Much as I love my Traverse even as she’s getting on a bit and a more than a little wobbly from time to time, I have to say that GM’s engineers seem to absolutely hate petrolheads who have at least a modicum of ability to turn the occasional spanner or wrench.
I’d promised a while ago that I’d document the process for replacing a headlamp on the Traverse last November…and then promptly forgot about it in February the last time I mended a blown headlamp.
That was rather surprising because it’s normally a process that takes up to a hour to complete (don’t laugh…when you see the steps you have to do, you’ll understand) but this particular instance I was able to complete the job of mending the driver side bulb in a record time of 20 minutes with half of that spent trying to get the stupid bulb into the socket!
I’m sure you’re thinking…”mending a bulb is so easy that a toddler can do it!”
Well, here’s what you have to do…
- Turn the wheel all the way over to get access to the plastic liner in front of the front tyre nearest the blown bulb.
- Using a Torx screwdriver with a T15 bit, remove two Torx screws holding the front part of the liner in place.
- Once the screws are removed, bend the liner back toward the tyre with all your strength and then find some way to hold it out of the way as your other hand goes into the void in front of the wheel well to find the large circular plastic cover that protects the bulb and socket from moisture and remove the cover. You likely will being doing this completely by feel because you can’t see the headlamp assembly!
- Free the socket holding the bulb from the lamp assembly by twisting it a quarter turn and pulling back.
- Remove the old bulb with one hand from the socket (again…blindly!).
- Take the new bulb and install it in the socket (remember, you’re bending a very stiff bit of plastic in order to access the lamp assembly) and you’re doing this completely by feel. This is the point where all sorts of cursing if not using the Lord’s name in vain tends to occur!
- Once the bulb finally decides to lock into place in the socket, push it back through the reflector hole and twist the socket to lock it in place.
- Replace the weather cover protecting the socket/bulb.
- Put the liner back in place and secure it with the two Torx screws.
Can you see now why I was darned thrilled I’d got it done in only 20 minutes the last time I went through this horrific procedure?
Every other vehicle I’ve driven can have the lamp bulbs changed by lifting the bonnet and swapping them out in less than a minute.
But oh no, GM don’t play that way!
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to see that the passenger side lamp decided to burn out at some point between the IcePlex where Nicholas was substituting as goalie for Hydras and The Nerdery early this morning.
Especially when the temperatures are supposed to be hotter than fire and damnation today… 🙁
That’s what I was up to this morning right after waking up and I’m guessing whatever gods smile upon those who mend cars must have been sending me the good juju because it only took me ten minutes from the time I started undoing the Torx screws to the time I was putting them back in place after verifying the new lamp was in place and properly functional.
In fairness, the right side is often the much easier one to mend because I can use my right hand to do all of the blind fiddling about behind the lamp assembly but this time it went surprisingly well.
I have no doubts that at some point I’ll pay for it with a much more…fun…mending job but for now, I’ve got two working headlamps and hopefully they’ll stay that way for the forseeable future. 🙂