Once again my youngest daughter came to me with a car problem she needed help with: replacing a headlight bulb. One nice thing about modern cars is how well they do keeping dirt and debris out of the engine compartment. The downside is that it is not very intuitive on how to do simple things like replacing a headlight. Before committing to the work, I looked on YouTube at the process of replacing a headlight on her Jeep Cherokee.
The first video I found had a very encouraging sign: the video came in at 3 minutes. That indicated it would be a fairly simple job. I watched all 3 minutes of the video and learned the very important trick to get to bulb. While I would have tried to go in through the hood, it is actually easier to unscrew 3 bolts and go in through the wheel well. The guy did it in 3 minutes on the video but did some editing to remove some of the boring parts. I estimated it would take me 10 minutes. I found time in my schedule and texted my daughter when she should come over so we could work on her car.
My daughter arrived with the new bulb and we did the work in my driveway. Fortunately we had a bit of a warm spell this week and I didn't need to bundle up. We worked together and quickly had the old bulb removed. As you should never let oil from your fingers get on a new headlight bulb, I ran inside quickly to get a single disposable glove so I could handle the new bulb safely. Then we reversed the process and had the new bulb in quickly. It would have gone 30 seconds faster if I had remembered that you turn to the right to tighten. Once I figured that out, the car went back together easily.
When I added up the time it took me to research the most efficient way to change the headlight bulb and the time to actually do the work, I figured I saved myself about an hour. Yes I could have gone in through the hood and figured out how to change the bulb thanks to my skinny hands. I probably would have lost a lot of skin and learned a dozen new expletives so I'm glad I took the time to do a bit of research.
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