Sarah, Sarah, No time is a good time for Sarah...
So, my latest foray into fixing my car deals with replacing the headlights.
About two weeks ago I found a really good deal on a new set of headlights. They are the CFL Halo style assemblies (VW's, like many cars now, use a headlight housing that contains multiple bulbs). The advertisement assured me that these were plug-n-play (so to speak) and that I could install them and everything would work fine.
I get the headlights and proceed to drool slightly since they look amazing. Waiting for an opportune time to swap out the old for the new, I only had to wait until Sunday when the weather was perfect for it. While I woke up around 9am, I was figuring that I would just look at them, determine if it could work, and then go from there.
The first thing that I found out was that I didn't have a torx wrench set. So, off to Auto Zone. One new kit later, I began the long and somewhat arduous process of swapping out the headlights.
Step 1) Remove the Radiator Grille. This is the portion on the front that has the VW marquee.
Step 2) Remove the Front Bumper Cover. This involves 15 screws: 4 in each wheel well, 5 under the radiator grille, and 2 behind the front air dams.
Step 3) Unplug the Headlight assemblies. Straightforward enough, but the driver's side headlight has about an inch and a half of clearance before you run into the battery housing.
Step 4) Remove the headlight assemblies. This involves 4 screws for each one; two of which sit a bit back from the front and are in a bit of a tight area.
Step 5) Reverse the order to install the new headlights.
All of this took slightly more than 2 hours. Which, I will admit, was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Just to make sure that I wasn't wasting my time, I tried testing one of the new lights before I installed it. It appeared to work, so I continued with the installation. Once the car was all back together, I turned on the lights to see them in their glory... Nothing. Not even the Daytime Running Lights. "Shit," says I. I look at the dashboard and the car is registering that the high beams are on. "Fuck," says I. After checking the connectors again, the issue is a problem with the pin placement on the new headlights.
Needless to say, I was rather irritated by this. Rather than attempt to pull everything apart again, I decided to see if there was some kind of converter I could wire together to get it to work. Off to VIP Auto. No dice.
What does this leave me with? The blinkers work and I have a starting reference for the re-wiring that I have to do.
All things considered, I'm still rather pleased with the situation because I managed to not only remove the bumper cover, grille, and headlights; I put them all back together again without issue. I'm just irritated that a "simple" headlight swap is proving (like every thing else about my car) to be more than just a little complicated.
About two weeks ago I found a really good deal on a new set of headlights. They are the CFL Halo style assemblies (VW's, like many cars now, use a headlight housing that contains multiple bulbs). The advertisement assured me that these were plug-n-play (so to speak) and that I could install them and everything would work fine.
I get the headlights and proceed to drool slightly since they look amazing. Waiting for an opportune time to swap out the old for the new, I only had to wait until Sunday when the weather was perfect for it. While I woke up around 9am, I was figuring that I would just look at them, determine if it could work, and then go from there.
The first thing that I found out was that I didn't have a torx wrench set. So, off to Auto Zone. One new kit later, I began the long and somewhat arduous process of swapping out the headlights.
Step 1) Remove the Radiator Grille. This is the portion on the front that has the VW marquee.
Step 2) Remove the Front Bumper Cover. This involves 15 screws: 4 in each wheel well, 5 under the radiator grille, and 2 behind the front air dams.
Step 3) Unplug the Headlight assemblies. Straightforward enough, but the driver's side headlight has about an inch and a half of clearance before you run into the battery housing.
Step 4) Remove the headlight assemblies. This involves 4 screws for each one; two of which sit a bit back from the front and are in a bit of a tight area.
Step 5) Reverse the order to install the new headlights.
All of this took slightly more than 2 hours. Which, I will admit, was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Just to make sure that I wasn't wasting my time, I tried testing one of the new lights before I installed it. It appeared to work, so I continued with the installation. Once the car was all back together, I turned on the lights to see them in their glory... Nothing. Not even the Daytime Running Lights. "Shit," says I. I look at the dashboard and the car is registering that the high beams are on. "Fuck," says I. After checking the connectors again, the issue is a problem with the pin placement on the new headlights.
Needless to say, I was rather irritated by this. Rather than attempt to pull everything apart again, I decided to see if there was some kind of converter I could wire together to get it to work. Off to VIP Auto. No dice.
What does this leave me with? The blinkers work and I have a starting reference for the re-wiring that I have to do.
All things considered, I'm still rather pleased with the situation because I managed to not only remove the bumper cover, grille, and headlights; I put them all back together again without issue. I'm just irritated that a "simple" headlight swap is proving (like every thing else about my car) to be more than just a little complicated.