As I was leaving my political meetup last night, one of the guys stopped me to tell me my headlight was burned out. Damn! It was dark already, all I needed was to get pulled over and get a ticket (or worse). I was looking over my shoulder the whole way home.

I made it home OK last night, so today I had to figure out how to change out the headlight. I’ve done it before, but that was a long time ago. New cars are nowhere near as easy to work on as the old ones were. Not too many ‘shade-tree mechanics’ around anymore, no wonder why. I gave up working on my cars years ago- it’s just too complicated now.

Thank goodness for Google!

I found this video and it told me exactly how to do the job. It went pretty well. I did have to take the flasher (turn signal) light off, it did make it much easier. Taking it apart was simple once I found the right size wrench. 🙂

The hard part was trying to get those 3 long bolts back in place with their guides in the original position. They’re supposed to slide right down those grey pieces sticking out in the photo. I got the bolts back in, but I’m pretty sure they’re not in the same position. It was really tricky to get all 3 of them back in there. The one in the back is really hard because you really can’t see it and there’s no way to reach back there to guide it either (even with a screwdriver).

It’s important to put them back in the same position they were in.  That’s how the lights are aligned to shine at the road in front of you rather than at the sky or a tree on the side of the road. I’m sure I did not get the light back in the same way it was when I took it out, but it looks like it’ll work well enough.

I tested all the lights and they all work! Yeah!