Nothing Is Ever Easy

Why is it that what you might suppose should be an easy job ends up being an exercise in pain and suffering? I don't know if you do any of your own car repairs, but most of the time, doing things yourself is a great way to save some money. Changing your oil, rotating your tires, changing lights and such yourself all saves money. Sometimes though, what seems like a good way to save a few dollars ends up being a time consuming experiment in human patience. Take my latest attempt at saving money for example – changing a blown headlight bulb.
At first look you might think that this would be an easy job. First you have the problem. A broken bulb. So you look up the part number and head to the local purveyor of car parts and buy a bulb. (I got two just to save a trip later. Smart eh?) Then I headed home to what I thought should be a 15 minute job. Pull out the old bulb from the holder and unhook the electrical connection. Hook up the new bulb and replace in the holder. Wham bam thank you man. Easy as pie. What follows is a step by step outline of what really happened, minus the muttered, shall we say, unfriendly, language. Feel free to use this in your next attempt to change a headlight bulb.

1. Lift the hood of the car.
2. Locate the bulb to be replaced.
3. Realize that my hand is too big to fit into the space available.
4. Remove the plastic shield that is causing the restricted space.
5. Again attempt to remove the bulb from the headlamp.
6. Again realize that the space available is too small. (Swear.)
7. Realize that the battery must be removed to access the headlamp. (Swear.)
8. Try to remove the battery.
9. Realize that the retaining bold is rusted in place.
10. Soak the retaining bolt with penetrating fluid.
11. Wait.
12. Wait.
13. Wait.
14. Attempt to remove the battery retaining bolt. Drop the socket into the engine compartment. (Swear.)
15. Spend 10 minutes trying to retrieve the lost socket.
16. Finally remove battery retaining bolt and battery.
17. Remove the protective cover from the headlight assembly.
18. Pinch my fingers trying to remove the retaining spring.
19. Unhook electrical connections.
20. Discard broken bulb.
21. Hook up new bulb and replace in headlight assembly.
22. Realize that there is no way to test the new bulb without replacing the battery. (Swear.)
23. Replace battery.
24. Test headlights.
25. Rejoice that the new bulb works.
26. Reassemble the parts from steps 4 thru 13 in reverse order.
27. Wonder what the extra bolt is for. (Swear.)
28. Disassemble parts from steps 4 thru 13 while muttering swear words.
29. Reassemble parts from steps 4 thru 13 correctly.
30. Close the hood.
31. Wonder why this aggravation is worth the effort.

There you have it. Usually I am able to accomplish most tasks with a minimum of fuss and bother. But in this case I think I should sent a bill for my pain and suffering to the designers of this car. What could they have been thinking? Of course to make matters worse, when I finished the job and compared the driver side headlight assembly to the passenger side one… Lets just say that the four step process would have been possible if the other bulb had burnt out. Just my luck.