Today I replaced my first headlight on my Mazda 5. I had read some horror stories about how much of a pain it was and how it had taken some people hours, and how they wound up with scratched up hands, etc, etc.

I have giant hands, and yes it was awkward, but I managed to get the entire job done in about 10 minutes. The hardest part by far was putting the clip back on when I was putting things together, mostly because the spring is quite strong, and I wasn't entirely sure how to clip it back in, but it still only took a couple minutes to get it in.

While I have to admit, it wasn't the easiest job, it was not that bad at all.. BUT, it was definitely a million times easier than the time I had to replace the headlight on my 1979 280zx. Now THAT was a nightmare!

 

I had to do the exact same thing on my '08 Mazda 5 about two days ago. The first thing it says about it in the owners manual is that "you cannot do this by yourself and you should take your car to a licensed Mazda dealer for service". I took that as a challenge, being somewhat handy. You are absolutely right though......the worst part was getting the damn spring back into place. But as you found, 10 minutes and a couple of cuts later (I have larger hands as well) it was all done.

 

I find it hilarious that it says to bring the vehicle to Mazda! Seriously. $10 for a new bulb, and then what, $50 for install? $100 for install? I would only pay that if after hours I had still failed.

I am wondering about the bulbs though. This is my second dead headlight. The first was fixed by Mazda under warranty during an oil change so I didn't have to do it myself, but two dead bulbs in 3 years seems a bit much. I have owned many cars, and have only ever had a total of 3 dead bulbs, 2 of which on this one car.

Oh well, at least its only $10 for a replacement bulb... and a few bucks for bandaids. ;-)

 

I have been thinking about upgrading to a HID headlight kit.....you know those "blue blinding everyone else on the road" things....partly because I was wondering about the life of the stock Xenon bulbs and partly because I was thinking that if I was behind them I might tend to care less about the blinding light of others if I could see better too. I have found conversion kits ranging from $60-$100. The bulbs for HID are considerably more expensive however.....almost $50 per bulb. Do they last longer? Would the cost of skin and money be worth the effort?

 

I just had to comment on that. A member over on the 3 side did exactly that after hours of not being able to redo the clip. The tech at the dealer 'fixed' the problem by liquid nailing the headlight into the back of the housing. That is of course not what they're supposed to do, but it just goes to show that sometimes the dealer can screw up by the numbers just like everyone else. lol

 

YIKES! So what happens next time the bulb dies? That is ridiculous - I cant believe the dealer would do that...

 

That was my exact question. Sadly there was never any followup in the thread.

I had a slightly similar experience. The little tab inside my flip key which you push to separate the key half from the remote half broke off at some point when I dropped the key. My solution to keep it from falling apart was to just put a piece of paper folded over the part that stuck into the remote half to shim it up.... just a friction fit. It worked fine but you could still pull it apart if you tried to..... or if you didn't push the ignition release before pulling it out of the ignition.

So I took the car to the dealer for something random and as the guy goes to pull the key out he manages to separate the flip key/remote by not pushing the release button on the ignition. I tell him it's no problem, not to worry about it and that I'd just put a new little piece of paper in it later. So my car is finished and they hand me to receipt with all the services listed on it. The last one was "customer complains that key/remote separate. Repaired at no charge". I look at it for a moment and can't see anything that they did to "repair" it. It pulled apart pretty easily at which point I get to see the huge glob of super glue they put between the two pieces. So first off I didn't ask them to fix it for me. Second their fix was to glue the two pieces together which if it had worked would have precluded my ever being able to change the battery in the remote. Third it didn't work and the big glob of glue obscured/destroyed all of the FCC/Visteon/Part numbers along the top of the remote where it meets the key half.

Grrr.