Had a headlight finally go out (turned purple, then finally died). Seems silly the amount of work required to replace it. Remove all the plastic pins from the radiator and grill cover. Remove the two pieces which direct air into the engine and airbox (which requires taking the lid off the airbox too, which requires removing the battery cover first). Then unplug the high-beam. Remove the T-25 Torx tamper-resistant (dot in the middle, which requires a special bit or a very small flathead screwdriver). Remove the plastic cover. Remove the power plug to the light. Remove the retaining clip. Remove the light. Repeat in reverse with new bulb.

I get that bulbs were $100 a pop and not found at your local gas station when these cars first came out, but it seems far too much work just to replace a bulb. Means you can't simply do it on the side of the road or a gas station parking lot. Seems they wanted everyone to have to bring it to a dealership for replacement.

 

^


I had to do the same 'dance' when I replaced my dead OEM HID system inverter units with an aftermarket 5K set-up years ago, not fun.

You still running your OEM inverter units?

 

Yeah, still the OEM inverter. Just had to replace the bulb.

 

my favorite is when that retaining clip launches and just vanishes lol..

i agree i was cursing up a storm removing everything just to replace a hid bulb..

 

Ugh. The amount of times I've unscrewed something just to have it drop and disappear into the abyss! I really should get a magnetic screwdriver or at least a cup

 

Most likely a lot of work involved to change the bulb because they didn't consider it to be something that would be replaced often. having to remove all of that stuff to get to it once (sometimes never) for most owners didn't justify the amount of design work to make it easily accessible.

 

I thought I replaced the bulbs without removing the headlights the last time?

 

You don't have to remove the entire headlight but you do have to take off the cover panel to get access to it. With the passenger-side you then only need to remove the plug to the high-beam, then the security screw on the water-proof housing cover, then the cover itself, before disconnecting the power harness and then the retaining clip. On the driver side it requires the additional step of removing two airflow-related bits before you can get to the headlight housing cover.

Removing the entire headlight requires removal of the front bumper. Thankfully it doesn't require that just to do a bulb.