The old style trailer plug (except 5-pin instead of 4-pin) has the circuits: ground, right signal light, left signal light, tail light, and reverse light. The right signal light and left signal light circuits are also the right and left brake lights. I had a DIY aux. reverse lights already that...
Buckle the seatbelt behind your back, put the transfer case in neutral, set the parking brake, with the engine running put the transmission in reverse, get out and view the lights.
All done, used a Curt # 56584 trailer T-harness to get a reverse light and ground circuits without having to tap into any OEM wires. No modifications were necessary to mount to my Rubicon rear bumper.
Use a (ON)-OFF-(ON MOMENTARY) toggle switch to add an additional option for momentary rear flash.
Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Toggle-Switches-OFF-MOMENTARY-TOGGLE/dp/B00M292P7S
I can get mine out without too much of a problem, but inserting back them is the difficult part for me. The extension cables are a needed luxury for my old worn out hands.
They ran out of lights because of limited supply, and because they shipped to the people first that order after you and I.
Just kidding, be patient, we will eventually get our emails and light in due time. I think the wait will be worth it. :)
My JTR also has these dash panels, my opinion is like yours as they are okay, it's just not worth the effort to me to change them out, but I would prefer black or the the gray panels. If someone wants to accent or whatever to their Jeep, power to them for having fun with their vehicle.
I've had this happen a couple of times.
First time I unmarried and removed my Tazer to the stock configuration, pulled fuse 97 for a few moments, ran some errands where I had some drive/park cycles, didn't start working again until the next day. I was getting ready to take the JT in for...
I never thought about using a trailer plug as a power supply cable until reading through this thread, you can always learn from others ideas/mods. Now I going to get a trailer side 7-blade plug to make a 12V power supply pigtail.