Changed some bulbs -- what a job!

[Benzadmiral]

Yesterday I took the big Buick for its brake tag (annual safety inspection). The car passed, but one of the license plate bulbs and one of the third brake light bulbs had burned out.

I scooped up the replacements at two O'Reilly stores. One had the license plate bulbs, but the clerk couldn't find the third brake light on her computer. I stopped at another store on the way home, and this clerk actually called the dealer to get the code. O'Reilly's seems generally to hire sharp people.

Anyway, the third brake light was no real trouble -- I just had to climb into the trunk and remove the sockets up under the rear hat shelf.

The license plate bulbs required, get this, required the removal of the entire tail light assembly! Six pop-out fasteners to loosen the trunk liner; nine bolts that hold the assembly in place; a little wiggling, and it came off and hung by a thick cable. Then pliers to gently loosen the bulb sockets. If I'd known it was going to be that much work, I'd have bought all the bulbs for the taillights and backup lights and replaced 'em all at once.

The point is that the Haynes manual, which is supposed to cover all the full-size GMs from 1985 to 2005, an impossibility on the face of it, covers almost nothing. It gives generic instructions like ". . . some bulbs are held on by screws," and the pictures are invariably of a car unlike mine. It took me an hour to figure out the steps and to replace the two little 194 bulbs. I'm proud of myself, but geez -- Must I go to the dealer to get a real shop manual? Or EBay?

Just a vent.

 

[javacontour]

I hear you. When I start tearing into those areas, I tend to just get all the bulbs so I can just do them all in one go.

Did you check your owners manual to see if it had instructions on bulb replacement? I know my Prizm has instructions and bulb specs for every bulb the typical consumer would replace. Even some most wouldn't such as instrument cluster bulbs.

 

[eljefino]

GM could do a marketing service and stick white LEDs on the license lights (and sidemarkers etc where sockets corrode-- hardwire them in). "Imagine a world where the cops will never pull you over because your tag light just blew."

A late 80s monte carlo needs its whole bumper skin removed to change a sealed beam headlight.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
I hear you. When I start tearing into those areas, I tend to just get all the bulbs so I can just do them all in one go.

Did you check your owners manual to see if it had instructions on bulb replacement? I know my Prizm has instructions and bulb specs for every bulb the typical consumer would replace. Even some most wouldn't such as instrument cluster bulbs.

The owner's manual, in fact, was what clued me in to the procedure. It didn't mention the license plate bulbs, but I figured once I had the thing off, I'd be able to find 'em, and it worked.

It didn't list the spec for the license plate or third-brake bulbs, so I wrote the numbers in, so I'd have 'em next time.

 

[javacontour]

I have to say my wife's Camry is pretty nice in this regard. Little "doors" in the trunk liner to access the bulbs.

I just did the license plate bulbs on the Prizm. Originals lasted almost 15 years and 234K miles, and the instructions were in the owners manual. Pry out the plastic lens assembly with a flat screwdriver, turn the bulb holder 1/4 turn and pull the bulb out, replace and reassemble in the reverse order.

I cleaned up the lens assembly a bit before I stuck it all back together. I replaced BOTH even though only one of the two bulbs was out.

 

[Steve S]

The cars are built to the lowest quality possible to extract the max profit . I call it screw the customer designs from my experiences over the years at work.

 

[mrsilv04]

Originally Posted By: eljefino


A late 80s monte carlo needs its whole bumper skin removed to change a sealed beam headlight.

I drove an '87 Monte Carlo until it had 252,000 miles on the odometer, and I never had to remove the bumper skin to change a headlight.

???

 

[MrCritical]

I hardly call having to change bulbs in a six year old car "building it to the lowest possible quality".

So anything with a timing belt must really be a piece of [censored]?

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
Originally Posted By: eljefino


A late 80s monte carlo needs its whole bumper skin removed to change a sealed beam headlight.

I drove an '87 Monte Carlo until it had 252,000 miles on the odometer, and I never had to remove the bumper skin to change a headlight.

???


Maybe it's just the (1 pc) euro nose or whatever they called it.

like this one

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted By: MrCritical
I hardly call having to change bulbs in a six year old car "building it to the lowest possible quality".

So anything with a timing belt must really be a piece of [censored]?


I didn't get that changing bulbs is the problem, but having to disassemble the car that was built around that one central bulb is the issue, such as having to remove the entire nose to replace a $10 bulb.

If that is true about the 'euro nose' Monte Carlo, then it's a silly design and is low quality (poor design.)

 

[PF52]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
but having to disassemble the car that was built around that one central bulb ...


I've heard the New Beetles described that way. "A pair of turn signal bulbs move down the assembly line, and more and more parts are attached to them until an entire completed car emerges at the other end."

Although come to think of it, it may have been fog light bulbs.

 

[Spykem4e]

I hear you.. I know how you feel.. I needed to change some bulbs in the headlight and here's what I had to do to get there:

 

[MrCritical]

I can't remember the model, buy my friends' poor quality Mercedes Coupe had to have the fender removed to replace the a/c compressor.

 

[andyd]

To change the power steering belt on a 99 Honda CRV, the LF wheel and a motor mount have to be removed.

 

[sciphi]

Benzadmiral, the factory service manuals occasionally pop up on Ebay for $30-50 for the set. That's how I got mine. Each book of the 2-book set is roughly 3 inches thick, contains a small tree's worth of paper and 3 gallons of ink, and is chock-full of the most arcane things about your car. Still, the really arcane stuff often comes in handy when you need to do some troubleshooting.

 

[AcuraTech]

Unfortunately, because of cars becoming more curvaceous and aerodynamic, bulb replacement becomes more of a hassle. The 04+ Acura TL requires not only front bumper skin removal, but also headlight lens assembly removal to be able to replace HID headlight or even side marker bulbs. Oh, and the cost of the HID bulb for those cars is over $200. I guess that's the price you pay for good lighting, not that long ago it was common for cars to have poor quality sealed beams with bad grounding which made them about as bright as a flashlight. Now it's gone to the other end of the spectrum, with super bright HID lights and LED tailights that blind you while sitting behind them at a stoplight.

 

[RacerE7773]

My '00 cavalier I changed all the bulbs after 5 years so I would not see red and blue bulbs in the mirror. Same with our '03 impala. Three years ago I ended up breaking the tab holding the RF turn lens to the headlight when I went to change the signal bulbs on the cav. I've checked boneyards and still haven't found
a replacement.

 

[toocrazy2yoo]

Racer, try Rock Auto. They have all that stuff, they buy it direct from the peeps that make the stuff for the dealers. Foreign cars, too.

This dinky little Hyundai Accent I have (and all the others before it) has horribly difficult license plate bulbs to get to, and you have to pull the battery to get to the bulbs on the driver's side. The tail lights and passenger side headlights and markers are ok, though. As these bulbs start to go down, I'll probably replace all of them, headlight included, considering the hassle. As a wise man once said, if one's dead, the others can't be far behind. And that's not to mention the cost of tickets, a major factor these days with the local government so broke. Seems like around here, the police are just one more revenue-producing part of the landscape for Fairfax County of late.

 

[cousincletus]

Originally Posted By: RacerE7773
My '00 cavalier I changed all the bulbs after 5 years so I would not see red and blue bulbs in the mirror. Same with our '03 impala. Three years ago I ended up breaking the tab holding the RF turn lens to the headlight when I went to change the signal bulbs on the cav. I've checked boneyards and still haven't found
a replacement.


A new light from the dealer is under 30 bucks for the Cavalier. It shows you in the owners manual how to remove the side marker/turn signal.

 

[StevieC]

I love my Hyundai more and more with these stories... I changed the headlights in my Santa Fe with the brighter ones and it took me all of 10 minutes to do both. Didn't have to do anything other than remove the cover on the back of the headlight...

Someone should make these vehicle designers spend a week in the dealerships doing these tasks so they think at the drawing board...