Headlamp bulb change

[Murphyv310]

A bit like the old Skoda, certainly the base model is on sale here and gets good reviews. I'd be looking at a year or two old car and the middle in the range, possibly the 0.9 3 pot engine for economy and tax. Same with the Kia as its zero tax.

[boater sam]

I would heartily recommend the Hyundai i10 or i20, simple to get to headlamps and zero tax on new ones. Our i10 is 2011 and only £20 tax.
Though built in India, similar to the Kia in many ways (there is a tie up between the two) the quality is fine, ours has been thoroughly reliable even though it is a cat D right off due to hailstone damage. No rust at all in the dents.
It has a golf ball finish so it goes faster!

[Kalee20]

On a BMW318 I had, I needed to change a headlamp bulb and the access was via the wheel arch. So first it's a job of brushing off the dried mud...

A Honda Accord I also had (nice car!), changing the bulbs was under the bonnet, behind the lamp. Unfortunately to do it you needed the slight hands and slim fingers of a Japanese geisha girl, and even more unfortunately she didn't come with the car...

But difficult access isn't new. I had to change the brake master cylinder on another car, a Morris Minor, and to do this you needed to strip the RH front suspension. The bolts were easy enough to undo, but couldn't be withdrawn because the torsion bar was in the way. To be fair, in most other aspects it was dead easy to work on.

[boater sam]

Oh yes the master cylinder inside the chassis, rusted to hell along with the main brake pipe. Remember them well.
We used to bend the torsion bar out of the way  by chaining the bar to the ramp and jacking the car up, its spring steel so it goes back OK. When refitting we put the bolts in the other way round. If they were really rusty, most were, we just burnt the bolts off. The gas axe would cope with anything. 
Of course all this was after struggling to get the floor panel out.
Headlamps were very easy though!
Bad access was always a problem we had to cope with, like rear brake pads on all the Jags, we cut access panels in the boot floor. Did the same to fit clutch cables on later  "sloper"Vauxhall Victors, cut the top of the bulkhead other wise it was a dashboard out job, about 7 hours!
And talking of clutch cables, I lost count of how many Avenger bulkheads we welded up after the cable had torn through it.
Don't mention replacing clutches in E type Jags, too painful. Or door hinge pins on Lotus Europas, I could weep just thinking about those.
Ah, the misspent youth in the motor trade.

[ppppenguin]

My first car was an Austin 1100. Changing the clutch on it was fun. There's one bolt on the cover that's almost impossible to access. Workspace was very tight for the whole job. Might well be worse on a Mini. There's also a little hose in the cooling system of that A series engine that you can't really change without taking the cylinder head off.

I've heard that brakes on a 2CV are a bundle of laughs. Or it might have been some other Citroen of that vintage with inboard brakes.

[boater sam]

Mini & 1100/1300, jack engine up off mounts to get at the bottom bolts. Or just heave it out of the pile of rust that remains of the car. Then scrap it.
Bypass hose on A series engines, water pump off first or squash new convoluted hose terribly and lube with Swarfega.
Citroen, all easy once you know except headlamps on Maserati engined DS20 with steerable lamps, don't ask!!!

[Pat Pending]

Mk4 Cortina headlamps were easy to change I had fitted some new ones to mine (the old ones had rusted inside) and a week later some Herbert nicked them, just one screw and they were out.

Andy.

[pwdrive]

The easiest I had was on my old Air Portable Landrover (lightweight) press the headlamp surround in a touch, turn a few degrees and the whole lot pops out, the indicators, side lights, stop light/brake lights glasses were threaded, so just unscrew to change the bulb, they even had thumb grips molded on the glass, my old Sankey trailer was the same.

All designed for squaddies.

Lawrence.

[Refugee]

Clutch cable rip thru used to happen on the MKI VW Golf. At the time a work mate of mine had one that was about two years old and he was making up a stack of large washers to fix it. I told him to give the main dealer a call to see what they do as it just looked like it was a common fault.
The next day he showed me an official repair patch that was shaped to fit the bulk head with double sided tape to keep it in place while the cable was being threaded thru. It was much thicker than the original bulk head.

[spot-wobble]

I changed the master cylinder on a Morris Minor Trraveller in 1983/84.
I remember it came out from inside the car as it was in the driver's side footwell. I couldn't have managed stripping out/down the suspension to do it!

Andy