Welcome back to TSTDRVR!
We have a super busy day today, filled with a lot of family activities that require the truck, but before we head out i’m going to try and install the grill and the new headlights that i have on the f-150. I would love to give you a step-by-step walkthrough on everything that it takes to do that, but there’s plenty of videos on youtube that explain all of that. So instead we’re just gonna get to it because I’m time crunched.
OEM King Ranch Grille
Normally, everyone is itching to black out their F-150. Mine came with the Sport package, which basically means that it is blacked out already. The only thing that isn’t black is the grille, which is like a mineral gray color. Maybe it’s because i’m getting older, but i want to try chrome. So I picked up a King Ranch OEM grille from somebody on the facebook marketplace for around a hundred dollars. If you know, you know – These are about $600-700 if you buy them from anywhere else.
I then blacked out the top and bottom mesh parts and bought an overlay for the front Ford emblem so that we’ve kind of got that nice black and chrome look going. I'm not sure if I’m going to like it or not, but that's kind of the fun of this, right? Let’s install the grille, and see what it looks like.
VLAND Headlights
We’re also going to be installing these VLAND blacked out headlights. If you’ve been watching these, these are like impossible to get. I think I waited four months for these to come in. They’re really popular because they look just like the OEM headlights that you can get on a Sport F-150 that comes with the LEDS. I think these, with the grille, are going to look pretty sharp. Let’s find out!
Thumbs Down to Dynamic Turn Signals
The only thing that I’m not a big fan of with these VLANDS is the dynamic turn signals. In the instructions, they say that if you don’t want the dynamic turn signals then you can open this bottom part and disconnect the yellow wire, but the problem with going with cheaper parts is that there is no yellow wire. So it looks like we’re stuck with the dynamic headlights. I’m gonna have to read some forms to see if somebody figured out a workaround, but I didn’t really want those.
Moisture Control
I’ve read online in a few places that people have issues with moisture built up in the VLANDS, so they’re suggesting that you take a couple silica packets and put them in the bottom of the headlight and that should take care of it.
Pick a Harness
The harness from VLAND connects to all of the existing wires that go into the OEM halogen headlights. We installed the headlights using the black harness instead of the brown harness. I don't know the difference between the two. We also routed a wire into the fuse box.
Post-Installation Woes
And just like that. ladies and gentlemen. she’s done. It came out so well…
I kind of expected this, but i’m really kind of pissed off that this is happening. If I hit the flashers, you’ll see that it’s flashing on the inside of the truck, but let’s go take a look at the front end: We have one headlight that isn't flashing… Hello passenger headlight! Unfortunately, if we put on our passenger turn signal, it looks like it’s the same thing. That’s disappointing!
I guess that I’m gonna have to start reading the forums to figure out what the solution is. I seem to remember that somebody on one of the forums said that if they used a brown harness on the passenger side in the black harness on the driver’s side then everything worked well. But I’m not doing that today because that wasn’t a lot of fun to take apart, and I’m gonna do some more research to make sure that that’s the right thing to do. Maybe there’s something that I can do with forscan that can fix it?
I guess we don’t have a passenger turn signal, which is really just kind of stupid. Between the wheels rubbing, which I did spread the crash bars, and alleviated about 80% of the rubbing. I have a plan to get rid of the other 20%, but we’ll do that in the future. Sometimes, it just feels like when you do mods to your car you’re making it worse. I mean, we’re going to figure it out, but it is kind of annoying when you put in like two and a half hours to get this all done and it’s not perfect.
Let's Try Again
Alright, so I couldn’t let it go. I had to try and see if it was a different harness. Knowing that it’s not perfect is really driving me nuts, so what I did was that I systematically replaced the harness on each side and then tested. It turns out that the black harnesses are the best "bad" result. I get a hyper flash or no flash on the passenger side and the driver side turn signal always works. With the brown harnesses, there was like a flicker on the turn signals and so it kind of looked like like an emergency response vehicle. It was cool looking, but I’m pretty sure I may get in trouble running like that.
New LED Fog Lights
In order to make myself feel better, since I have the wheel well liners popped, I’m going to install some new led fog lights. I currently have LEDs in the stock housings, but I bought a brand new unit on Ebay. They’re pretty cheap, like around $50. I’ll post a link in the description.
We’re going to install these now, so I can feel better! :)
