re: Stealing F250 tail lights is apparently a thing

I remember when Euro taillights became popular. People would steal those damn things off of anything, but especially trucks. A friend of mine had two sets stolen. He replaced the first set. When someone stole the second they actually replaced them with their old factory taillights, hooked up and everything. We didn't even know when they were stolen because he didn't notice it right away.

I remember when people were called 'sky screamers' for saying that all this tech wasn't worth the added cost. Looks like the sky screamers were right.

Youtube 15 min
This mechanic talks about a 2018 F150 with a tail light issue. Cost the owner $5600 just for repair.

There was some water intrusion and caused all sorts of malfunctions. Old day, the housing was maybe $100 then you put a new bulb in there. These days, with the sensors, they all talk to each other and the vehicle is essentially a network or a system of systems. This problem led to the vehicle not even starting. It had to be towed in for repair. Tail light assembly is about $1300, but it does not come with any of the modules / sensors like obstacle detection. Those have to be bought separately. Took 4hrs of labor to Dx, repair/ replace and total cost was $5600. For tail lights on a 5yr old vehicle. That did not include the cost to tow it to a shop.

I get your example. None of that was relevant in my estimate. Garaged, no water intrusion, and what appears to be to me a mount and plug in job. 4 hours of labor and ancillary electronics was $2k?

2022. They broke my bed cover, and then pulled the manual tailgate releases to get access. The tailgate was backed up against steel retaining wires with maybe 3" of room. I only know the manual releases are there because the motor that dropped the tailgate failed 2 years ago, and I had to figure out how to get crap out of the bed.

Buddy of mine just had this happen to his truck in San Antonio

It really is crazy how purposely annoying cars have gotten.

On my 1997 4Runner I can change the headlight bulb with a single flathead screwdriver in 3 minutes and the bulb costs like $6

On my wife’s 2017 Infiniti SUV the bulbs each cost $130 at Auto Zone, and replacing each took an hour because you had to disassemble and reassemble multiple parts of the car to reach the headlight from the inside.

So why are they stealing F250 tail lights? Is there that big of a market for used tail lights or are they creating the market?

“Had your tail lights stolen? Buy these that we stole from someone else for $500 instead of $1,700!”

In the cart. This has been a thing since the 2003 F150 model? WTF?

The small irony is that I bought the 2022 diesel so I didn't have to buy another vehicle for decades, because of federal rules coming our way.

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But calibration is the excuse for everything

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Wait until you need to get a new windshield, and the "sensors calibration" easily puts it over $1,500 as the starting range for a standard vehicle.