I just bought and installed the 02-03 taillights on my 2000 TL. My question is about the harness that everyone is talking about. I bought OEM taillights, with all of the bulbs included. Everything seemed to be easy plug-and-play, I didn't see where I would need the harness. Is the harness only for those people who want to use their old lightbulbs with the new taillight?

 

there is a plug and play harness in the old tail light that you can jsut remove and put into the new one. no big deal

 

They changed one of the bulbs to another one on the newer style taillights.

 

They changed one of the bulbs to another one on the newer style taillights.


this is the prob. im having i went to the store to but the bulbs for the tails n there two completely different bulbs so am i going to need the harness or is there a way of getting around this. THANX

 

You must not have bought the OEM tails then. Aftermarket tails which look like OEM 02-03 tails but does not require another harness. It uses the same 7440 bulbs for turn sig as the 99-01 tails.

OEM 02-03 tails uses 1156 bulb instead of the 7440 bulb in the 99-01 Turn sig. Thats why it requires the new wiring harness ($32,call 1888RAYLAKS) The 7440 bulbs are too small for the 1156 holes.

If you look closely around the botton of the tail on the red area, you should see some small letters and SAE approve etc. It should say DEPO if it is aftermarket, Honda if it is OEM. If it does say HONDA and you can use the same 7440 bulb, that mean it is the Honda Inspire Taillight imported from Japan.

 

If you bought the OEM tails and don't want to buy the harness, you can basically electric tape the smaller 7440 bulbs into the holes. This will hold them in place and save you the trouble of buying a harness. The rest of the bulbs are the same. Only the turn sig is a different bulb.

 

well i bought 02 oem tails, they came with the harness and bulbs. the actual harness actually plugs right in to the old one

 

You got lucky, just like I did when I got mine.....they included the harness and the bulbs along with the lights.

You won't have to buy anything... typcally people will just send the light with out the wires and bulbs....you've got them already...enjoy!!

 

my car is in the shop so im not exactly sure what im looking at but when i went to pepboys to get the bulbs the 99 tls call for the 7440 which are white bulbs n the 03 tls call for the 1156 which are orange so i looked to see if they make the 7440 bulb in orange n i didnt see anything i looked at the back of the tails n all the holes seem to be the same size so i dont knoe if i need a harness to change from 7440 to 1156. i also looked at the outside on the bottom of the red n there is no letters saying HONDA,DEPO or SAE i ordered them from procarparts.com THANX

 

i so dont want to do this 99-01 to 02-03 conversion,.....its too common, now if someone can share the wisdom on blacking out the tails or making them fully red.....now that would look lovely on my NBP.

 

residualfreedom and elah, where did you guys order your taillights?

 

I got mine directly from a scrapper.... They probably didn't see a point to seperate the wiring harnes & bulbs from the actual tail light.

If I remember correctly, if you get the lights without the "proper" bulbs, the only difference between the two is the size of the connector the blinker light pulgs into..

So if you don't want to go to acura and buy the wiring harness that will allow everything to snap in and work like it is designed to.. you can "snap-lock" the brake light and and the reverse light like designed, however the one blinker light is different...it is smaller with the older cars, leaving the ability to "tape" the light into it's proper position even though it doesn't "snap" in can be held there with tape or a couple of tywraps..

I was lucky... I got my tail lights with both the wireing harness and that sponge grommet.