posted
My dad's a mechanic. I know that when your headlight goes out, it's generally the bulb. Easy fix, right? I watched my dad do it when I was little. Pop off the protective covering, check out the instructions in the owner's manual for replacing the bulb, replace bulb (don't touch it with your bare hands), pop cover back on, test.
Cool.
I go to auto parts store. Get bulb (use nice handy dandy computer to make sure I get the right bulb). Go home. Snag owner's manual, give it a look-see. Pop the hood and discover you can't pop the protective covering off without sliding the assembly out. Crap. Get socket wrench set, take out two bolts that bolt the assembly to the car. Slide. Assembly catches. Swear. Poke around, find another bolt.
The last bolt. A bolt that has rusted into place. A bolt that you can't get a socket wrench into without removing the front grill. Fine. I remove half the plastic covering that connects the top of the grill to the car to access the bolt. I get the other socket thing that looks like a screwdriver that accepts sockets. Try that. It isn't long enough to generate enough torque. More power. Moooore...and I break the tool. GAME OVER.
I'll attempt it again tomorrow, with TB blaster stuff my dad told me to get and a new wrench. In the meantime, I'll carry the bulb in my car and if I get stopped, I'll tell the cop my story about the drunken monkey who designed the damn car.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Sounds like you have it under control. And eventually you'll see the poor design of cars is too calculated to have been done by monkeys. It's a deliberate act by a team of skilled sadists.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Anything you watched your dad do to a car when you were little is likely not valid today. Cars are made much differently these days. Posts: 241 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: Sounds like you have it under control. And eventually you'll see the poor design of cars is too calculated to have been done by monkeys. It's a deliberate act by a team of skilled sadists.
The engineering is by skilled sadists... the execution of the schematics? THAT's drunk monkeys!
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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In all the cars I have owned there was no removal of protective covers involved. The lightbulb is held in place by a spring arm in the back. You pop the spring arm off and the lightbulb unplugs. That is all there is too it.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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Modern cars seem to be specifically designed to be as unfriendly as possible to normal people.
My very favorite example of this is my late Ford truck (may it rest in peace or be reincarnated in a new and wonderful life). To replace the oil pan gasket, you must remove the engine from the vehicle. Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I had a very similar experience, Mack, with my one (and hopefully only) experience with a high-end GM product. Now, most people would assume that as you pay more and more for a vehicle, one of the things you'd get is called BETTER DESIGN.
In fact, what my experience taught me is that you get more expensive designs to repair. In every case.
For example. Pop-up headlamps have motor assemblies that last for 1000s of up/down cycles. But to save money, GM attaches nylon cams to the motor's shaft and the teeth on those things break every 2-3 years. It is impossible to purchase the little toothy cam, you have to buy the whole motor sub-assembly.
or, you can pull the thing apart, rotate the stripped cam a quarter turn, and go again until that section of it is rubbed down to ineffectiveness.
The prices for the motor assembly, by the way, with labor from GM -- TEN YEARS AGO -- were a minimum of about $170 to a maximum (for the unimaginably stupid last year model of the TRANS AM) of just under $400.
Now, bulbs:
My Buick Reatta had a tail light assembly that was a row of halogen bulbs in a specially designed "holder" that spanned the entire width of the rear panel. It looked cool. It also turned a 4-for-a-buck burnt out bulb experience into a 2-3 hour labor job and a original dealer-only item replacement of $25/bulb. I was told by Buick that the bulbs "NEVER BURN OUT" but, that if they should burn out, they aren't warranteed for life. They're a special order item.
Later on, when the auto parts aftermarket guys figured out that halogen bulbs do burn out. Every year or so...just like the cheap old-style bulbs...they could undercut the dealers by 50% and still make a huge profit. Nowadays you can buy the replacement bulbs at any auto parts store. When I first got that devil-car, you had to pay the dealer $22.50 plus tax per bulb. And you had to wait for the bulb to come in from the parts depot three states away because they just assumed not many people would be buying them.
Uh-huh.
I replaced more halogens on that stupid car in the 3 years I owned it than I did over the entire 26 year lifetime of a 1976 Mercury Bobcat -- the cheapest car Ford made at that time (bar one -- the slightly less fancy Pinto). I spent more on the first bulb than I spent on repairs for the Ford that entire year.
I wrote to GM to point out that they hadn't done ME any favors. They suggested that maybe the last person to put a bulb in was not wearing gloves.
Uh huh. Like, maybe, at the factory?
Jerks.
If I WON a Buick in raffle, I would either ask for the cash equivalent or sell it immediately.
Don't even get me started on the process for replacing a headlight. These, at least, weren't halogen. They were, however, rounded rectangular things that sat in their frames with a tenacity only exceeded by the grip of the giant squid when it finds a sick whale at 20 fathoms.
I couldn't get the old bulbs out. I couldn't get the new ones in. I curse the designers at Buick.
Horn buttons were also a notorious early failure item. of course, true to form, you couldn't just buy a new plastic button that would clip in. Nope, you had to buy the entire horn button assembly and take apart the steering wheel to replace the thing.
Hours of labor.
I turned to manufacturing my own little buttons out of the broken pieces of prior buttons. Melting a core into the plastic, inserting a metal rod, and glueing it all back together.
It worked great!
Monkeys! They are monkeys. The lot of them!
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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I gave a mechanic $10 to help me do it one time. He would have done it for free but I figured that it took him 20 minutes to change the bulbs in my 95 Honda Accord wagon that he deserved something for his efforts. It was depressing. I'm told the new Hondas are much easier.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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BTW, you should always change both bulbs at the same time for safety reasons. It ensures that you have equal lighting on both sides of your car.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Man, the lights on my '88 Bonneville were changable in about a span of about 45 seconds. Headlights, taillights, and third break lights all were changable within that time.
Much like Jacare the taillights had a tension bracket that held them in place. The headlights simply twisted 90 in their power socket, then could be pulled into the open.
Haven't had to change any on my new car yet, but I certainly hope this simplicity is still there.
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I find it really sad when someone has one really bad experience with a car and then decides that the whole brand must be junk. Buick Reattas were pretty bad cars, from what I understand, but Buicks in general are some of the most reliable cars you can buy in America. In terms of reliability, Buick is on par with Lexus, Cadillac, Lincoln, Infiniti, and Porsche. So if you win a Buick in a raffle and don't want it, Bob, I'll be happy to take it off your hands. Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:I wrote to GM to point out that they hadn't done ME any favors. They suggested that maybe the last person to put a bulb in was not wearing gloves.
That would explain why the bulb exploded, but it wouldn't explain why the filament burned out.
BTW, I haven't yet heard an actual case of a halogen bulb exploding, and I've stopped worrying about touching them with my fingers, unless my fingers are greasy.
But it's true, car manufacturers really do engineer things to make it difficult for non-factory mechanics to fix. BMW used to have a fancy electronic gadget that you had to plug into a receptacle on top of the engine to reset the service engine light. And the light was merely on an odometer interval. Why they couldn't have put a button under the hood, or a wire that you grounded out, well, it was to prevent people from turning out the light by themselves without paying BMW $1200 for a service.
GM has special tools to disconnect wiring connectors. You can't remove the plug without the "key." Which was really annoying when my nephew decided to feed quarters into the seatbelt slot and locked up the seatbelt tensioning solenoid. I coundn't release the seatbelt because the solenoid was engaged, and I couldn't disengage the solenoid, because it was active. Simple solution would have been to unplug it, but without the key, it just kept getting hotter and running down the battery (which was mounted under the washer solvent reservior and behind the headlight frame).
Short answer: I cut the wire.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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