XLT to LARIAT LED third brake light

Inklesstako

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I’m new to the forum and I’ve had my XLT for a few months now. I thought I’d share what I did to swap my XLT third brake light over to a lariat one. I was pretty bummed after I found out mine wasn’t LED. WTF Ford. It’s bad enough they penalize the non lariat guys with the headlights.

Anyway, I found a wrecked lariat in a junkyard and scooped up the third brake light. That poor truck only had 250 miles on it. Unfortunately the front end was wiped off it. Probably why it was totaled, 3k in headlight damage alone.

so I just figured it would be a 100% direct swap. Well not so fast. Ford didn’t want to make it THAT easy. I removed my antiquated bulb unit, it’s just the 4 obvious screw LS and a torq bit. I quickly learned the harness to unplug it is in the truck under the headliner. Not hard to get to, but just a heads up. So I pulled out the old one and without looking at the new one vs the old one too much I stuck the connector through the hole in the cab and went into the truck to plug it in and declare victory...

after fumbling around blind (because I didn’t pull the headliner down) for about 5-10 min without success getting the new plug to go in the cab harness I decided to compare the 2 plugs. Whoops. Ford pulled a fast one and made the connector shape just different enough so as a guy couldn’t swap them.

I ended up popping out the wires and (de-pinnning) swapped my XLT connector onto the lariat LED light. The wires are the exact same color and once I did that I was able to complete the swap. Everything works perfectly as it should!

so the swap is possible, but sourcing the part and dealing with the connector are the hurdles. A guy could easily cut the plugs off and use crimp style connectors or solider them on. But by simply getting a very small tool in the plug you can release the wires one by one and replace the plastic part. To me that seems like the most professional way to go about it.

hope this helps someone!

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Msfitoy

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All information in these forums are in some way helpful to others. Thanks for sharing OP but definitely not for me.
 
OP
OP
Stockranger

Stockranger

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Msfitoy

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