Instruction manuals

Do you ever do something the hard way only to discover much later that there's a much simpler way to do it?

Last winter I had an intermittent problem with one of the van's low beam headlights. It was a light that gave me trouble before. It worked about 95% of the time. Sometimes a bad pothole would kick it out, only to come on again at the next pothole. That suggested a loose connection somewhere. Since I wasn't doing much night driving I didn't worry about it.

Actually, I was dreading the job. Previously, to get at the light, I had to remove the starting battery along with the battery tray. Even then it was a really tight area to work in. Then my other low beam headlight burned out. Something had to be done.

Once I examined what it would take to get to the backside of the other light I figured there had to be a better way. While I couldn't find my exact model in a youtube video there was a similar vehicle. The video showed a guy changing the lights by removing a couple of simple retaining clips. Sure enough, on my van, by lifting up a couple of clips the whole headlight assembly came out. Then it was really easy to work on.

Yeah, I felt like an idiot. The loose wire was easy to find and fix and the new light bulbs popped right in. So much of my ambulance/motor home is a custom conversion that I forget about the parts that are standard and may actually have instructions somewhere.

Like much of life there's usually an easier way to do things if only we knew how.

-Sixbears