79-82 Tail lights.

DARCA

New Member
Nov 19, 2008
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Tacoma, WA
Ok, I was wandering around my local wrecking yard. And came a crossed a rusted out Orange vinyl top 81 mustang. I was poking around it and noticed it had some pretty sweet looking tail lights, as I am new to the mustang world I'd never seen them before. I'd really like to see these on my '88. So now after searching high low on the interwebz I have only been able to come across 1 on ebay. I am assuming they will fit fine. But I'd like to be sure. Does anyone have pictures of these tail lights on there aero body foxs?

Ebay link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Part....c0.m245&_trkparms=72:543|65:12|39:1|240:1318

-Thanks
 
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The taillight panel where the taillights actually bolt on to is different on the 79-82 cars; so those tails wont bolt right onto a '83+ car without some kind of modification to the taillight panel. Thats part of the reason why you dont see to may folks with those tails on later cars.
 
The taillight panel where the taillights actually bolt on to is different on the 79-82 cars; so those tails wont bolt right onto a '83+ car without some kind of modification to the taillight panel. Thats part of the reason why you dont see to may folks with those tails on later cars.


Correct.

Hm, ok, So anyone here done this modification?


Me!! Project 81 Hack Job. I put 87-93 LX lights in this car. The bulb configuration is totally different. You cannot bolt them in nor will the sockets fit through to twist in the tails.

I have a before pic on my pc at home. I'll edit and post it tonight around 9:00-9:30pm.




AFTER: I didn't spend tons of time making it look all pretty because it's covered up, but I did make sure there were no leaks after and they was not.I had to weld a bunch of metal to make the new ones work, so you...would have to cut out metal from a 83-93 tail panel to get the 79-82 lights to fit. It was a lot of work. It's not worth it on your car if it's a complete running car. On a project car, well...everything is a ton of work, so to me it did not matter.

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AFTER AFTER!!
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I personally love the old tail lights. One bad thing about them is they're not very bright, probably because the plastic is much thicker. I have a set and i had toyed with the idea of putting them on mine but decided against it because of the body work needed to make it work right.
 
I personally love the old tail lights. One bad thing about them is they're not very bright, probably because the plastic is much thicker. I have a set and i had toyed with the idea of putting them on mine but decided against it because of the body work needed to make it work right.

Good point. They are not bright at all. They take the old school twist in bulbs which suck.

One thing you can do to make them bright though, is to take the lens off the backing and paint the backing a nice bright silver. Many of the fox tails develop molding, or the factory silver backing peels off because of age. I painted the backing of Hack Job silver and maaaan those lights were bright.

See..
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Good point. They are not bright at all. They take the old school twist in bulbs which suck.

One thing you can do to make them bright though, is to take the lens off the backing and paint the backing a nice bright silver.
Many of the fox tails develop molding, or the factory silver backing peels off because of age. I painted the backing of Hack Job silver and maaaan those lights were bright.

+1
Back when I had my LX tails I gave the stoplights a fresh coat of silver, then I painted the backup/turn signal part black and it gave it a nice smoked look. But now I have Cobras so I painted the whole housing silver.

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+1
Back when I had my LX tails I gave the stoplights a fresh coat of silver, then I painted the backup/turn signal part black and it gave it a nice smoked look. But now I have Cobras so I painted the whole housing silver.

stang2.jpg



Wow!!! :nice: Nice job man. That does look sick! I never thought of doing that. It is totally noticeable. :nice:
 

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