Originally Posted by
Joe_Lukeman
I was thinking of getting complete new headlights. But then I read that you have to remove the whole front of the car to replace them and decided the plastic lens was not so bad after all. Today it took me a good hour to replace one headlight bulb and the associated holder spring on the "easy" drivers side. I am not mechanical but my xfire is forcing me to learn with $2000 in service bills in 2000 miles.
My bulb holder springs are all bent and worn out from previous owners abuse and do not hold the headlight bulb securely so you drive along and all of a sudden one bulb points down.
NEWS FLASH Volvo OEM spring bulb holders #9178535 are almost the same as Chrysler OEM but cost $4 each instead of $20!! They work fine. The wire is the same shape but slightly thicker.
That fact was noted some time back, people forget that parts like that are off the shelf items and are used by a multitude of car makers and car component manufacturers the car companies. Wherever possible makers go to the generic part for economic reasons, not cheapness as some say or else we would pay more for the cars.
The front indicator socket being a well known case for our cars, tires are an obvious but forgotten example of this.