Replace broken tail lights with LED ones? Which is better.

Hello everyone!

My son broke one of the tail lights on my 05 expy. My options are replace with ebay used (salvaged) ones for about 50 quid or get a pair of LED tail lights which are tinted for about 150.

Wondering if any one have LED tail lights installed on your trucks and how they look and functions.

Any opinions are appreciated and pictures with them lit up would be nice too.

Thanks in advance.

No comment to your aftermarket question, but I believe you can also use the '07 and up Expedition taillights with very little modification. Slightly updated, but still OEM look, which I prefer.

Yeah there's plenty of sources out there for the stock tail light assembly. I think those "LED Tail Light Assemblies" should be restricted to the rice burners they were intended for. If you want an LED bulb there's tons of 'em out there too. But I would stick with the stock tail light assembly as far as cosmetics and function go.


-Mike


2005 Expedition Tail Light Assembly from A1 Auto

A lot of the aftermarket LED bulbs are crap and will not throw light in an OEM housing making them less bright. The few that will do decent are not cheap. I have thr Anzo LED tails on my Navi. The Expy version is exactly the same just without the inner set on the tailgate. They are brighter than the stock housings. They normal go for around $300 but I got them for $115 on Amazon.

mwhyes said:

No comment to your aftermarket question, but I believe you can also use the '07 and up Expedition taillights with very little modification. Slightly updated, but still OEM look, which I prefer.

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Would you be able to expanding a little? What type of mod would you have to do? Filing, drilling ETC? If you have a link to someone that did them would be great too. Cheers!

Hamfisted said:

Yeah there's plenty of sources out there for the stock tail light assembly. I think those "LED Tail Light Assemblies" should be restricted to the rice burners they were intended for. If you want an LED bulb there's tons of 'em out there too. But I would stick with the stock tail light assembly as far as cosmetics and function go.
-Mike2005 Expedition Tail Light Assembly from A1 Auto

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Nice price. Thanks.

Lostneye said:

A lot of the aftermarket LED bulbs are crap and will not throw light in an OEM housing making them less bright. The few that will do decent are not cheap. I have thr Anzo LED tails on my Navi. The Expy version is exactly the same just without the inner set on the tailgate. They are brighter than the stock housings. They normal go for around $300 but I got them for $115 on Amazon.

Click to expand...

I did not mean to install a LED bulbs in the housing. I ment to replace the whole housing. I did search for Enzo LED's on Amazon but found only the third brake lights on the roof line for sale. Any info would be appreciated.
Cheers

Since I'm working on a Saturday morning I looked up a few things. The Expy version is Anzo 321234. Its lightly smoked lens over a chromed LED housing. It's the only one they have listed on their site but they have non smoked(311096), black with chrome just where the LED/reverse lights(311097) are and a red lens(311076) one I found for the Navi. Any one the Navi ones will work they just come with extra lights that replace the inner tails on the tailgate of the Navi. I paid $115 on amazon for the 311097 but they are showing around $250-275 right now.

I also found IPCW 2nd gen tails in black or chrome that look a little more modern to me but seem to be over $300.

I did change the 3rd brake like too for the smoked ANZO one. I tried the Dorman one first that looks stock but says it's LED, it's not.

I have found if you leave items in your cart or shopping list on amazon they will sometimes send you coupons. I got my Magnaflow exhaust 25% off this way. And their prices fluctuate sometimes wildly if you check back every so often.

I wanna see a second gen with 3rd gen taillights in it! 3rd gen taillights would look very nice!! Anyone have pics of this, or are there threads of the conversion? I haven't seen any yet..

2005exp said:

Hello everyone!

My son broke one of the tail lights on my 05 expy. My options are replace with ebay used (salvaged) ones for about 50 quid or get a pair of LED tail lights which are tinted for about 150.

Wondering if any one have LED tail lights installed on your trucks and how they look and functions.

Any opinions are appreciated and pictures with them lit up would be nice too.

Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

i have IPCW LED tail lights...love them...enhanced the look i wanted to have for my truck...if you go on ebay you will see the different LED lights on the market...anzo...spyder...IPCW...

go into my album and you will see pics of my tail lights...maybe not the current lights i have to this day but you will see the chrome and maybe the smoked...i have black right now...

hendricksen11 said:

I wanna see a second gen with 3rd gen taillights in it! 3rd gen taillights would look very nice!! Anyone have pics of this, or are there threads of the conversion? I haven't seen any yet..

Click to expand...

this has been done...they fit but the angles are a little off since the 3rd gen has more straight lines...also the bulb sockets are switched AND the reverse light socket is too small to be direct plug and play...you will have to dremel or use whatever tool you prefer to make the hole bigger to feed the socket from the 2nd gen into the 3rd gen housing...i believe the user name was "expedition" who did this mod and one other person may have done it as well...but there are pictures of the differences in lights and write up of what needs to be done as i explained to make it work...once u do that ur good to go...

6K-Watts said:

the reverse light socket is too small to be direct plug and play...you will have to dremel or use whatever tool you prefer to make the hole bigger to feed the socket from the 2nd gen into the 3rd gen housing...i believe the user name was "expedition" who did this mod and one other person may have done it as well...but there are pictures of the differences in lights and write up of what needs to be done as i explained to make it work...once u do that ur good to go...

Click to expand...

The Navis have separate reverse lights on the tailgate. I switched to LED bulbs and wired up additional sockets for the Anzo lights to have 4 altogether. The hardest part was getting additional wires through the rubber grommet back inside the truck to wire up the new set of reverse light sockets. For someone who doesn't have or is not good with a dremmel but can do simple wiring this option might be better.

6K-Watts said:

i have IPCW LED tail lights...love them...enhanced the look i wanted to have for my truck...if you go on ebay you will see the different LED lights on the market...anzo...spyder...IPCW...

go into my album and you will see pics of my tail lights...maybe not the current lights i have to this day but you will see the chrome and maybe the smoked...i have black right now...









this has been done...they fit but the angles are a little off since the 3rd gen has more straight lines...also the bulb sockets are switched AND the reverse light socket is too small to be direct plug and play...you will have to dremel or use whatever tool you prefer to make the hole bigger to feed the socket from the 2nd gen into the 3rd gen housing...i believe the user name was "expedition" who did this mod and one other person may have done it as well...but there are pictures of the differences in lights and write up of what needs to be done as i explained to make it work...once u do that ur good to go...

Click to expand...

Your truck looks just like mine without the wheel... ..... Hahaha.. Same Green colour with gold trim. I installed Led tail lites just like yours (ebay....$ about 140 quids).
Fits and works great.
One thing I have noticed is that they are "Just about as bright as original tail lites."
I wished that it was a little brighter.

Now I'm searching for the 3rd brake light to match.
And may be black out the gold trim??
Thanks for posting up the pictures.

Cheers

PS. You might want to cut out your plates.