Raxiom Sequential Tail Light Kit; Plug-and-Play (05-09 Mustang)

Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com. And today we're taking a quick look at, and installing the Raxiom Sequential Tail Light Harness, Plug and Play install available for the '05 to '09 Mustangs. And you should be checking these out for your early S197s if you're looking to add a modern updated technology to an otherwise traditional and outdated rear end. This option allows you to just switch out the harness to activate a sequential pattern for your brake lights, hazard lights, and turn signals without having to pick up a new set of full tail lights. Now, aftermarket tail lights, of course, are available in the category but this option here is gonna be a lot more budget-friendly coming in right around 100 bucks which makes it a lot more affordable than a full tail light swap.Now, this is something that we saw on the early Shelby models from '68 through '70 and it's actually coming standard on a lot of the newer Mustangs coming off the line these days. So, now you can get it for your early S197 which I think just rejuvenates that rear end giving you a more updated look, and honestly, giving you a more aggressive finish. Now, this particular one is gonna have that plug and play install meaning you don't have to cut, you don't have splice, no permanent modifications. All you have to do is transfer over your factory bulbs, transfer them over to your new Raxiom harness and plug them right back into your stock tail lights. It's as easy as that. The new harness is set up for you. It has a new grommet as well to make sure it's got that weatherproof seal just like your factory harness did, and it's gonna clip right into that stock harness already in your vehicle. Now, because they're meant to be used with factory incandescent bulbs, this is not gonna work with aftermarket LEDs. If you have LED tail lights, this option again, isn't gonna be for you. You're gonna need your factory bulbs or updated incandescents. Now, the install, I'm gonna give one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. With all that said, I'm gonna walk you through every single step of the process. It'll take you about 30 minutes from start to finish. What you say we get started?Tools used in this install include: An 11-millimeter deep socket and a ratchet.First step here, pop the trunk, of course. We're gonna start on our driver's side to remove our factory tail light. Top left here, you'll see a little wing nut clip that's plastic. It's threaded on so really what you're gonna do, is just unthread it by hand and then pull it straight out. And then from there, you can peel this back. Now, you can remove this entire black trim panel. I don't find it completely necessary simply because you can get to this bolt here and you can get to the wiring harness straight down just by putting your hands here. You just wanna make sure you're not breaking this. Don't put too much pressure on it to flex.All right. So, we're gonna grab our 11-millimeter deep socket and get this nut off. Really once you break it loose, you should be able to get it off by hand. Now, while we have this guy peeled back, I'm gonna reach my hand straight down and just pinch and disconnect the harness. All right. Now, straight down here, you'll find this wiring harness that leads to this clip. Basically, what you're gonna do is push in on the top and pull straight back. All right. So, at this point, what we're gonna do is take the carpeting on the side and just peel that guy back to expose the top 11-millimeter bolt or nut, and then the same thing right underneath it. Grab your socket and get those guys off.Next up, we're gonna remove our tail it. So, straight from the back, I like to pull right back on this black trim piece. You just kinda wiggle it back and forth until it dislodges. You can also push from the inside on one of the studs to help you out. And from here, we're not gonna disconnect our harness, we're just gonna pull the whole thing straight out and set it aside because we don't need this anymore.All right, guys, so we got our tail light uninstalled from our '06 GT on the driver side here. What we're gonna do is uninstall our factory harness and then we'll talk about the differences and similarities between the harness there and our Raxiom sequential. So, first up here, we got our tail light. What we're gonna do is just twist each one of the bulbs so that they disconnect from their housing socket. All right. It's really that simple and then finally, your reverse light is going to twist as well. Pull that guy out and just gently set it down on the table. From here, we can take a look at the two harnesses and the real only difference that you can see is that our sequential harness has a lot more wiring going on. That's really it. It serves the exact same function, it is the exact same as far as quality of materials, quality of technology. It's all the same. The only thing that's different is, it's got a little bit of extra wiring going on to make the sequential function happen. Now, in order to get this to work, we do have to take our bulbs out of the factory harness and swap them on over. That includes all three of your brake light bulbs including your reverse light. So, what we're gonna do here is gently take each one of the sockets and pull back on the base of the bulb. You don't wanna grab the bulb itself, pull back on the base here. Just wiggle it back and forth and disconnect. From there, you're gonna take that, swap it on over, and click it right into your new socket. Now, you might have to put a little bit of firm pressure down but it'll snap in, and you're going to move on. Do that for each one of the bulbs.Then finally, of course, the reverse light is a specific socket so you wanna grab that and stick that one in your reverse light. We can set our factory harness aside and pull over our factory tail light. Now, when we install this, we have to install the sequential harness in a very specific order. You have to put each bulb socket in the correct spot because it has to sequence in a certain order as you already know. So, looking at your tail light, it's gonna go one, two, three. And each one of the bulb sockets are labeled one, two, three. So, you see on the back there is a little sticker there. And then finally, your reverse light doesn't have a sticker, that one is pretty obvious where that goes. So, we're gonna put bulb number one, socket number one in the spot in our tail light closest to our license plate because that's where we want one, two, three to be. All right. So, we got that. Going to install this guy. The first guy is gonna go here. Twist that in, and it locks in just like your factory harness. Bulb number two goes in the middle. You just wanna rotate that until it fits in just like a puzzle piece. And finally, bulb number three is gonna go all the way to the outside. And lastly, the reverse light is gonna come over here to the reverse light spot. From there, you'll be able to install this right in the reverse order. You already have a new grommet included in the wiring loom. You don't have to worry about transferring over the grommet. Pop that guy into position in the open hole on your vehicle and then plug it into the factory harness still in our car. Your basically gonna repeat that same process for the other side once you have that guy uninstalled. So, what do you say we toss our table aside and pop this guy back in?All right. So, we got our tail it here. What we're gonna do is feed this harness back through the hole. You can see that coming through the inside of our trunk. What we're gonna do is take the inside and just pull gently to get our grommet to seat. We can push on the outside as well, all around the middle. You'll hear it click in. That's what you want. From there, you can take this harness and plug it in. Just push until you hear that snap, clicks in, and then seat your tail light. Grab the factory 11-millimeter nuts, put them on by hand and then tighten them down. Also at this point, before everything is fully tightened down, I definitely recommend testing your lights to make sure they're operating in the proper sequence. If something isn't right or if they're out of sequence, go back and adjust the position of each socket. And finally, the last one up here. All right. Now, we can go back and tighten them down. Perfect. Once that's taken care of, guys, you're essentially repeating the exact same process on the other side.That's gonna wrap up my review and install for the Raxiom Sequential Tail Light Harness, the Plug and Play finish, available for the '05 to '09 Mustang. If you wanna get this kit, you can do so exclusively right here at americanmuscle.com.