If there's one thing you should know about John, the owner of this 2013 F150 5.0L STX Project Truck, it's that he has a crippling addiction to lighting upgrades. It's sad, and he needs the kind of help that only licensed metal health professionals can provide. In any case, it means that our 5.0L F150 project truck was pretty much destined to have every single bulb and lighting component replaced, on top of adding a bunch of off-road LED lights and light bars to brighten up the night. Thus it was done, and our 2013 F150 is a pinnacle of lighting madness.
First up is ANZO's U-Bar Projector Headlights for the 2009-2014 F150s. We've been meaning to get our hands on the ANZO U-Bars for a while now, as they're one of the more unique F150 headlight options out there, but we just never seemed to make it happen. However, we got them up and running on our 2013 F150 5.0L with awesome effect. The U-Bar Halos that droop down under the low-beam and high-beam lenses look awesome at night and during the day, while the low-beam projector lens has a clean beam cutoff while still allowing a lot of light output. 09-14 F150 ANZO U-Bar Projector Headlights
With the headlights swapped out, we needed the rear taillights to match. Our 2013 F150 project is going for a black-and-blue styling theme, so we grabbed ourselves a pair of 2009-2014 F150 Spyder Smoked LED Taillights. These taillights have a smoked lens with some chrome in the housings and feature rows of LED lights instead of halogens for a modern look. The end result is a more dark and aggressive look that is a great match to other smoked lighting components on our truck. Unfortunately, we no longer have these specific LED taillights in stock, but find something similar within our selection of F150 taillights.
Later on in the build process we actually swapped out the Spyder taillights for these Anzo G2 LED Taillights so you'll notice photos of both scattered throughout the build pages. These Anzo lights have black housings, multiple rows of bright signaling LEDs and hyper-aggressive swept LED styling strips that completely alter the look of our F150's rear end. The black housings with clear lenses allowed us to maintain all brightness of the lights while still fitting the blacked out color scheme we've been running with. 09-14 F150 ANZO G2 LED Taillights
Since we replaced the taillights we decided to add a little more visual flare to the back of our F150 by throwing on a Recon 60" White Lightning Tailgate LED Light Bar. While the tailgate bar doesn't necessarily have a practical purpose, it does give the back of our truck a more unique look and that's still a plus in our book. We wired our bar directly to the taillights so that we wouldn't have to unplug the connector in order to tow. Recon 60" White Lightning Tailgate LED Light Bar
We only had the factory side mirrors installed for a short time before replacing them with the larger tow mirrors, but for that brief period we had a set of smoked Recon Amber LED side mirror lights installed. The smoked lenses match all of our other smoked lighting upgrades and the amber LEDs are a nice touch that have a clean factory look but are brighter then the standard mirror lights. F150 Recon Side Mirror Amber LEDs (Smoked)
One of our favorite lighting upgrades is the Halo Lifts Amber LED Grille Light kit. This upgrade is essentially a requirement for all Stage 3 builds at this point. This simple lighting kit uses a bracket with 3 amber LED's that mount up behind your truck's grille to create a similar look to the amber LED's found on the front of F150 Raptors. The install was clean and simple and the result is a fresh, unique lighting upgrade for the front of our F150. However, we no longer stock these specific lights from Halo Lifts, but if you love the look just like we do, shop similar F150 LED Grille Lights.
Next in line for replacement were the factory F150 fog lights. We went ahead and installed Recon's LED smoked fog lights to match all the smoked lighting features we have scattered throughout the truck. The brighter LED lights helped carry a more modern style on the front of our F150 and the housings were a direct replacement for the factory units. 09-14 F150 Recon LED Fog Light Kit Smoked
We tackled all of our truck's standard halogen and incandescent bulbs by replacing them with Diode Dynamics LEDs. And by all I mean ALL. We started out by dumping the Recon fog lights for the Diode Dynamics XML2 LED bulbs before we hit the rear of our truck with XP50 LED Backup Bulbs. Our ANZO U-Bars got a pair of HP24 Front Switchback LED Bulbs and then we updated the interior of the truck with an SMD12 LED Dome Light Kit. Basically all of our truck's signal and accessory lighting got a huge boost in output along with a great, new look over the bland yellowish halogen and incandescent light colors. It's also worth noting that all of these lights were simple plug-and-play replacements for the factory bulbs. As great as these lights perform, most of the lights and replacement bulbs we used have been discontinued, with the exception of the Diode Dynamics HP24 LED Front Switchback Turn Signal Bulbs. Check out our inventory of comparable F150 Lighting Upgrades to light up the night.
With the basic stock replacement lights taken care of, it was time to get more extreme with a little help from our friends and cross-town neighbors over at Rigid Industries. We were out for enormous levels of forward lighting while also keeping a clean look. We started the process by adding a Rigid 28" E-Series LED Off-Road Light Bar in a custom mounting behind our truck's grille. Next, we threw in a quartet of Rigid Dually White Spot Pattern Off-Road LED Lights in the upper portion of the front grille, before adding a pair of Rigid D2 Driving Off-Road LED Lights on the truck's mirrors facing forward. However, the light bar we used on this build is no longer in stock, but we have plenty of similar F150 Light Bars for your build.
- Rigid Dually White Spot Pattern Off-Road LED Lights
- Rigid D2 Driving Off-Road LED Lights
