Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to share a few photos from a recent light change I had to do on my car!
DIY Bulb Repair
I'm not trying to jinx myself, but it's been a bit since I've been underneath my car to fix something. That changed the other day though, when I had to get under there to fix a light bulb that had burned out.
It's a little annoying how some things go on cars in terms of repairs. We had a light bulb that burned out a few months ago but I tried to fix it and it turned out that I got the wrong part, so that put the squash on that attempt. I knew I had to fix it though, because when you get your car inspected, they can be a pain in the ass about small things like this. I don't know if a daytime bulb would cause an issue, but you never know.. plus it was annoying that the pop-up warning showed up every time we drove the car lol
As with any job, I learned something! Don't be such a brute.. it's always a good idea when it comes to cars. So the bulb attaches into a socket, which is then powered from the engine through a connector. You take off the connector, and you can turn the socket and it comes out. That part was actually the easier part of the whole job. What I had one of the biggest challenges with was getting the damn old bulb out! I guess it's one of those things you look up before you do it, but I figured why not I can swap out a bulb.
Turns out, I couldn't LOL
So if you look on the above photo, you see there is a path the bulb follows when it's inserted into the socket. This COMPLETELY makes sense, but if you have no visual of this, or experience with this like I did, then you screw it up.. lol. What you are supposed to do is push the bulb down so you can twist it past the lip there and it slides right on out.
Nope, I had no clue! I ended up brute strengthed the damn thing. I thankfully had gloves on but the glass popped off and I didn't get cut. I then had to get pliers and pry the damn thing out.. but I pushed down and it was very easy, so I tried again and realized that it was pressure sealed with a lip. Woops! :D
I think the thing to note here is give a few things a try before you break something, which is certainly a motto that most experienced DIY people can attest to. I am a little rusty on it, it seems! I did not practice that and I paid the consequences of 15 minutes of frustration before I figured out what to do lol.
It was a learning experience though, as it is every time you do something. You always have the potential of learning something new when you are fixing stuff, and I think that's one of the biggest reasons I love to do it. I love learning!
So I took a few photos while I was under there to convey what was going on. The photo above is the bulb, connected to the connector and the electrical stuff. You have to press down on the connector end and gently pull down. Eventually with some consistent pressure it pops out and you are free to work on it.
What I didn't realize until the second time I did this job, was that you can't take the bulb out of the light housing until the connector here is removed. That was helpful to know and maybe why I couldn't get the bulb out the first time I tried until I completely unscrewed the bulb housing which was excessive.
Once you pop the connector out, you turn the bulb counter clockwise and it frees up very smoothly and comes out. This part is where I messed up, I took the bulb and just tried to pull it out, not realizing that it's secured in there with the lip on the socket. With these bulbs, you buy a box of 2 of them so you can change them at the same time. That part makes complete sense because you don't want to change one, and then a week later have to roll under the car to change the other one.
It took an extra 3 minutes to roll my ass over to the other side of the car when I changed the bulb. I completed the passenger side one, which was the one that was burned out, and then rolled over to the drivers side to get that one sorted.
The huge benefit of this experience at that point was that by the time I got to the drivers side, I already did the passenger and knew exactly what to do and what to be careful of. This meant I didn't brute-force the bulb out lol I pressed down the way I was supposed to, turned a tiny bit and the bulb slid out smooth as butter. The wonders of doing something the correct way LOL. I popped the new one in, and boom I was done with both of them.
While I was down there though, I thought it would be a good idea to check on something that was nagging at me.
In the summertime, most people that don't live in ridiculous countries, have cars that have air conditioning in them. This means that it sucks the hot air from inside the car and blows cold air for you. That's really nice! With that, you can imagine there is a lot of condensation that needs to get evacuated somewhere.. well this is where!
The weather here has been hot and fairly humid the past few weeks. I don't mind it because it's easy for my body to adapt to the temperature changes. This means we are running the air conditioning a lot in the car, and I would see water dripping underneath. I knew it was condensation from the AC but there is always a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that your car is dripping fucking transmission fluid or something.
Thankfully this was just the drainage line for the AC, and it was dripping regular old water. Crisis averted!
What about you, do you like to fix things on your own? Let me know in the comments!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated
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