Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com. Today we're taking a closer look at and installing the Raxiom Smoked Taillight and Sequential Combo available for the '99 to '04 Mustangs excluding the '99 to '01 Cobras. As you guys know, the '99 to '01s have slightly different taillights, so you guys who are owning '99 to '01 Cobras will have to check out your specific option in the category. Any late SN95 and New Edge owners out there who are looking to swap out your factory taillights for one that is more modern, a lot more stylish, and a little bit more aggressive, this is gonna be the combo kit for you.Now the aggressive side comes into play with the Raxiom smoked taillights basically taking the exact same factory ones that you have on your New Edge, smoking out that lens, so instead of the clear option, it's a little bit darker and a lot stealthier. Now the stylish and more modern section of the combo kit is the harness. Unless you're completely new to the Mustang community or you've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you guys have seen the sequential harness before. Now this time I want to show you guys what it's like on the New Edge here basically sequencing from the inside out one at a time. It adds that touch of modern styling, something you see on the newer S197 and S550s you can now have for the New Edge in a plug and play kit.Now as far as the sequencing actually goes, you'll get the sequencing in your turn signals both left and right, of course, it's also gonna activate when your hazards are on and it's gonna activate when you hit the brake pedal. Now when you hit the brake pedal, it'll start right to left or inside to out and it'll freeze, so you'll get one, two, three and then it'll solid red, that's your brake light. Hazard light, of course, it'll flash in sequence until you turn them off, same thing for your turn signals.Your sequential harness does not come with bulbs, you'll reuse factory ones or you can pick up aftermarket ones that are brighter and there are Raxiom bulbs included in the category if you wanted to pick them up separately. Now pop the factory bulbs into your new harness and they'll fit directly into your new smoked housing. The combo kit is a very convenient way to pick up both ends of the spectrum that you need for your rear end. A lot of guys like picking up the smoked look but also wants sequentials and now you can have it all together. Now this, in particular, comes in right around 250 bucks. And the install, I'm giving one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. Anybody can tackle this in about an hour from start to finish in the driveway at home with very simple hand tools. Plug and play is the keyword, I'm gonna take you through every step of the process. Let's get to it.Tools used in this install include a flathead screwdriver, 1/4-inch ratchet, and an 11-millimeter socket. Step number one is gonna be to grab a flathead screwdriver and we're gonna unscrew the plastic pin that's holding on the inside of our trunk liner. We're gonna start here on our passenger side. Once you get far enough you can do it by hand. And in order to keep it safe, I just normally toss it right in the trunk.Now what we're gonna do is peel back this panel and then the secondary trunk liner which are just being held in by some studs. You'll gain access to three 10-millimeter bolts or nuts rather and you're gonna remove all of those to pull your taillight out. You're actually gonna grab an 11-millimeter socket and remove those three nuts. Then once you get them loosened up you can probably just pull them off by hand. You want to hold on to those nuts cause you'll reinstall those later. From there you have one more up at the top end and I know it might be a little tough to see but they're all the same thing. Once you get that loosened up, pull it out by hand. From here you can pull your taillight out. Now you have four bulbs on the back of your factory taillight, you're gonna twist and disconnect all four of them from the housing. You can set your factory housing aside.Now because we have a sequential harness, we have to remove the factory one from the inside. This clip here, you're basically just gonna pull this back and disconnect the harness. Now we want to feed the harness to the outside and there's this rubber grommet in the way, so what we're gonna need to do is push on the inside of that grommet while pulling on the outside of the grommet, that'll disconnect that and we can feed this out.So we got our factory taillight off of our '99 GT behind me, it's sitting next to the Raxiom smoked option. And I want to take you guys through some of the similarities and a couple of the differences between the two. Now as far as quality goes, you can expect all OEM quality, it's pretty much a copy and paste of the exact same OEM housing, the only exception being the darkness of the lens. Now as you can see, this one's a smoked lens made of that same polycarbonate material, so it's impact-resistant, scratch-resistant, all of that good stuff, built-in just like you'd expect from the OEM.The big difference here with this particular kit, not only is the smoked housing but it's also gonna be the sequential harness. Now that's sequential harness, again, copy and paste in the same layout. Now you'll see a couple of extra wiring involved to make that sequence happen and the only thing that's missing are the bulbs. You're gonna pop off your factory halogens, switch those over to your new sequential harness and it's gonna plug and play the exact same way. Back of the housing here, again, copy and paste, same exact thing. You have your backup bulb spot, your new headlight bulb spots, your taillight bulb rather and they're all the exact same shape, so again, plug and play is the keyword of the day.Now getting them installed is gonna be basically the same thing in reverse, the only thing we have to do is pop these bad boys out, so that's what we're gonna do here on the table. Now as you can see, two the bulb housings are black, two of them are tan from the factory, same thing on our new sequential. We're gonna copy and paste that over to here. So all you have to do is gently pull the bulb straight out and transfer them over. Now your reverse light bulb, of course, is gonna be unique, so find the housing that that fits first and then you should be able to work on the rest of them.All right, now once you have your bulbs transferred over, we're gonna install the harness into the vehicle first. Now before we get to that portion, I want to explain something to you. The back of the lights, these have to be re-installed into your new housing in a specific order. On the back of the bulbs, they're all labeled one, two, three and then the fourth one is blank. The blank one is gonna be your reverse light, that, of course, has its own spot. One, two, three has to go in that certain order. Now they sequence from the inside out, so you want to look at your taillight inside out, so this is gonna be one, two, three. So you want to install the bulbs in one, two, three just like that. And I'll show you guys on car. So first thing's first, let's install our harness.Now your new harness does have a new grommet, so you want to line that up to the open hole here by inserting the harness clip first and then lining this so that it snaps in around the edges, that'll provide a weatherproof seal. We can clip in the new harness. All right, you should hear that click. All right, now remember you want to find number one and install that closest to your license plate. Once you have that inserted, you can just give it a twist and it locks in. Number two is gonna go in the middle, twist and it locks in, and three on the end. And finally, the one that does not have a number is your reverse light, so put that on your bottom slot.Now we can pop off the plastic covers on the studs. Reinstall your taillight, and we're good to test them out. Grab those factory 11-millimeter nuts, thread those on by hand on all four studs, and then we'll tighten them down with our socket. Perfect. Now repeat for the other side.All right, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review and install for the Raxiom Smoked Taillights and Sequential Combo available for the '99 to '04 Mustang, '99 to '01 Cobras excluded. If you want to pick up the smoked lens and the sequential combo together, you could do so for about 300 bucks but they're also available individually. If you already have the housing and you just want the sequence, you can pick that up or vice versa. If you're interested for your own SN95 or New Edge, you can pick yours up right here at americanmuscle.com.