Monday 20 April 2009

Satisfaction

Changing a light bulb doesn't normally fill one with a sense of achievement and satisfaction.
 
Only, this was no ordinary light bulb...it was for the headlight of my car!!!  About two to three weeks ago, I noticed that I no longer had the right hand side headlight, the full beam light worked, just not the normal light.  I didn't want to take it to the garage just to fix something so relatively simple, particularly not when the garage have already had enough of my money lately!! (I am still waiting for another bill from them for some recent work).
 
So...I went to Halfords (a car parts shop for those that don't know) and bought a bulb.  Of course, when you get there you are faced with a whole wall of bulbs all with different codes and sizes and shapes!!  I bought the wrong one first time around (naturally!), but then bought the right ones.
 
Then, I had to actually fit it in the car.  The little manual wasn't really very clear about what I had to do, but I gave it a go, only to stop half way through because I wasn't very certain about what I was doing and so I gave up rather than do something that might break the lights!
 
What did I do next? I googled it of course!!  I found this perfect youtube video that showed exactly what I was supposed to do.  The main thing that was stopping me was that the headlight fittings didn't seem to want to come out of the car, but on the video the chap really did wiggle the setting about to get it out, so I was no longer afraid of using a bit of force to get it out of the socket.
 
I went back to the car and proceeded to fix the new bulb - it really isn't a simple matter of taking the old one out and putting the new one in!  I had to take off a small section of the front grill, unscrew that bit, move that lever, wiggle the fitting out, unclip the back of the housing and THEN I could take the old bulb out.  Put the new one in and do all of the above in reverse order!!
 
And do you know what?  It works!!!!!  Ooooh, the satisfaction!!

5 comments:

Mrs. Spit said...

You rock!

Next stop, oil changes!

Celia said...

I am dead impressed! I recently had a problem with the toilet, it was not flushing, worked it out by taking the syphon apart and its fixed! All for £12! Would have been well over £60 with a plumber for sure!

I will follow your example if a light goes in my car!

Alice said...

Great job with the car light, Sam!

SpeakUp Librarian said...

Impressive. How about sharing the link for that video?

SpeakUp Librarian said...

Oh. I didn't realize the video was specific to your car's make. I thought it was more general.