well, the guy in the classifieds never got back to me after two more request, so i decided to take the advice of soaking them in cleaner. The auto recyclers also gave me a little attitude, telling me that he's not going to ruin a perfectly good "bumper", just to sell me licence plate lights. I told him that the lights were on the trunk, and he said he'd sell them them to me for $25.00 each. I refused. I ended up rechecking the condition of the lights, and noticed the orange wire on both terminals were completely off. No wonder they didn't work. Duh!
I sprayed them with wd40, scrubed them with a toothbrush, then soaked them in dishwater to clean all the corrosion off. Put new bulbs in, stripped the black and orange wires to reveal fresh wire, rewired, and boom, the lights work again. Half an hour total time. Thanks for all the advice guys.
