How to wire up export tail lights

[Lanter]

As the saying goes, "there's more than one way to skin a cat", this is my way to wire up exports.  I went this route to minimize the wiring changes made to the actual body harness of my car and concentrate almost all modifications to the tail light harnesses.   I ended up using my factory tail light harnesses with an added bulb that I pulled out of a junk yard harness.   Below is my crude wiring diagram I used, wire color in the diagram are arbitrary and do not reflect actual harness color.

 

 

So step 1 was to remove the tail lights and pull the harnesses off.  I then added one two wire bulb that will become the turn signal bulb.  I simply spliced into the ground wire located on the tail light bulb above it then ran the signal wire down the harness and to the factory plug.

 

Step 2 was to remove the brake light pin (happens to on a '98 be the only pin with two wires going into it).  I then removed the pin from the two wires with a pick after a lot of stuck fingers and patience.

 

Step 3 was to run the signal wire from the newly added turn signal bulb to the pin that use to contain the brake light wires, I re-crimped the pin onto the turn signal bulb signal wire and re-installed that pin into the factory 4 pin plug.

 

Step 4 involved adding a single weather proof plug that will now supply the brake lights with their signal from the third brake light.  I purchased two single 14 gauge weather pack connectors from McMaster Carr.  So I now moved the two brake light wires that were originally going to the factory 4 pin plug and crimped them into the new single pin plug.

 

Step 5 was adding the brake light signal wire.  This involved tapping into the third brake light, in my case the wire is located in a plug that goes to the trunk harness and is red in color.  I then ran the tapped wire to the tail lights and plugged it into the added single pin weather pack plug.

 

Step 6 you need to de-pin or cut the brake light signal wire located at the main distribution block behind the driver's kick panel.  Photos of where this block is located and what wire to cut can be found here: http://www.chythar.net/mustang/mustang_94-95_export_taillight_installation.html  (this link actually provides a great refrence for where items are located and how to dissassemble interior panels.)

 

Step 7 just involves replacing the factory flasher with a Tridon EP-27 "trailering" electronic flasher.  Reason here is the flasher works by operating with a known resistance across the turn signal bulbs, when one bulb goes bad the resistance changes since current can no longer flow across that bulb.  When this happens the flasher speeds up to alert the driver a bulb is bad.  Well in the factory case there are two turn signal bulbs in the tail lights, with the exports there is only a single bulb.  So the factory flasher is operating under the same conditions as a factory car with one bad turn signal bulb, hence the fast flashing turn signal.  Replacing with the trailering flasher which is made to operate under a different resistance valve slows the flasher back down since it is for a single tail light turn signal bulb.

 

It was late and dark out so I didn't take any pictures of the harnesses but if people are interested I can take some this weekend when it's light out.

 

Results:

 

 

 

[Serpent]

great write up. Thanx for posting this!!!!!!

[Steve-Oh]

Oh, this is for the fake one's