Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com and today we're taking a quick look at, installing and light testing the Raxiom Gen5 Tail Lights available for the '05 to '09 Mustangs. You should be checking these out for your own early S197 if you're looking to ditch the factory, boring, red, clear housing, outdated taillights for one that is extremely popular out on the road. These are Gen5s, similar to the new Coyote '13 and '14 tail lights, the iconic new S197 tribars. These have built in LEDs to be brighter, more attractive and in more modern technology than your factory lights on the early S197s. And with that, they also have a built in sequential harness. So that means not only are you getting the updated LED technology. You're also getting the modern sequential with your turn signals and your brake lights. So that's something that is highly anticipated and highly coveted with these taillights and with taillights in general. Everybody's looking for the new rave of the sequentials. This is something that you don't have to worry about picking up separately. It's built in all in one kit.Now this guy here does come with a black housing and a smoked lens for the utmost stealthy and aggressive taillights in the category. These are definitely a showstopper and everybody with an S197 in my opinion should be picking these up. This guy does have a plug and play styling so you don't have to worry about any wiring, no splicing, no cutting, no modifications. It's a direct bolt-on and a direct plug and play. The kit comes in right around 350 bucks for the pair. So you get the driver and passenger side and everything is already built in ready to go right out of the box. No need to swap anything over from your factory lights. They plug in right to the factory connectors.The install for these I'm giving one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. Literally anybody can tackle this with about 30 minutes in the driveway at home. All you need is a ratchet and an 11 millimeter deep socket and you'll be able to get the job done. Now I'm gonna show you every single step of the process starting with getting your factory lights off. So what do you say we get started?Tools used in this install include a 1/4 inch ratchet and an 11 millimeter deep socket. First step here. Pop the trunk of course. We're gonna start on our driver side to remove our factory tail light. Top left here you'll see a little ring 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 necessarily 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. So what we're gonna do now is grab a 10 millimeter socket to get this bolt off and disconnect our harness.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 hands. 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 light. So straight from the back I like to pull right back on this black trim piece. You're just gonna 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.We got our factory tail light off of the driver side of our '06 GT behind me. It's on the table next to a Raxiom Gen5. Let's talk about some of the similarities and differences. Now I wanna start with the similarities, right. The housing is pretty much the only thing that's the same aside from the connector. Because it's plug and play it'll connect right in similar, if not exactly identical to the factory harness. Now the housing itself is made from the same quality plastic as the OEM option. It's gonna fit the exact same, it's gonna feel the exact same but it's gonna look totally different.Moving on to those differences you'll see the housing does have a smoked lens on the outside, black interior lens on the inside. So the housing on the inside has that completely decked out stealthy look. The smoked on the outside gets rid of that clear transparent lens and gives you something that's a lot stealthier, a lot more aggressive while still allowing the proper amount of light output to get through in order to be DOT compliant. Comparing that lens to the factory one, this is a clear lens with a red interior. Very reflective housing. So really night and day difference there. Inside you'll find the new LED technology. You'll find the running lights all around each of the tribars here. That's reminiscent of that Coyote styling, the S197 styling or the Gen5. So that's what you're seeing in the new housing.The old S197 styling as far as '05 to '09 goes, you'll see it is very traditional, very basic. My opinion, pretty outdated. The '13, '14 Coyote lights are absolutely iconic and that's really what you're getting here compared to the old S197 styling. You're also getting a complete set of LEDs. Usually when you see aftermarket lights like these, you'll get new running lights, new tail lights but you'll reuse factory incandescent reverse lights or halogen lights. These are going to be complete LED start to finish. You don't transfer a single thing over from the factory housing. Really out of the box it plugs right in, nothing needs to be taken apart from the OEM. So that's something I really like about it.Let's quickly flip these around and talk about that plug and play harness. The harness here on the new one plugs right in, already works with the LEDs. And this harness unlike your factory one already has the sequentials built in. so that's something I also really like. Some of the aftermarket ones nowadays are compatible with Raxiom sequentials. This one actually comes with it built into the housing. It's already set up for you which is one of my personal favorite things about this tail light. It already comes with a weather grommet so you don't have to transfer that over. And the plug and play style connector makes sure you don't have to do any splicing. So with all that in mind, we're gonna toss this guy aside and because we don't have to transfer anything over, let's just get to the install.All right. First step here. I'm actually gonna take this resistor on the harness which has 3M attached to the back of it and I'm gonna just stick it somewhere. Now you can stick it to the body of the vehicle. I would suggest sticking it either in here where it's not gonna obstruct the install or just tuck it in somewhere on the back of the tail light. Now if you're doing it to the tail light, you wanna make sure that it's not gonna be touching anything side to side. So here we have gaps. That's gonna be fine. You just wanna make sure this isn't gonna cause any melting of the plastic. Now if you're just sticking it to the 3M just like this without it actually touching anything, then it shouldn't be a problem. And also the same thing if you attach it to the metal or the body of the vehicle. We've got that taken care of. I'm gonna take this harness now, feed it into this slot and plug that grommet in. Just gonna push right where the wiring is, just push in and it gets stuck. So now what we can do is mount our tail lights. Feed those studs into the holes, line it up and push it right in. All right. So first thing we wanna do is plug in that harness. So you're gonna take the new plug, plug it right into that factory connector. Hear it snap. And then from there, let's work on our nuts.All right, let's tackle this top stud since it's right here. I'm just gonna peel back that black trim, thread on the factory nut. Don't need any new hardware. This guy goes right on. I'm gonna seat these all the way down, 11 millimeter socket, deep socket and then tighten it down. Now we can do the same thing to the other two studs. All right. So at this point, we're gonna peel back our carpet liner, grab the remaining two nuts and just thread these guys on. There's the top one and the bottom one's down here. All right, so now you can grab your socket and tighten them down.All right. Last step here on this side is to grab that little twist-on plastic clip here. We're gonna put it back on the stud. Give it a couple of swings and tighten it down. Repeat that for the other side.Well, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review and install for the Raxiom Gen5 Tail Lights for the '05 to '09 Mustang. Now if you wanna pick this up, you can do so exclusively right here at americanmuscle.com.