linkismyhero

Oh YES. Yes yes yes. Time to celebrate. Why? Read on. It's PHOTOJOURNAL TIME!!!!!!!



For a few months, my passenger side headlight had a big hole in it with cracks all around. I decided that since I love my car Annie, I should take good care of her and replace the headlight.

What I didn't realize was that to fix the headlight, I'd have to replace the entire headlight assembly. Buh. So it was time to search around the web. I checked a couple auto parts sites I found with Google, but I either had no luck or they were going to charge me a zillion dollars for it.

You see, my car is a '96 Toyota Tercel. Not easy to find parts for an old car. What to do? The obvious answer is eBay! I found a few headlight assemblies that were an exact match, but again, many of them wanted lots of $$$bling$$$ for them. Then I lucked out and found this one at a comparably nice price. I bought that sucker and with shipping it ended up being about $47. Took maybe a week to arrive.



Here it is, a shiny new headlight assembly. Below it are my 4-in-one screwdriver (two sizes of Phillips and flat-head) and my adjustable wrench.



In order to remove the headlight I had to pop the hood. Due to a... complication... that I will discuss at length later, I had to pop that hood about five billion times. I got very familiar with this little lever.



Hood = popped. License plate = blurred for my privacy.



You can see a bolt and a screw at the top of the assembly holding into place. I WOULD SOON FIND OUT that that wasn't ALL that was holding the assembly into place



If I was gonna yank out the headlight assembly, it might help if I disconnected the wire from the back of the light first. The sun makes it hard to see but the purple circle gives you an idea of where it is.



I was a good car owner and checked the owner's manual for how to unplug the light. I also checked to see if they had any instructions for replacing the headlight assembly, but duh, of course they didn't.



One of the things holding the light in place was the faceplate thing. Actually it was more like the lights were holding the faceplate in. It was snapped into both headlights on both sides, though there were some plastic pieces that went into holes to secure it further. I popped that sucker out.

Then for a while I tried yanking on the headlight assembly. It wasn't going anywhere. wtf?? I could feel that one side of it was secured into place, somewhere around the orange sidelight. So...



Since one of the screws on the top of the headlight assembly also held down the sidelight assembly, I was able to pull on the sidelight. It didn't come right out, but I saw in the owner's manual that you have to pop it out, so I did.



I unplugged the wire from the back of the light. Later I would discover that this action was pointless.



I removed the light from the headlight assembly. Also pointless.

Now, with the sidelight out I could see... THIS BOLT



Dark picture from the side:



Flash picture from the side showing random hole in body of car:



THAT BOLT Oh man. It was in there REEEEEALLY tight. I tried removing it with my wrench. I adjusted it to be as tight as I could make it. But in attempting to unscrew it, all I managed to do was strip the bolt Strip? Whatever you call it I smooshed the metal all up, such that any further attempts to loosen it were futile because the wrench just slipped off every damn time

I didn't know what to do. I went at it for a long time. After a while I gave up, stuck things back in place and went back inside and tried not to think about it for a while. Incidentally my butt really started to hurt the next day from all the exertion. I literally busted my butt trying to get that bolt out.

I thought I might get a ratchet set or something. Mom thought I should get a wrench set, i.e. wrenches that don't adjust but are solid.

At a later day, I went to Radio Shack to buy a ratchet set. It was of course too small for this bolt. Fuck. A neighbor offered her toolbox and there was a teeny tiny wrench that fit, but it just slipped off too.

I mentioned the bolt in this journal I think. And I told Redbeard3 about it. First he suggested WD40. Later L7rules suggested prying up the bolt with a screwdriver and trying to turn it while pried up. He also mentioned I'd need a replacement for that stupid bolt. Argh. And later still, Redbeard3 suggested getting locking pliers. Locking pliers! They sounded brilliant and I knew that if I could get my ass to a hardware store I'd buy a pair in a heartbeat.

Many days went by and I just left the headlight assembly as is. I of course had to put the lightbulb back into the headlight so I could drive at night.

Then yesterday mom tells me she wants to go to the Kmart in a shopping center that also has a hardware store. I jumped at the chance to go.

Right, so, hardware store. I had pocketed the one intact bolt that had come out of the TOP of the headlight assembly, which I could tell was the same size and type as the one that refused to budge I asked the dude by all the bolts and screws if he could find me a matching bolt. They didn't have exactly what I needed, but they had a bolt the same size and they could stick a washer in there, so that's what they gave me.

Then I asked for locking pliers. The guy was all "huh?" and he asked some fellow associates who were all "huh?" One guy pointed us in a direction and we went there. I could see plenty of things that looked like locking pliers. The guy just kept looking and looking, unable to find what he thought was the right thing. I realize now I probably should have just reached out and grabbed what looked right, but eventually the guy grabbed the right thing off the shelf. On the packaging it said "LOCKING PLIERS". Duh!

Check out this beauty.



Now THAT is a TOOL! I had a great deal of confidence in this particular tool. But yet I remained cautiously optimistic in case I was foiled yet again.

Yesterday I greased up the bolt with WD40 as best as I could. The thing was in there so tight there was no way I could pry it up with a screwdriver. But I sprayed the side of the bolt, and I even sprayed inside that random hole in the body of the car where other end of the bolt would appear to sit. I left the bolt overnight.

Today, I decided to try out my hot new locking pliers.



I had to brighten this picture way up so you could see the pliers grabbing the bolt. I think you can see it now. When they say "locking" pliers they sure mean it. Those things had one hell of a tight grip on that bolt.

I'd had to spend a minute figuring out how to attach the pliers. I tried from the side but there wasn't room. Then I discovered that from the front was a perfect fit. I adjusted the locking mechanism a couple of times. If it wasn't adjusted right it wouldn't lock. Adjusted properly, it had a DEATH GRIP on that fucking thing.

I turned the pliers. The first time, they slowly slipped off. Not tight enough. I tightened them. I turned. Turned a little more.

BINGO!!!!!!!

Oh man. That was the happiest moment of my day when that stupid bolt finally turned. What a rush. Oh yeah.



Voilà. The headlight assembly popped out quite readily with that bolt gone. I did have to pull a bit, but it came right out with a little effort.



The new headlight is in place. Beee-you-tiful. Look at how shiny and new it is. The other one (not pictured) looks all foggy and old next to it.



This is a bad picture of the makeshift bolt that I put into the new headlight assembly. It's a plain bolt with a washer. It fit perfectly, thank God. I was worried the guy at the hardware store had measured wrong. It turns out to be a metric bolt or something. Stupid measurement systems!



Look!! The light works! The new headlight assembly actually came with a light already installed, which was cool. I didn't even need the old light at all.



THIS IS THE STUPID BOLT See how some of the metal is friggin' peeled away from my efforts to budge it? I sure showed that fucking bolt what for. I ROCK!