Without YouTube...That Car Headlight Would Never Get Changed (At Least, By Me)

I drove up to the pizza place and noticed a headlight was out on my car. I've changed other bulbs on my '04 Vibe, but never a headlight. But, I've changed headlights in other cars--other newer cars, not the headlights like those on cars from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. With those you had to put in the huge blocks of glass and then position the correctly.

Thank goodness times have changed. Now, for the most part, you pop in a small bulb, hook up the wires and BOOM! You're done!

Or so I thought...

When I replaced the headlights on our minivan it was SO simple, and having a lot of space under the hood helped. Turns out there's not a lot of space under the hood of a '04 Pontiac Vibe. It's pretty cramped under there, especially near the the battery, which was the side where the light had burned out.

I spent 45 minutes trying to change that light. I even took apart the other headlight housing to see if I could understand just how to replace it. Nope. Finally I went old school. I dug out the owner's manual form the glove box and looked it up. Even that didn't help.

Of course, I should have just pulled up YouTube in the first place. You can see the YouTube video that helped me: HERE. It would have saved my time and the skin on my hands. After watching the video, I had the old bulb out in 15 seconds! And after another couple of minutes I had the new bulb in, the wires hooked up and the hood closed.

I know I'm not part of the millennial generation--maybe they would have accessed YouTube first. I know if I had, I would have saved time and skin.