Ok, so here's what I did. I was all set to take the cladding off the rear hatch, had all the fasteners out - no issues there....I have to say again how great a shape this thing is in with this many miles and how well cared for it has been. When I started looking at peeling/cutting the double sided tape to get the cladding off (I downloaded the shop manual as well as looking through the forums) I realized that this was all the original tape, and it was very firmly in place. I've learned from experience these things are never quite the same once you take this sort of assembly apart...rattles will start no matter how well I try to emulate the tape during reassembly. So I waved off on taking the cladding off to get to the license plate light bracket.

I did get a "Grabit" drill bit to try and get the rusty screws out; true to its name it grabbed it and I succeeded in shearing the heads off of them. But at least that allowed me to get the lens off and make sure it was just a burned out bulb and not a wiring issue. Once that was determined, I decided to dremel the rest of the screw body flush with the mounting holes and then re-drill new holes in the lens mount just a little offset from the original ones.

So at this point I have a new bulb in adn new holes to put new #8 sheet metal screws in to. Because the new holes force the lens to be slightly rotated on the axis of the bulb so it didn't sit entirely on the plastic/rubber seal, I put a little RTV (very little) on the lens edge then screwed it back together. It's not the most beautiful job in the world, but only I (and now all of you) know it's there since no one is going to look up in that recess.

Now every light on the vehicle works as it should, plus I threw in some Sylvania Silverstar Ultra headlight bulbs. That took about 5 minutes a side, including being very very careful not to touch the bulbs glass (that will kill the bulb life).