ZRE JDM Tail light globe switch

[dutchie101]

Hey'all.

JDM Tail light switch guide

No "rice" comments this time please

This is an awesome JMD style tail light switch. Your parkers are now in the middle of the taillight, making the rear look tight and thin. Not that there is anything wrong with tight asses B)

Now typical JDM style is to make the rear look fatter, wider and more full... I am talking about the rear of the car still, trust me :) Your brake light is in the middle as standard. Not cool, not fat.

This guide swaps these two lights around, moving the parkers to the outside, widening the look of the rear, and moving the brakes to the center, making them shine brighter upon illumination also.

The finished swap will look like this. Sorry for the over exposed pics but you get the idea:

Now lets start.

1. TAIL LIGHT REMOVAL

Now, before you go cutting anything, i can tell you that the swap can be made without extending the wiring. You can stretch the wiring to reach, it will make it with some serious stretching, but puts a lot of strain on the wiring and associated sockets, not good. I opted for a simple extension of the parker wires. This tech goes through the extension process.

First step is simple, remove the rear tail lights. All you need is a 10mm ring spanner or 10mm double ended spanner and a largish flathead screw driver and a pair of needle nose pliers if you like. OK,open the access panels found in the rear corners of the boot space.

You will see two protruding bolts, one near the bottom and one towards the top. Both with 10mm nuts on them, loosen and remove these, dont drop the nuts or you wont see them ever again :) Next, you will see two blue clip tabs. The bottom clip has tabs can be squeezed in to free up the clip, and the top one is a little harder. Use the screwdriver to squeeze the bottom tab of the top clip, and then postion the screwdriver above the clip to push down on the clip and 'squeeze the clip top free the light. You will see what i mean when you try it.

Unclip the loom plug and now you have your lights free. Yay!

This is the standard setup for the left tail light:

2. LIGHT SWAP AND EXTENSION

Ok, now undo both globes, and move the brake to the center hole. Good stuff. Easy.

Now get two wires for extending the parker, around 10cm is fine. You will need 4 wires all up, 2 for each side.

Neatly snip the parker wires in the middle, giving you plenty of room to move. Strip the wires back around 10-15mm.

Twist the corresponding wires together, the loom side first, solder and slip over 2 pieces of heat shrink per wire. Neatly solder the joins. Again twist the plug side wires together with the extension wires, solder and slip the heat shrink over both joins and heat with heat gun or lighter to shrink. repeat with the other wire.

Options other than solder

Just checked out the Narva range. I dont know how good these are, but its worth putting them up for those that can or don't solder their joints.

Narva cable joiners - item 56056BL i think

Narva solder splice - item 56382 should be good

Narva heatshrink terminals/joiners - item 56350 should be right

Some of these come in a pack of 50 or 25. Prob more than you need. Last option is to drop into you local auto electrician, they should do it for 20 bucks or so.

You should now have nice and neat extension of those parker wires. Simply slot that parker into the outer housing and your done.

Like this:

Tuck away those extended wires, replace the light, clip in, do those nuts up and away you go.

Repeat for the other side and you done!

PS: I changed the 5W T10 globes in the parkers to 8W T10 globes. I had these spare after changing my map globes for flux type 9x led T10's.

Hope this all made sense and enjoy your plump ZRE!!

Edited December 15, 2009 by dutchie101

[Squall0011]

That's a pretty cool look, too bad I own the sedan :(

But there are way's to mod them too... Which I have done :D

[Ascendant Rice]

Damn guy thats bad *****!!!!!!! nice work simple but awsome mod

[juvenile]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

[flipsta24]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

you read my mind john....LOL i might give it a go....meeting up with KevO tomorrow so might try it then

[Ascendant Rice]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

you read my mind john....LOL i might give it a go....meeting up with KevO tomorrow so might try it then

if yours goes good would u do mine if i payed you :D

[master.Cuong]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

you read my mind john....LOL i might give it a go....meeting up with KevO tomorrow so might try it then

mee want in LOL

been afk from this part of forum soo long :(

what i missed ?

[juvenile]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

you read my mind john....LOL i might give it a go....meeting up with KevO tomorrow so might try it then

if yours goes good would u do mine if i payed you :D

Me too, i can fit four ZRE's in my garage, bring parts and i can pay with pizza as well :D

[Whitey1212]

Oh this looks cool!

Can you fit a fifth car in your driveway, John? :P

[flipsta24]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

you read my mind john....LOL i might give it a go....meeting up with KevO tomorrow so might try it then

if yours goes good would u do mine if i payed you :D

Me too, i can fit four ZRE's in my garage, bring parts and i can pay with pizza as well :D

sounds good to me :) name a day and time and i'll shall see what i can do ;)

Charlie

[GTL05T]

Oh Pete, love your work

Well Sydney, we going to do it? Charlie? ;)

you read my mind john....LOL i might give it a go....meeting up with KevO tomorrow so might try it then

if yours goes good would u do mine if i payed you :D

Me too, i can fit four ZRE's in my garage, bring parts and i can pay with pizza as well :D

sounds good to me :) name a day and time and i'll shall see what i can do ;)

Charlie

Make that SIX!!! Zre photoshoot aswell???

[juvenile]

Oh this looks cool!

Can you fit a fifth car in your driveway, John? :P

Yep, sure can.. ;)

[flipsta24]

did the mod today, took 20mins all up, no need of cutting wires but as pete said there is just slight stretching but if you undo the electrical tape and and re-tape it in the right spot there is no need of cutting and rewiring....i'll put some pics up tonight if i can get some photos done

Charlie

[KevO]

Legend

[dutchie101]

Yeah i noticed that the passenger side was easily stretchable, but for some reason the drivers side was way shorter. Way too much pressure on the other globe. (the reverse was it? cant remember) I decided to extend mine, cause the first time i tried to extract the now outside placed parker, due to the tightness on the wires and angle of removal, i lost my globe in the lens! Arghh, i wasnt going to have that happen again! Mind you, i am prone to silly screw ups like that, i just wanted to eliminate any chances. :) Extensions do give you more room to move, but like i said, you can get away without it.

[JE-55-EA]

That's a pretty cool look, too bad I own the sedan :(

But there are way's to mod them too... Which I have done :D

Any pics??? :D

[master.Cuong]

did mine today with the help of charlie the legend :D

[Ascendant Rice]

all boast no pics!!!

[GTL05T]

I just did mine, its a piece of P155 to do!!! Cheers for the guide dutchie.

Edited December 24, 2009 by GTL05T

[dutchie101]

No probelmo. :) glad to be of assistance. Looks much better doesnt it? :D

[GTL05T]

No probelmo. :) glad to be of assistance. Looks much better doesnt it? :D

Hell yeah it does!! I was looking at it tonite, I was like damn that looks hell of a lot better!! It really does look phat! Good work bro, thanks for showing us how to do it!!! Merry Christmas!!

[Speed_Chaser]

I am planning to probably make this mod to my Auris someday and would really like to see some pictures too... I have a bit different lights compared to the ones you have, but I'm sure I will be able to make it work.

[kristof-auris]

@ alex-C :

i have the same tail lights , its easy to change the lights ....

you just have to switch the blue and green wire on the left side on the picture here :

now i need some stronger bulbs for the stoplights ....

Edited February 14, 2010 by kristof-auris

[Speed_Chaser]

Kristof! You're here too. That's very nice to see you man :)

Yea I know I have a scheme where I have meanings of the wires. It is also easy to check the wires with a voltmeter. Do you know if it's easy to find stronger bulbs (=globes)? Stop lights and parkers have different types of bulbs and I haven't yet investigated if there is stronger ones but the right type...

Oh and maybe for you or someone else with the same lights here is the scheme, maybe it will be useful at some stage. Remember to make sure you're doing the right thing my double checking this scheme using voltmeter!

Their significations are like this:

for the left tail lamp:

5 is the ground

4 - parking light

3 - brake

8 - left signal indicator

7 - rear fog lamp

6 - reverse lamp

for the right lamp:

5 - ground (minus)

6 - parking

7 - brake

1 - right signal

4 - reverse

These are for TMC production models. For TMUK, TMMT models, at the left lamp no.6 is not connected.

Best regards, Alex

[kristof-auris]

Do you know if it's easy to find stronger bulbs (=globes)? Stop lights and parkers have different types of bulbs and I haven't yet investigated if there is stronger ones but the right type...

i dont know what types of bulbs i have for the park-or brake lights....