Over the license plate there is a housing that holds two lights meant to light up the plate a night. As I noted earlier, the wires to the lights had been cut some time in the past. I put together a wiring harness…well two leads inside of some shrink tubing…to go from where the wires had been cut to the housing. While I was at it I decided to clean up the housing by replacing the trim piece, putting in new lens on the lights and replacing the seals.
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Getting everything apart was fairly easy. The trim piece is held in place with a couple of end clips and some clips have tabs that hold the trim to the housing. A little time on the web I learned how to secure the clips. I was able to salvage two of the four clips but needed two new clips. For most of the suppliers, the clips were out of stock but I did find JBugs had them available. Really wanting to finish this project I decided to fabricate my own clips cutting them out of stainless steel fender washers. I also noticed the factory used some small rubber seals to help keep water out of the housing. Again, I salvaged a couple of the rubber seals but made some new ones out of inner tube rubber.
To install the clips you need a special tool that allows you to twist the tab in order to hold the clip in place. Working with an old screw driver I cut off the tip and then used a Dremel tool to cut a notch that would go over the tab.
With all the parts in hand I went to work to get the housing back together and installed on the car. The clips first slide onto the trim piece. They you line up the clips so the tabs will fit through the slots on the housing. Once in place and lined up I used my new tool to twist the tabs to secure the clips. I applied a little bit of silicone sealer to keep water out of the housing and then installed the light brackets. Finally, I was able to install the new lenses with new seals and the housing is ready to go back on the car.
The final steps were to connect the new wires, get the new housing seal in place and securing the housing with four screws. That was easy to write but getting the seal to fit right was a bit of a challenge…but with some patience it turned out pretty good. And now with lights on the license plate I do not have to worry about getting pulled over for non-operating lights.
