A blog by spenibus

The way my car illuminated the road had been bugging me for a while until I took a good look and realized that the inside of the front right headlight was detached from its housing. [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cN) Life must be expensive or at least clunky when you can't fix things yourself. So naturally, I took apart the car (just a bit). This is a working headlight: [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cL) This is a dislodged headlight, notice the empty black space in the middle, proof that the piece has sunk in its housing: [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cM) That's when I grabbed a [Torx][1] screwdriver and a [socket wrench][2]: [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cO) I had done the same operation a week earlier to fix the housing of my front left fog light housing. It was slightly broken, dislodged and the bulb was destroyed. At this point, I should mention it is a used car I bought 2 months ago, just to shift the burden of responsibility. I fixed the broken bits the best I could and changed the bulb. Speaking of which, the engineers who designed that car had the fantastic idea (spoiler, it's sarcasm) to use a less standard one, the PSX24W. Most shops don't carry it and when I found one, it cost me 33 euros for a single one. I thought about retro-fitting more standard bulbs but the difference in wattage, and therefore higher temperature, might have burned the housing. <center> [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cR) [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cQ) [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cS) </center> Anyway, back to the headlight. I was hoping to fix it properly but the housing is sealed shut and taking it apart was becoming tedious and potentially risky. I simply snapped the piece back where it should be and settled to help keep it in place with some zip-ties, hoping the heat wouldn't reach behind the reflectors and melt them away. <center> [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cT) [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cU) </center> There, all fixed. [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cV) Then I went for a test drive to check and fix the alignment. The white stripes on the road are 3 metres long and the space between them are 10 metres long. `3 * 3 + 2 * 10 ~= 30 metres`, pretty much perfect. <center> [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/dr) [](http://spenibus.net/f/g/cW) </center> All done. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_wrench