Lanchester.net ...musings of an old nerd

I was helping out at Vacation Bible School a couple of weeks ago, and in our church, VBS is at night. Some nights, you don't head home until around 9:00 pm. I happened to flip on my headlights in my 2002 Honda CRV, and nothing happened. (Well, the parking lights came on.)

It seemed a bit odd to me that both headlamps would go out at the same time, especially since both were replaced three months ago (after one of the original headlamps finally gave up the ghost after eight years).

After ticking off everyone on the drive home by driving with my high-beams on, I hopped on the internet to figure out how a safety hazard like this occurs. Turns out others were having the same problem. I found that others were taking off the steering column cover (three screws), and inspecting the white electrical connector plugged into the back of the headlight dimmer switch (also known as the turn signal).

And mine was fried. I wasn't happy, and I took it the Honda dealer to see if there was a safety recall. I didn't want to pay a lot for this, and I certainly didn't want to put the same defective parts back on.

The Honda dealer is replacing the dimmer switch and the electrical connector and wiring harness, all for $185. Sounds good to me. It was hard enough for me to get my big amazon hands behind the steering wheel to pry open the connector to see that it was fried. There's no way I'm going to attempt the fix myself. I'm electrically incompetent, anyway. And they said it's an upgraded system that shouldn't fry this time.

And while we wait for parts to come in, the Honda dealer fixed it for free with a spare used part they had.

If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear I was at the local Mazda dealer's service center. (I'm a huge fan of the local Mazda dealer's service department. They're great!)