Bad Bulb

I’m not so sure how long it has been out, but someone told on my way out of the work parking lot tonight that one of the fog lights was unlit. I thought I was pretty conscious about checking to see if I could see two lights reflected in some surface of the car in front of me, but I guess I took it for granted that both lights were working in recent times.

The fog light bulb are standard 55 watt H1 bulbs, but for some reason the first two places I checked (Advanced Auto & Walmart) didn’t have them. Oh, they had the expensive Sylvania Silverstar bulbs for $18-20 each, but I wanted no part of them. Not only have they gotten a slightly bad rap on Miata.net, but if I bought just one the light from the fogs would be different from one another. I just wanted 1 plain ol’ halogen bulb for around $5, not 2 hoity-toity bulbs for $40.

Store number three, Autozone, was the answer. They had one left on the self for $5.99. They only fly in that ointment was the counter help was overwhelmed with customers and no one could break free to check me out. After several minutes a clerk asked if she could help me, but when I said I needed to check out, she said, “Oh, I can’t use the register.” About this time I was tempted to walk out, but considering what I went through to find this bulb, maybe the last one in town, I stuck it out a while longer. Cooling my heels I even considered tossing a ten spot on the counter and walking out, but before I could do anything rash, a certified register professional appeared as if by magic from the back and rang me up.

It took about 45 minutes to replace the bulb because you have to jack up the car, remove the front wheel and unfasten a half dozen screw and bolts to peel back a plastic wheel well liner to allow access to the bulb. If they had 2 bulbs I would bought both of them and changed out the passenger side as well. In my experience they usually go in pairs because they each are on for the same amount of time. Plus because I use the fogs as daytime running lights they are on whenever the car is on during the day, so they get quite a bit of use.