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Replacing license plate lamp bulbs


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Hi everyone, new member here. I have a 2010 Transit Connect XLT that I drive as a fleet vehicle. Since it doesn't belong to me, I'm only making a few simple "mods" to it, one of which (or so I thought) is to replace the license plate bulbs with LED bulbs. The manual says to simply remove the lens on the housing and pull the bulb out. That is BAD info. The lens is glued to the black plastic housing, and as careful as I tried to be, I broke it. Once I broke it off, I could clearly see the glued surfaces.

Has anyone replaced their license plate bulbs? For now I just put the original bulb back in and reglued the lens, but a cracked lens will not do. I looked at "fordparts.com" and it shows the assembly as part # 13550 with a price of $6.48?? The bulb it shows separately available as # 13466 with a price of $25.00?! That makes no sense. It is the same part as the light bulb for the side markers, and they also show a price of $25.00. I'm going to have to contact a Ford dealer I guess. If anyone can shed light on this (pardon the bad pun) I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

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I went by the Ford dealer, they said that lower-priced part is the housing... so I ordered 3. One to replace the cracked lens for the time being, and 2 to play around with to figure out how to get at the bulbs.

On a side note, I did the interior bulbs and so far I'm pretty pleased with the outcome, though they could be brighter (reflectors in the light housings would help).

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Well since this kinda turned into the "LED light mod" thread, here are some pictures of the newest iteration of the lighting. I was inspired to add a set of Ikea Dioder lighting I had laying around the house when I realized the Ikea lighting ran on 12 volts DC. Heck why not?! So easy to mount, looks very clean, only an inch or so of wiring visible before tucking into the headliner. The combined light output of the LED festoons and the Ikea LED strips is phenomenal - I am so pleased with this, makes finding something at night MUCH easier.

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WOW! Looks great, so much brighter than the LEDs in the dome light alone....though that moody blue in the first photo is pretty swanky, reminded me of flying on Virgin airlines and their mood lighting.

So how did you wire in the IKEA lights? Do they turn off and on with the other dome lights' switch?? Do you have a photo 'how to' set up yet?

:drool:

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WOW! Looks great, so much brighter than the LEDs in the dome light alone....though that moody blue in the first photo is pretty swanky, reminded me of flying on Virgin airlines and their mood lighting.

So how did you wire in the IKEA lights? Do they turn off and on with the other dome lights' switch?? Do you have a photo 'how to' set up yet?

:drool:

The blue effect seems to be exaggerated greatly by the camera I took that picture with, although the LED replacement bulbs are on the bluish end of the scale. The pictures of the "finished product" are more color-correct as I took those with my dSLR. I cut off the original connectors on the IKEA wiring and tapped into the dome light wires in the cargo area using tap connectors. For the front I attached a piggyback terminal to the hot terminal on the dome lamp, and soldered a length of wire directly to the negative side of the bulb holder, both of which have standard male/female connections so I can unplug it and remove if necessary. This way the LED strips do in fact follow all the behaviors of the dome lamps. It's like the dome lamp on steroids. Since everything is LED's and the current draw is very low, I wasn't particularly worried about using the IKEA wires or those tap connectors.

I didn't take any pictures while doing it I'm afraid, it was raining outside.

I thought about the headlights and would love to do that, but since the van isn't mine, that falls into the "maybe if I'm still working for this company when the van is due to be replaced, I'll buy it from them and then mod it" category. :D

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Whoops, I forgot to mention the license plate lamps.

Boy is my face red. I got the parts from the dealer today, he was nice enough to give me a better price when he saw my work uniform so the lot of 3 only cost me about 16 bucks. Which is good, because when I went home and inspected them, I found the "back" part of the housing that is obscured by the body seal actually is a separate piece and snaps off! Haha, durrrrr.... but in fairness to me, the manual does a poor job of describing that one.

So to sum up, the lens is in fact glued in, but it doesn't matter because the whole housing is what comes off, not the lens. :confused:

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Edited by azdamay
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Haha, the Emeryville Ikea?? I didn't realize you were in the Bay Area. There are automotive-specific LED strips you can buy that don't need to be "hacked" like the Ikea lights. I just figured I'd put something unused to good use.

So you are planning on doing an HID install on yours? I would like to see pictures of that when you do it.

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Yep thats the Ikea, about 1.5 miles from home. :)

Ok well i saw some LED light strips on ebay, I just wasn't sure that they would be as good as the ikea. I guess I'll compare prices. The ikea ones are about $55 after tax for 4, and i already know they look good in the transit. :D

I'll keep you posted on the HID.

I saw the pic of your Transit in the intro forum--nice. The chrome rim rings look really good! I ended up getting Volvo rims for my transit. The rims are 17" and 7" wide but the overall tire/wheel diameter is the exact same as stock due to the lower profile tires so the speedo/odo don't get messed up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was gearin up to buy the LED lights from Fleabay ($16.00/pair) to save over the cost of the Ikea lights (msrp $49.99 for 4), and i thought, oh hell I'll check ikea's website to see if they have any sales.

Well since IKEA's stuff is so cheap they rarely have any big storewide sales, and as correctly predicted they had only about 8 items listed up for their big after christmas sale....but the LED lights were remarkably one of those 8 items---wow what are the chances!? So starting Sunday the ikea LEDs will be marked down to $14.99.

So if anyone else wants to do this LED mod get to your local Ikea this sunday! :yahoo:

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  • 2 years later...

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