Color Ambient Lights fix for 2018

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gijosh28

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You're going to need the nylon panel poppers. I have had a lot of luck with this kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07917TDL6/?tag=fordraptorforum-20. This one looks cool too. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LUPOU1O/?tag=fordraptorforum-20. If you don't want to wait for Amazon, most auto-parts stores carry these kits on the shelf. Make sure you use nylon because that soft touch plastic scratches super easily and I haven't figured out how to buff it out yet (I did some damage near my center channel on another install). You also need a smaller flat head screw driver for getting the door handle covers off. You will need a hot glue gun because there is a liner inside the door panel that may need to be peeled back a little. I also used the hot glue gun to glue all the little clips and nutplates in place, which solved all of my rattling issues when the music is loud, and a socket wrench or nut driver (I can't remember the size - the video gave a metric but mine was an SAE). It really was not too bad.

Helpful videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCEIE8oEzr4&t=25s
This video was helpful in taking the door panel off, but when removing the handle cover the video below has a much better method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOaKQwPk69g&t=216s
At about 2:05 he shows you how to put the little flat head screw driver in the bottom of the handle cover. This is the right way to remove that.

Neither video covered a couple of things.
First, when you go to remove the small plastic plate from under the door handle, there are two lines to wedge your tool under. It is the lower line. You can see him doing this at about 0:19 in the first video.

Second when you put the panel back on go slow. There is no rush and the new style clips don't need to be jammed on like the panel clips of yester-decade. When you put the panel back on I would put the top on first and put it on at an angle. On the second video you can see him do this at about 4:01. He doesn't say he went at an angle but you can see he did. I feel like he should have emphasized the angle.

One last note: If you order an extra of one of the foot well kits, you can probably easily replace the shifter light and the light in the cell phone holder under the radio behind the sliding door. Those use the same type of led breadboard and connector. You will need to run an extra line to a scotch lock on the LIN line from the cup holders to the LIN line on the other two. The LIN carries the instructions for the LED to change color. You could always come back and do this later though. You will understand this when you see it, when you do your cup holder.

I wanted the foot wells brighter. Drilling a hole in the housing on the back ones didn't really do much. On the front ones, taking the little diffuser stick out, made them much darker. Pulling them out of the housing and just having them blaze down into the foot wells was WAY too bright. Tin foil made them a little better, but I am going to redo the tin foil on the front two to see if I can make them work better. I also bought a mirror and glass cutter to experiment with making my own housing.

List of parts to add color changing ambient lighting.
**Note: I don’t know why the front passenger door was a different code than the rest. It absolutely was the right piece though.
**Note: The cupholder light is from the F-250. Not the 17 Raptor. I guess they changed cup holders for 2018.
**Note: I may have the footwell lights marked wrong, but the part numbers are correct, and installation is very obvious for them. The fronts don’t look anything like the backs, and then they are unique from side to side because of color tape, etc.

Front/Left (Driver) Door: FL3Z-13C724-D
Front/Right (Passenger) Door: FL3Z-14A318-Y
Rear/Left (Driver) Door: FL3Z-13C724-F
Rear/Right (Passenger) Door: FL3Z-13C724-E

Cupholder: HC3Z-14A318-E
Glovebox: FL3Z-14A318-R
Front Footwell: FL3Z-14A411-F
Front Footwell: FL3Z-14A318-Q
Rear Footwell: FL3Z-14A318-N
Rear Footwell: FL3Z-14A318-L
 

Kbobk

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Is this to change the bulbs so we can change the color of the ambient lighting in the truck from the stick blue?
 

MurMech

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Thanks for the write-up I enjoy my blue color, can you only change it to once so if I wanted a different color I would have to reinstall?
 
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gijosh28

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Is this to change the bulbs so we can change the color of the ambient lighting in the truck from the stick blue?

Thanks for the write-up I enjoy my blue color, can you only change it to once so if I wanted a different color I would have to reinstall?

Make these changes, and enable ambient lighting on the APIM with Forscan and you can change the colors whenever you want. These are the instructions and part numbers for changing to the leds that can change color.
 

HotLap

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Make these changes, and enable ambient lighting on the APIM with Forscan and you can change the colors whenever you want. These are the instructions and part numbers for changing to the leds that can change color.

gijosh, excellent write up and thanks for sharing. Question: once the Ambient color functionality has been enabled via ForScan, do you have the ability to dim/brighten the ambient lighting level? I'm thinking I like the blue but miss the ability to increase the brightness? If I could enable this via FORScan that would be excellent...thanks!!
 
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gijosh28

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gijosh, excellent write up and thanks for sharing. Question: once the Ambient color functionality has been enabled via ForScan, do you have the ability to dim/brighten the ambient lighting level? I'm thinking I like the blue but miss the ability to increase the brightness? If I could enable this via FORScan that would be excellent...thanks!!

On the ambient lighting menu you can actually drag the color sliders up and down to intensify the light output, but honestly it doesn't have a very high margin. I don't know of a Forscan mod to make them brighter. Some suggested that using the Lincoln color schemes made the lights brighter. I tried it and it didn't seem any brighter to me, and I hated the Lincoln background and Welcome screen. In the driver and passenger footwell, if you just pull out the little light diffusing stick it gets darker. If you pull the lights out of the holder and just tape the little circuit board to the mount aiming down, it is WAY too bright. I took tin foil and lined the plastic holder (shiny side out), and covered the top of the holder, and it increased light output pretty well. I bought a mirror I was going to cut to try to mount to the back of the holder, but never got around to it. The tin foil almost gets it to where I wanted it.

@Livnitup might be able to shed some light on increasing the Ambient Light output.
 
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Rob O

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**Note: The cupholder light is from the F-250. Not the 17 Raptor. I guess they changed cup holders for 2018.

Excellent write up. Thanks. Had this feature in my 2015 Platinum and it was fun to change things up from time to time.

The 2018 key is a revised design, and appears to be shaped slightly different than the old one (2017 Raptor / 2015-2017 F150). Because the "hidden key compartment" (for coding MyKey) is in the cupholder, perhaps the 2018 has a revised part and thus new part#?
 

Sonicsunspot

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Thank you GIJosh28 for the write-up on this. I used several sources to complete this, but your write-up is by far the best to update ambient lights on GEN2s. Mine work perfectly after I ordered the harnesses from Tasca.

The next step for me is adding a few more lights, but at $40 a harness it's not cheap (and COVID has made them a 2-3 month wait from Tasca and Auto Nation) and I would love to upgrade the old harnesses I pulled from my Raptor with the color LEDs from the pre-2018s. LED boards are cheap, and why pay for the wiring harness when I already have them?

Problem is getting the LED boards. I have searched everywhere and can't find them. I am guessing Ford doesn't have their own LED board manufacturing facility, and that Ford outsources these. But they may not be a COTS board either (why I cannot find them on internet).

Here is a picture of the LED boards "side-by-side" - top pic is the "old" single color LED board (ice blue). Bottom is the multi-color LED board. As you can see both have the 3-wire config, same green/gray/black wires. But the boards are very different. If anyone has any way to find these boards, it's an easy soldering job to swap them out.

image0.jpeg
 

Raptor18Actual

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Thank you GIJosh28 for the write-up on this. I used several sources to complete this, but your write-up is by far the best to update ambient lights on GEN2s. Mine work perfectly after I ordered the harnesses from Tasca.

The next step for me is adding a few more lights, but at $40 a harness it's not cheap (and COVID has made them a 2-3 month wait from Tasca and Auto Nation) and I would love to upgrade the old harnesses I pulled from my Raptor with the color LEDs from the pre-2018s. LED boards are cheap, and why pay for the wiring harness when I already have them?

Problem is getting the LED boards. I have searched everywhere and can't find them. I am guessing Ford doesn't have their own LED board manufacturing facility, and that Ford outsources these. But they may not be a COTS board either (why I cannot find them on internet).

Here is a picture of the LED boards "side-by-side" - top pic is the "old" single color LED board (ice blue). Bottom is the multi-color LED board. As you can see both have the 3-wire config, same green/gray/black wires. But the boards are very different. If anyone has any way to find these boards, it's an easy soldering job to swap them out.

View attachment 141635

Ford doesn't do their own electronics design, and definitely not their own electronics manufacturing. All of that is outsourced to suppliers, and not COTS, hence why you're not able to find these readily available online.

The boards you posted were made by Pacific Insight (the PIEC lettering in the bottom pic), a competitor to a company I worked for in a previous life. The 3 wires are because these are controlled by Local Interconnect Network (LIN - you can see that lettering on the gray wire in the top pic). I don't remember where exactly the LIN master was, but I want to say BCM. The BCM talks with the lamp over the LIN network to turn the lamp to turn on or off (and in the case of RGB, which color). The lamp can also report status if required (e.g. dead LED, short circuit, etc).
 

Sonicsunspot

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Agreed - I was just hopeful I could find the 3-wire (bat, LIN, grd), multicolor 12V LED boards or something like them to mock up my own lights using the old connectors and harness wires I had leftover after I upgraded my ice blue lights.

Some of the folks on the board have a lot more time invested in this than I do (and I am grateful!), figured someone might have explored swapping out the LED boards as an option. Across several of the Raptor and F150 forums I have seen that people mentioned it, but no solutions I could see other than buying all new pre-2018 harnesses.

I am very happy with the results after swapping the original 10 harnesses. I couldn't have done it without the efforts of the folks on this board.
 
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