How To Change Your Own Headlight

I figured Week 5 was time to fight the patriarchy, so I had my dad show me how to change my headlight.

Yes, that sentence was supposed to be ironic.

So I have a 2004 Honda Civic (if that means nothing to you, like it does to me, its just a little gray ~~guy~~ car named Grayson) and one of the headlights went out and my least favorite thing about life and living is spending money, so I thought I’d enlist the biggest car guy I know (aka my dad) to help me change it. This is what I learned from Pops (but mostly from YouTube.)

(Seriously though, if you’re reading this with the expectation of learning how to change your headlight, you should maybe just check YouTube, there are some actual geniuses out there)

You have to take off the whole honkin front end to get the the stupid light. I thought I could just go under the hood, pop the plastic cover off, and replace the bulb. Oh contraire, mon frere. That whole sucker is coming off the car and it will not be fun getting there. To accomplish this, you must:
1. Pop the hood. I actually don’t remember if this was necessary or just gave the illusion of something productive happening, but it was the first step.
2. Unscrew approximately 4 screws. I don’t remember where they are, so good luck. At least two are underneath the car. We used a drill, you probably should too.
3. Remove the screw substitute things. I’m searching Google to see what they’re actually called and the name coming up is “Car Plastic Push in Fastener Rivets Clips.” Seriously? Concision is not the tool department’s forte. Anyway, these were my nemeses, and I ended up having to destroy a few of them (one even with a drill) because of how stupid stubborn they were to remove. One even took a chunk of my knuckle skin

4. Gently remove the whole bumper area. At least I’m 80% sure it should be coming off at this point.

2. Remove some more screws. I think there are about two more, and one is really deep inside the bumper area, so you need to put, like, two extensions on the drill bit to reach it.

3. Remove the light cover.

4. Replace the bulb. My dad says this is usually the time you make a trip to the store to get the right bulb replacement let me tell you, if I had to go to the store, I would go without the front end of my car because there is no way I would go through that all again. Luckily, my father has a lot of random things, extra headlight bulbs being one of them.

5. Steps 3-1, but reversed. Put the cover back on, screw the screws back in, replace the whole front end of the car, try to remember where all the clippy things go.

And that’s it. That’s how ~~my dad~~ I changed my headlight. If this was as wildly unhelpful as I’m sure it was, see YouTube for further and more accurate details.