2015-2023 Mustang Decklid Panel; Carbon Fiber Print Review & Install

Justin: Hey, what’s up, guys? Justin with americanmuscle.com here, taking a closer look and installing the Carbon Fiber Print rear decklid panel, available for your 2015 through 2023 Mustang at home. Now, you should be checking out this option if you’re looking to switch out that stocker and you really

dig the look of carbon fiber, but you don’t necessarily dig the price tag that comes along with it. So again, this really is gonna be for all of you ballers on a budget out there, US550 owners, again, who really love the look of real carbon fiber, but you

don’t like the price tag that it typically costs. Now, instead, this option is gonna utilize the popular method of what’s called hydro dipping, which will deliver a surprisingly good result for a fraction of the cost of the real thing. Now, construction will consist of a durable ABS plastic

panel that is then given that carbon fiber print through the use of hydro dipping. It is given a gloss finish, which I think kind of helps increase the realism a little bit. And honestly, guys, I think this would fool most casual enthusiasts out there. In fact, don’t take

my word for it. This is a great opportunity to check out some of the customer reviews in the customer review section if you haven’t done so already to actually

hear from real owners who have installed this thing, but also owners who have submitted some pictures to the site.

You can get a better sense of what this might look like on your own ride at home. Now, you will see some owners out there who have opted to kind of keep the clean look going, no emblems on it whatsoever, where on the other hand, some owners have

gotten a little bit more creative, maybe added a Coyote emblem or something a little bit more custom. But again, that is a nice possibility with something like this that is free from any emblems right out of the box. You can kind of choose your own adventure, go with

a clean look, add an emblem. That is totally up to you. Price point is gonna be the biggie here again, guys, as this option will come in right around that low $100 price point, making this one of the more affordable options in the category altogether. And again, a

fraction of the cost of a true carbon fiber option, which can easily cost you a few hundred bucks. But now, let’s get into the install here, guys. Site’s gonna call this one a pretty solid 1 out of 3 wrenches on the difficulty meter and at least 30 minutes

to complete from start to finish. But now, what do you say we head out to the garage for our detailed walkthrough and quick tool breakdown? Man: The tools you’ll need for this project are a 1/4-inch drive ratchet, a short extension, a 5.5-millimeter socket, a 7-millimeter socket, a small

flathead screwdriver, a pick, a soft trim removal tool, and some sort of cutting device. All right. The first thing we need to do is open up our trunk and then we’re gonna remove this trim panel piece here and these two pieces here to access the bolts underneath. So

let’s go ahead and get started using our soft trim removal tool. All right. The first thing we’re gonna do is remove our latch cover here simply by using our tool underneath it and popping it off. Then we’re gonna remove these nine pushpin clips here and the two up

here on the top. And then we’ll remove these two bumpers here to get this thing out. Get the two on top. Now we can just unscrew these rubber bumpers here, and then feed our emergency release handle through and remove our panel. Now we’ll remove these two covers here,

slipping our panel tool underneath and just popping it out. Now we’ll unplug our rear view camera here simply by pushing in on the release lever and pulling the connector down. Now remove the two bolts where the cover was removed using our 7-millimeter socket. Now you do want to

be careful when you take these out so that you don’t drop the screw into the trunk lid. Now we’ll get the two on the other side. Now next, using our soft trim removal tool, what we’re gonna do is hook it underneath the edge of the lip here of

the decklid and the decklid itself and just gently pry it away. You don’t want to pry too hard to dent your decklid, but there are some clips in there that need to come out. And then just pull it away. All right. Now we’re gonna remove our camera from

our decklid panel, and also we’re gonna remove these metal retaining clips as well. So to remove the camera, what you’re gonna use is a 5.5-millimeter socket and our ratchet, and we’re just gonna go ahead and take those out. Then we just slide the camera right out. Now we’re

gonna remove the metal clips. Now to remove these metal clips, what we’re gonna use is a small flathead screwdriver and a pick. Now you can use a couple of flathead screwdrivers as well and that’ll work just as good. What we’re gonna want to do is get underneath the

back end of these clips and lift them up, and then we’ll do the same thing on the bottom side and just separate them from the plastic tab. Now once you’ve got that done, then you can start working them out away from the panel. Now they can be a

little tricky, but you need to remove all four of these so that we can transfer them over to the new panel. All right. Now on the 2018 and up Mustangs, there are a couple of tabs that have to be removed in order for this to fit because they

don’t have the holes drilled in the decklid. So the ones we’re gonna remove are the alignment tab here and the retaining tab here. So right next to the first one is the alignment tab, and then the one right next to the alignment tab is the one that we’re

gonna be removing. And we’re gonna do that on both sides, so however you want to choose to remove them. We’re just gonna use a cut-off wheel just to make it quick and easy. But you can use like a hacksaw or even a knife or whatever. Just be careful

that you don’t break the decklid panel itself. So let’s go ahead and get those removed. All right. And you can remove the same two on the other side. Now the other thing that we’ll need to transfer over to our new decklid panel are these retaining clips here. We’ve

got two on each side for the bolts that go up underneath the decklid. So we’re gonna use our flathead screwdriver and just get underneath the end of it here and just start prying it up. All right. Now they can be a little difficult at times. So you also

want to make sure that you kind of got a good hold on them so that they don’t go flying across the room and you lose them. All right. So we’ve got the two out on this side. You can just repeat that process for the other two. All right.

Now we start putting in our retaining clips back into our new panel. So just starting from one end. Now keep in mind that these are spring loaded so they can be a little bit challenging, shall we say, to get these installed. All right. But that’s basically how they

go in. Just put them back in the holes and just push down on them, or you can tap on them with a hammer if need be just to kind of persuade them to go back into the holes where they belong. And we’re just going to use our flathead

screwdriver here to help us compress the springs and get them locked into place. Now you can do the same thing for the other side. All right. Now we’ll go ahead and put our retaining clips back on the upper tabs simply by pushing them on and seating them all

the way down. Now let’s go ahead and get our camera installed. So now we’ll go ahead and put our camera back in the same way that it came out of the old one. We’ll reuse the original screws. And then we’ll tighten them down with our 5.5-millimeter socket. All

right. Now that we’ve got everything transferred over, we’re ready to install it on our vehicle. Now I want to point out that there’s a couple of clips here on the backside of the decklid panel, and they’re going to correspond with this bracket on the decklid. So what we’re

going to do is we’re going to insert the camera in through the hole here and make sure that these clips on the bottom of the decklid panel go up here. Once we get that done, then we can just push the upper metal part of these clips in and

secure it, and then we’ll go ahead and put the bolts back in. All right. So like I said, insert the camera into the hole there, lay the panel up against the decklid so that it reaches those clips, and then go ahead and just start pushing in at the

top and get the clips locked into place. Now we can go ahead and insert the bolts at the bottom and we’ll secure it. All right. Now we’ll use our original screws that go in the bottom of the decklid here and our 7-millimeter socket, again being careful not to

drop them. All right. And then we’ll just go ahead and tighten them down with our ratchet. And now you can repeat that for the other side. Now we’ve got our panel secured. We’ll go ahead and reconnect our camera. Simply plug it in until it locks into place. Now

we can replace our plastic covers for our two 7-millimeter bolts simply by popping it into place. And now we can replace our decklid panel. Now we can install our decklid trim piece. We’ll feed our wiring harness in through the bottom here, feed our emergency release handle back through,

then we’ll go ahead, screw our rubber bumpers back in. Now we can replace our nine pushpins back in their original location. And finally, we’ll replace our latch cover. And that wraps up our review and install of the Decklid Panel with the Carbon Fiber Print for your ’15 through

’23 Mustang. Thanks for watching. And remember, for all things Mustang, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.