Pet Project: G’s Taillights With EDM OEM Style Rear Fog Lamp

I had a pair of authentic UKDM Prius G’s taillights with integrated rear fog lamp supplied by LS Japan and ordered through Tenso around late 2013’ish (or 2014? I cannot remember), but never gotten around to install it and ended up selling them to raise funds for our wedding in 2015.

I’ve been building, organizing and stocking up our garage now that we have one and I have perfect work and life balance, the available free time, opportunity to work on car projects and maintenance. I just opened up an old box full of Honda parts that I can make use of again:

In addition, I also recovered two set of 3rd gen Prius taillights that followed me around since 2014 (3 set of 3rd gen taillights if you count the one that came with my Prius that I swapped out for the Valenti). I got them at the salvage yard for about $50-$60 a pair at that time (Pyramid Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley). I figured at $50-$60 a set, they were a steal and I could make use of them for some future pet project.

Welp, that pet project is do-it-yourself blacked out Prius G’s style taillights with integrated rear fog lamp — just like the OEM set I owned years ago.

This project has been about a month in the making, mostly weekends, little by little. Here are some work-in-progress photos:

Unlike blacking out headlights, you can’t simply bake or run a heat gun along the seams of the taillights. They are sealed with plastic adhesive that hardens when cured instead of butyl rubber used for headlights that can be soften with heat. To blackout the taillights, I had to use a rotary tool with diamond cutter attachment. The time it takes to cut a tail lamp is about 20-30 minutes, depending on how skilled you are with your tool set.

A comprehensive DIY guide with video of the cutting process will follow in the subsequent weeks.

Plus an optional yet super simple mod that gives you a gradient fade on the rear parking lights:

Prius c maintenance DIY guides will follow now that my wife’s Prius c is approaching 75,000 miles on the odometer.

Stay tuned!

Update: 5/2/2018

I haven’t had the time to finish the write-up but did had the opportunity to install and test out the rear fog light during rainy weather earlier in the month of March. Here’s what the finished product look like: