i have an extra driver side (not sure it matters?) clip. just to clarify, its the paper clip looking bent thing. if this post is still here i still have it. message me
Same thing happened to me, OP. Mazda 3, 2004. Tried changing the headlight. Broke the clip. Luckily, my local auto repair place only charged me for the clip and labor. I didn’t have to buy a whole new housing. Still, it annoys the shit out me that I can’t easily change my own headlight.
ETA:Whoops. Just noticed this is a several year old thread.
The first time I’ve checked on SDMB in like, a year, and it happens to be on the day that someone posts, offering a part I still very much need. Incredible.
You’ve been driving around with a duct taped headlight for four years?
Among other kludges, yes.
I used to have a 2002 Mazda Protege5, the immediate predecessor to the Mazda 3 hatchback. Loved that car - great little car. I never bent or broke that stupid fiddly little clip (thank god), but the only thing I did hate about that car was that it ate headlights. Absolutely devoured them. I swear, I had it for 11 years, probably replaced the low beams probably 5, 6 times. Never the high beams; I live in the city and rarely used them.
And it was always in the dead of winter, at night, coldest night of the year. Damn headlights.
A wizard did it.
He’s got the record, but I had a half-assed lightbulb pointing in god-knows-what-direction for about a good 6 months to a year before I finally admitted to myself that this wasn’t going to work and I really needed to get it fixed, so I could totally understand Ogre’s mindset.
Damned great car, though. Mine’s still kicking without a problem at 115K. Still on the original clutch. No major repairs, minus the usual upkeep repairs (most expensive being a new set of rotors and pads.) Headlights and taillights do seem to have to be replaced more often than usual for a car. I had to change the rear brake lights 3 times in the last six months. The first time was in July, when I was pulled over and informed that BOTH my rear brake lights were toast. (No fine, but had to go to court to prove I fixed it). And then in December, my left brake light goes kaput.
I bought a 2003 Protege5 with only 80K on it in October 2013. I noticed one of the low beams was out the other day & bought a pair of basic Sylvania bulbs.
I got the burnt one swapped (driver’s side) without too much cussing. I was going to leave it at that, but the new bulb was noticeably brighter so I went to change the passenger side today. The darned clip broke away from the mount while trying to get it back in place!
The rubber boot/seal seems to hold it in place OK for now. When I wiggle the plug it’s not much different than the other, properly installed bulb.
I had a broken taillight for a year and a half and got pulled over four times. I got away with a warning on the excuse that I thought it was okay as long as the bulb was working every time. Then the fifth time a campus cop wrote me a ticket and I decided to get it fixed. 
But four years, wow.
My BMW motorbike headlight has adjustment screws to point the headlight in a suitable direction for the load the cycle is carrying. Well, I say has… turns out the adjusters are fragile enough that if you push a new bulb in with the same force it took to pull the old one out…
And yeah, new headlamp assembly for that, upwards of £250. :smack:
In about 1978, a friend and I drove from Pullman to Spokane, a distance of about 60 miles, to go to a car show. We took his Corvette, which had a taillight out.
We talked to three different cops that evening. :rolleyes:
i have an extra one contact me if you want it
I own a 2004 Mazda 3s with 320K miles on it. Every time a headlight goes out, I have to struggle with that stupid clip. It’s simple. With one hand, hold the clip. With the other hand, hold the plug; with your third hand, hold the housing. No problem. It’s easiest if, in addition to having three hands, you’re also a dwarf.
The car has suffered from every known ailment that plagues this model: fuel pump dying (Mazda will fix this one for nothing), motor mounts breaking (too bad, saith Mazda), rear tires wearing to the belts on the inner edge after only 20K miles (a fault of the non-adjustable factory rear camber settings), the shields on the bottom of the car only lasting a few months (because the car rides so low to the ground), the oil pan being taken out by debris (twice for me, for the same reason), and last of all, the windshield very vulnerable to cracking from impacts because…the car rides so low to the ground (FOUR windshield replacements for me).
Oh yeah, let’s not forget that the in-cabin electronics are doodoo, with things like window switches and A/C controls routinely failing.
This car has been a blast to own and drive (I bought it new), and the engine is a workhorse, but it’s got too many chassis design flaws and vulnerabilities.
And, dammit. My right headlight just went out, along with my left. Grrr… I feel like such a moron bringing in a car to get the headlight changed, but I ain’t screwing with that retaining clip again.
(I’ve never had an issue on any of the other things, though, although mine is a 2004 3i, not a 3s.)
Those clips are a huge pain until you figure out how they work.
Here’s an article that shows the Mazda 3 headlight bulb clips in pretty good detail.
Popping back in: We’ve got a Honda CR/V now as I mentioned above.
It has had headlight problems pretty consistently for the past 4 years or so - as in, they’ll burn out in less than 6 months. Now, I do tend to run the headlights all the time, but still this is a bit extreme.
So one time I bought a headlight, and followed the instructions in the manual, and tried to change it myself - and found a clip almost exactly as Ogre described in his OP.
I tried rotating it the way the manual showed - and nope, it was not BUDGING - and I knew if I tried, I’d bend it and render it useless. So yeah, I had the dealer fix it that time too.
I did notice that a rubberized gasket at the back of the whole assembly was present on one of the lights, but not the other. I don’t know if it was ever on the car, or if it got pulled of during one of the many replacements and was lost. Fortunately this did not set me back 250 dollars!!
Why do they make it so impossible???
Had the fun of redoing that fuse (mentioned upthread) again this weekend. The cigarette lighter charger for my cell phone quit working. From experience, I tried it in my husband’s car and it lit up just fine, so I knew it was the socket in my car (that happened once when I tried a diffsererent charger, but I’ve used the current charger for a year or more so WFT??).
I knew the fuse layout was bad - it said that slot 18 served the accessory socket but I’d noted before that this served the radio instead. But I’d neglected to note which one DID serve the socket :smack: So we checked each 15 amp fuse and finally found the culprit, which was labeled in the manual as something like BH F ACC (as opposed to the other one that said “front accessory”, and the one that said “rear accessory” that actually did the job when the rear socket failed). Yeesh.
My husband kept asking me “are you sure it’s a 15 amp fuse?” because I kept saying we needed to check all the 15 amp fuses to find the culprit. I pointed out the assortment box we had on hand: which had just 3 15-amps left in it and a whole bunch of each other size.
As before, it required long needlenose pliers - I tried with the testing / pulling tool and no joy, and I tried shorter pliers and also no joy.
Why do they make it so hard? It’s like they’re TRYING to make it impossible.
Finally, a place to vent!
2005 Ford Focus, overall a very good car (my wife’s). Fast forward 8 years and there’s an issue with the battery, and it ends puking acid and dissolving part of the wiring harness. Okay, that sucks, and I know it’s going to cost an arm and a leg, but at least it’s a replaceable part, right?
Well, it would be if they actually still MADE OR STOCKED THE PART! Dealership tells me that they don’t make the part anymore, but they’ll call around and see if they can find one.
1 week later, dealership calls and says (paraphrasing)…“Sorry, but nobody has one, no dealerships and we’ve called all the u-pull-its on the west coast, so it looks like you’re fucked.”
“So what do I do?” I asked, mouth hanging open.
“We can have our mechanic try to rebuild it by hand.” they say
“What if that doesn’t work?”
“Um, dunno. Sell it?”
After going through 3 mechanics, they were able to find one (at another dealership) who was able to manually rebuild the wiring harness. But if they couldn’t have found him, I would have had to actually sell the car!
I could understand if I was bringing them a 1991 Taurus or something, but the god damned car was only 8 years old!!
Needless to say, we’ve since sold the car and bought a lovely Hyundai.
Fuck Ford.
Heh, if you think you’re going to have a better time with Hyundai I seriously doubt it.
I found the same instructions in the owner’s manual for my Nissan Altima. Given that the local dealer quoted $700 for a “tune-up” (that consisted entirely of changing four spark plugs), I believe that I’ll attempt headlight replacement myself when the time comes.