to remove your housings from the car just replace the lens. We did so here just [INAUDIBLE] this installation.
Now, you're going to want to grab a flat blade screwdriver or something similar. And be very careful. Work your way around the edges of the housing and lens, separating the butyl tape sealer from the lens. You can actually start working it out by hand. Just work very slowly-- that way you don't break anything. And pull your old lens off.
Now, the inside of this housing is extremely dirty, and I need to remove all of this original sealer. I'm going to go ahead and get this cleaned up, and we'll show you how to put on the new sealer and new clips to attach your new lens.
Now that I've got everything cleaned up, I'm going to go ahead and throw on the new clips and the new butyl and the new lens. Now, all I used to clean out the old butyl was just a simple flat blade screwdriver, a little bit of time, and a little bit of patience. Work your way all the way around. You're not going to be able to get it perfectly clean unless you use some sort of chemical agent, but it's really not necessary.
I did take just an all-purpose cleaner and a microfiber towel and cleaned out the inside of the lens housing, because there was a lot of dirt built up. I'll sure you'll find the same thing on yours. Now, the factory uses four retaining clips. The new lens comes with five. The retaining clips are located on the outer tabs. And I'd normally take this fifth one and stick it on the next available tab next to the inside, because this will be next to the license plate. This is what I call the inside.
So we'll go ahead and throw those clips on. You want to make sure that the tang for the clip, right in there, goes toward the channel that the lens is actually going to be sitting in. And they just simply slide over the plastic tabs on the housing.
And you can go ahead and grab your roll of butyl. And I normally start at the lower corner, here. And just start unrolling it all the way around. You may have to stretch it out just a little bit to get it to fit down into the channel. That's fine.
And this stuff is very sticky, so take your time. Don't rush, because otherwise you'll just end up making a complete mess, which I have been known to do from time to time. And as this paper gets longer, you can tear off out of the way. That way, you're not fighting it the whole way around the lens. And when you come to a corner, just round it around.
And you'll notice around where the clips are at that butyl isn't tucking down completely in the channel, and that's fine, because whenever you set that lens into place, it will force that butyl in and around the clips so you have no leaks. That's why I put the clips on before the butyl.
And when you come up to your edge here, you just want tear off your remainder and then give yourself a little bit of a flattened edge on both sides. Tuck everything down in there. And then when you come up to your seam, just really make sure and marry those two together. That way, you have a completely sealed channel. Now you can take your lens. Kind of center it into position.
And then mash it on down. Don't press too hard, because you can break the lens, but you want to give it firm pressure all the way around to make sure that the lens fully engages the clips and then fully engages the butyl. All right. I'm not getting any more out of it.
So there you have it-- completely restored factory housing with our new LX lenses. Now, this same process will apply for any of the tail light lenses we sell. Again, the LX lenses are the only ones that include the butyl and the retaining clips. But we do have a kit that includes the butyl and retaining clips for all the other lenses that we sell.
Now, for more exterior restoration videos and for other lighting options for your Mustang, check out latemodelrestoration.com.