Changing Headlight On An NC Miata

[lupinsea]

First off: Fook you Mazda for designing a crappy way to replace burned out headlight bulbs.


The replacement bulb wasn't too bad, ~$14 halogen H7, and a $5 pack of two bulbs for the parking light that was also out. But getting it done was a PITA.

To access the right headlight bulbs on the Miata the owners manual suggest turning the wheel to the left, then removing a number of pieces of plastic splash guard and under trays. Then fishing your hands up from under the front bumper to:

- somehow disconnect a connector you can't see (oh yeah, just press that release tab there)

- work off a rubber dust boot

- unclip some fiddly little spring clamp (which they don't adequately describe how to do)

- carefully remove light bulb

Once the bulb / housing is out, replace said bulb and reassemble.

Remember, you can't touch the halogen bulb with your bare hands, and you have to put all this back together blind by feel because you can't see jack while you're doing this. Oh, and in case we forgot, this is on a sports car that is low to the freak'n ground. Don't forget that the halogen bulb only goes in a certain way, but you can't tell how it's aligned.



However, I figured a "better" way of getting this done.

Go in from the top by borrowing my boss's socket set (yeah, I did this in the driveway at the office just now) and remove the windshield washer resevoir and shove it out of the way. Then worm my hand into the back of the headlight housing. Worked like a charm. Except for when I dropped the new bulb down into the Pit of Dispare: a nigh inaccessible void behind the front bumper that's about 16" deep. Suddenly, Fook Mazda became Fook Me. I thought I'd have to take off all the splash guards to get the bulb back. But then I found some wire and bent it into a contorted shape with a hook on the end. Fished out the dropped bulb surprisingly easy because I'm awesome. I was back in business again but this time I stuffed a wad of trash (that I had in my trunk) into the void to keep from loosing the headlight into the Pit of Despair again. Some more swearing as I used the needle nose pliers in an awkward fashion to rehook the spring clip. And more swearing when I figure out after the fact how it can easily be unhooked and rehooked by pressing it in a certain way. Thank you Mazda for not imparting such information in your owner's MANUAL.

All I can say is thank goodness it wasn't the other headlight that burned out: Mazda put the electrical fuse block right behind that bulb housing and I think there's be less wiggle room to go in from the top on that side.

I love my Miata but this seemed like a particularly stupid way of changing a light bulb.

But, hey, that little spring clip sure saves weight!




Side note, most cars have their wheel wells fully stamped out in one big curve or arch to house the wheel. On the Miata, Mazda cut out about 2/3 or more of the wheel well steel to save weight. It's just the plastic liner covering the voids in these areas.

[Terri Kennedy]

Originally Posted by lupinsea

Fook you Mazda for designing a crappy way to replace burned out headlight bulbs.

On an Eagle Talon, the procedure involves removing the bumper.

[lupinsea]

At least it's not as bad as changing the air filters on the new 911s.

[Terri Kennedy]

Originally Posted by lupinsea

At least it's not as bad as changing the air filters on the new 911s.

Wasn't there some American land yacht of a car where you had to pull the engine out of the car to get to one of the spark plugs?

[kognito]

did not have to remove the motor, but I owned a 1980 chevy C10 van (V8) I had to remove one motor mount, and jack the engine/transmission up about 1 inch to get the third plug on the passenger side out.

[lupinsea]

And I heard on the Mazda Milleniea that the back sparkplugs were similarly difficult to access.

I was somewhat annoyed that I had to remove part of the cowl on the E46 to get to the rear plugs. It wasn't bad, just annoying.

[Nick M3]

Originally Posted by Terry Kennedy

Wasn't there some American land yacht of a car where you had to pull the engine out of the car to get to one of the spark plugs?

Luckily, it was a big old American land yacht, so everyone just took a hole saw to the fender well.

[Pinecone]

The Chevy Monza V8 required the engine to be lowered to get to the rear spark plugs.

One Ferrari has to have the engine lowered to access the upper plugs (two plugs per cylinder).

[lip277]

I remember the first time I changed the plugs on my (1'st gen) Ford Explorer.
It took me all of 15 minutes to do the first 5. About 3 hours to figure out how to do that last one (the rear passenger side plug).

Damn - what a PITA.
Even after I figured it out - still took ~20 minutes just for that last one every time thereafter I did it. (And as I had that truck for ~180,000 miles, I did it a few times - every 40k to 50k miles).