ive noticed that every time i wash my truck and spray out the wheel wheels and undercarriage with the pressure washer or hose that lots of dirt, sand, grime, and mud comes out from around my taillights...and just keeps coming, i can never seem to get all of it out. does anyone else have this same problem and if so how have you gotten that dirt/mud buildup out of there...it cant be good for the truck to have all that sitting back there...dont really see why ford would design the taillights where they would be exposed to all that mud and road grime slinging up from underneath...

 

i have the same problem on my f150...to get them clean i take off the lenses off the truck and clean it that way...

 

Same problem here.

I got one of those long wand type hose nozzles. I actually have 2. The one I picked up this year extends out to about 30". I can get to most areas under the truck. You can get in behind the taillight assemblies pretty easily with this type of wand.

 

Very common and, I concur -- it's a poor design.

To remedy this on my 2001, I simply taped up the 'hole' that was in there to keep the vast majority of 'gunk' from coming into that area. Unfortunately, on the new body style, it's much more of a task to seal that area.

While I know you want moisture to get out once it's in there (to avoid corrosion), I also want to prevent 'gunk' from coming in there to dribble down the side of my paint when I'm washing.

Damned if you do... Damned if you don't.

 

so you feel that taping up the hole behind the taillight worked pretty well? how big of a hole is it behind the lense that i will need to tape...and will just something like duct tape or gorilla tape work?

 

The hole, to my recollection, was about half the size of a baseball... roughly.

Duct tape worked for me on mine... I prepped the area prior to sticking it down but, it seemed to work well.

 

I get this alot, this summer I might try to this perminantly to my truck, my plan is to remove the tails, cut the sockets/harness's off, slide a big enough metal washer down the wire & have it welded in to the hole, then slide a rubber wasler down it to make sure nothing gets past the wire, re-connect harness's and install tails back & see how it goes, If nobody has ever thought or heard of this then i'll tell you how it goes