Help headlight housing removal

Which bulb are you talking about? The white front parking bulb or amber side light? I've managed to fish the front parking bulb out of the housing without removing it (I can tell you how), but if it's the amber light bulb and you can't see it, there's no harm in having it loose in the housing.

 

I wonder if a vacuum would work?

 

Cool. Link to the YouTube video you found?

 

Wow. I can't seem to get my hand in on the passenger side. I saw that 2009 video. Wondered if it was the same for 2010 Gen III. Sigh, based on your pictures headlight replacement is a project. Better yet, if you have one car, best to have the replacement bulb in hand before you start Does not really look driveable.

My irk, the tech fiddled with the wires when we were determining which bulb to sell me. In so doing, the bulb turned on. Contact not bulb now. Efforts at home to find the contact issue....inconclusive. Inspection is around the corner. Time to dive in. Of course I did not get a bulb....but now I think I better have one on hand.

 

Rstark18...and others with Gen IIIs....

When I drove my car last night I noticed I did not have a "clean" low beam on the bulb I attempted to replace with just the removal of the reservoir. Oh boy...let's hope something did not get melted! Obviously I had not gotten the bulb in correctly and I don't think I am that sloppy. It twisted in and was pointing straight down....all by feel of course!

I decided to work on the removal of the headlight housing to get in there and do it right.

First, removing the bumper skin looks worse than it is. Two people helps at the end as one person disconnects the harness and the other holds. Keep close track of all fasteners. Make notes even. I bet there were 5 different types of fasteners by the end. I wasted some time at the end ensuring I got the right stuff back in their correct holes.

Second, the headlamp housing is held by three screws and one "sleeper" plastic catch. First two are staring at you. Third is on the outside of the housing and is exposed when you remove the bumper skin. Then the fun begins.

You cannot just pull it out as the 5 minute 2009 suggests. Front, car center there is a slot holding a flange of the plastic headlight housing. On the bottom, which you can't see, there is a "one way" tab. I attempted to push the tab up while daughter pulled and that did not work. It also kinda mangled the tab. Option 2 is to take a cotter-pin puller and pull up on the steel finger than is holding the flange down and said tab into a hole. This worked well although as a rule I don't like bending a metal tab. I had to push it back down to hold the unit snugly in place.

Once out all was well with the replacement of the lamp. I should have just done this the first time. What an exercise. If folks have a better method of freeing the "one way" plastic tab from the stamped hole in the car's frame (unibody), I am all ears.

 

Just to comment: headlight bulb replacement has gotten insanely complicated, on a variety of cars in the last decade.

I saw a show a year or two back, an AAA type was called to help with such a replacement: an hour or two later he was still at it, believe he had one corner jacked up and a wheel removed, still a ways to go, lol.

 

I dropped my LED bulb in the main housing last night while changing them...any tips on how to get that out? Thinking about removing the highbeam and trying to get to it with tweezers or a screwdriver...looks like my LED has some metal band around the top so maybe magnet...this sucks having a little red LED rolling around in the housing

 

Prob best to just remove the headlight. Last thing u would want is to scratch the chrome inside the headlight.