How to do the light conversion
So, you have your car, you have all the parts, now you want to actually do the work. Expect it to take between one and two days to make a nice job of it. I have not bothered to note the colours of the cars wires feeding this and that, as if you are doing this job, I expect you are familiar enough with a 12v tester to be able to identify them anyway.
I am also not going to go into great detail about where you should route individual wires, you will find your own way that suits you. I will say that your black four core cable goes through the bulkhead from the engine bay above the pedals where there are other cables already. From there it can go behind the inner sill trims, under the back seat and into the boot in the existing ducting you will find.
If you speak to an auto-electrician or an American car specialist, they will tell you how they solder and shrink seal joints where they cut into the wiring. This is the best method of course, and superior to scotch-locks but you have probably been joining bits of wire to other bits of wire for years so use whatever technique you are happy with.
Four relays, sited in the boot, right hand side of the wheel well, attach the DIN rail to the two captive bolts that stick out there already with 10mm nuts and washers.
You are using the cars original feeds from the existing lights only to switch relays here. So spurs off your front indicators will switch the relays in the boot to work the back indicators. (And maybe back again to feed the repeaters too if you are not using LED’s), a feed from a front sidelight will feed your fog light switch, and out again to the fog light relay in the boot. A feed from the high level brake light will feed the relay for your new brake lights.
You need a live next, it doesn’t really matter if it is a battery or ignition live. Straight from the battery is safest I think, not forgetting to run it through a suitable fuse (or fuses according to your taste) first of course.
This battery live will loop and power all your lights and be split and routed through the relays accordingly. The four core cable that runs from front to back is 1) LH indicator, 2) RH indicator, 3) from fog light switch and 4) The new live to feed your new relays in the boot.
Drill a hole and site the fog lamp switch next to the main headlamp switch or nearby according to your taste. (As long as you can see it from the drivers’ seat.) An example is in the picture on the fog lamp page.
When you plug in your new Euro back lights, the reverse light and tail lights will work already, there are plugs in the box – with them you can wire up to your new feeds from the relays so they plug on the appropriate lights, they are labelled at the lamp so it is not rocket science. The old brake/indicator light feeds are dealt with by the Euro lights.
If you use modified lights (as opposed to Euro lights) you will need to put in resistors to slow the indicator flashers down and make the SJB think it is still doing the same job as before (Seek advice from the forums about exactly what and where if you are doing this).
Wire your relays according to the information on the relay page. Remember to fit your back EMF protection diodes, and be aware that it is imperative they are fitted the correct way round first time. If in doubt, read the diode section again. Take the earth feeds for your relays from the earth tag you will see nearby in the boot.
Time to take the headlamps out. The front bumper cover needs to come off – its only a few bolts. If you choose to drill the headlights and insert a sidelight rather than use “Angel Eyes”, take them out and do it slowly, upside down with an assistant nearby holding a vacuum cleaner tube next to the bulb hole. If you dont, you will fill the headlight with white plastic swarf (depending where you drill it) which is hard to remove. If you are using ‘Angel Eyes’ you just swap them over. Use the feeds from the original orange side marker light in the front bumper (that you should disconnect anyway for SVA) to power your new sidelights).
Your wing repeaters you can tap straight off your front indicators also; drill the appropriate hole in the wing to accept them. Lose the front amber marker light as described already, and to be on the safe side, take out the pop out rear red side marker units and remove the bulbs for the test. (Different testers take different views on those.)
And thats about it! The next thing you should do is use the plastic ducting you bought to enclose any wires out of the way, so it looks like a proper job. Tape and/or cable tie all new wires at 300mm intervals anywhere an inspector may see them: boot, under bonnet and above pedals. This is part of the SVA/IVA test so hide and disguise them well, he told me everything should look like the manufacturer did it. So no spaghetti junctions, visible scotch-locks (yuk!) or cock-ups! Everything else other than lights on the S197 Mustang should fly through a UK IVA/SVA test without difficulty at time of writing.
If you think I have omitted anything or made a mistake here, use the comment box below to say so.
