Clear, JDM Front Side Marker Lights

If you’ve been wanting to do this modification, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet, do yourself a favor and go order a set right now. I had been meaning to do this ever since I purchased the car, but I was lazy and had other priorities. Then after my most recent ice racing adventure, I grazed a snow bank, causing no damage to my car other than snapping one of the clips on my right-hand side marker. I finally had an excuse to upgrade. I went with the OEM JDM version of the side markers because the less-expensive versions had a lot of complaints regarding condensation.

For those of you who haven’t messed with your side-markers yet… the way they mount to the car is one of the worst designs I’ve ever seen on a car. Not only does the design make them extremely prone to popping out, or being damaged if your bumper flexes enough during a light impact, but when you actually want to remove them without damaging the clips, it’s tricky and finicky and frustrating. The proper way to install these is to cut your wheel fully so that the front of the wheel is pointed into the fender. This gives you room to remove the three screw-poppers at the bottom of the fender liner, and one up higher near where the side marker is located. With that done, you can pull the fender liner away enough to see the inside of the fender. Then you stick a screwdriver through a hole behind the side-marker and use it to pop the side marker housing out. It’s a finicky way of doing it, and you always feel like you’re going to break something (and sometimes the clips get bent anyway no matter what you do.) You can see a more detailed write-up on FT86Club here.

Since my passenger one was already broken, I was able to just remove it without doing any of that. For the driver’s side one, I started doing the proper method, and then got frustrated when the screwdriver I had was too wide to fit through the hole behind the fender, so I just grabbed the side marker and yanked it out – not caring if the clips bent or broke since I was replacing it anyway. Installing the replacement units was relatively simple, but you have to exert a LOT of pressure on them to snap the clips back in, which again makes you feel like you’re going to break something. Once they were replaced, I tested them out, and was delighted to discover that when I had swapped by front bulbs for LEDs, I used white LEDs, rather than amber ones. So my front side markers are now white whether they are on or off (not technically legal, but I’ll take my chances!)

The end result surprised me. It’s a small change to replace that little yellow housing with a white one, but it rather dramatically impacts the way the car looks. With this change, the front of the car is significantly cleaned up, as it removes one more color from the mix. I’m absolutely loving the change, and wish I’d done it a long time ago. These aren’t the best photos, but here is the comparison.