I searched to see if this is a common anomaly - I know that I've never heard of it before, but nothing turned up in my search.

One night I heard a loud "pop" and shortly thereafter the forward illumination dimmed. When I reached the house, I looked and my headlight bezel, and sure enough, it has glass bits inside of it.

Nothing pierced the outer cover either. I'm going to take it to the dealer (1700 miles) to have them fix it, but I'm wondering if they're going to tell me that this is a "wear item" and refuse to even clean out the glass in the headlight assembly. Anyone else been down this road before?


Greg

 

First welcome to the site.
did you by chance have aftermarket bulbs in and touched the bulb itself, grease on hands will make the bulb explode,
but if you still have factory bulbs than theres something wrong here, kinda look see if you housing is leaking. but definetly take to the dealer they have to replace it.

 

Since its so new I'd say just a defective bulb. Those headlight bulbs have a good bit of pressure in them. Just a lemon and the heat made it fail. Hope you can get all the glass out of the lens :o

 

Bulbs are OEM, never touched by hands (less the line worker's I guess). I expect the dealer to remove the headlight assembly and get all of that glass out of there too - unless they have some kind of fancy vacuum that they can use to accomplish that task (without disassembly) that is. Wierd stuff, that's for sure...

Greg

 

Maybe you have a bad seal and some water got in there, good luck getting it fixed.

 

I've never heard of this problem before, but theres a first time for everything.

 

a bulb will explode from moisture or oil on the glass of the bulb. if it was never touched by hand and you dont see any condensation in the headlight, then it may just be a fluke, not sure what the dealers take is on the warranty thing, with that few miles on it they had better replace it

 

Finally got around to taking the truck to the dealer. At first he started telling me how much it was going to cost me to fix it... I simply told him that I wasn't expecting to spend anything to fix it. He didn't argue.

I had no idea though that the headlamp assembly needs to be removed to extract the bulb anyway. Lucky for me I guess as that made the entire assembly a really easy part to remove. Looks like (3) bolts and a 5 minute R&R. If I'd had any tools with me at the time, I'd have taken the thing out to swap it for a new bulb, but now I'll be going in on Monday night to have them take care of it. I may remove the lens in advance to fully vacuum the assembly out prior to heading to the dealer.

Greg

 

Good luck vacuuming out the headlite assy, its a real b!tch to get into all the corners only being able to access the bulb hole,,, I know.

 

You may want to try using compressed air (after you shake out all the glass you can) to get the tiny bits left behind. I don't want to sound like your dad, but wear some safety glasses if you try this.

 

I figured that I'd use one of those straws that you can "mold" into any position that you want to get in there. Is that what others have done?

Greg

 

You've been driving for 2 months with only one headlight?

 

No, this is not a daily driver. Sits idle most of the time. I just bought it as a tow vehicle. If I have no need for the truck, it sits. The odometer reads about 1900 miles and I bought it in February.

They replaced the bulb and extracted a fair amount of glass out of the bezel. Naturally, it still needs a proper evacuation performed. I'll try compressed air and a vacuum to extract the rest.

It is nice not to have to hide from the cops when the sun goes down though!


Greg

 

My '03 passenger light exploded Saturday night/morning. Mine was more like a flash fire or electrical. Bulb fragments everywhere. It ruined my headlight, which are Harley lights. Thought at first it was just a smoke haze. Ran water thru it...didn't come out, so I sprayed some mean green cleaner and where the yellowish film/haze was on the chrome.....there is no chrome anymore. Furious to say the least. I did have aftermarket bulbs. Did I mention that it melted both of the plugs from the wiring harness. Went to Auto parts store picked up replacements.
I wouldn't reccommend the aftermarket bulbs, maybe the sylvania bulbs but not the blue ones. They're too hot or something.
I just ordered some projectile beam lights, 1pc black to replace. These will look better anyway.

 

Interesting. That would go a long way towards explaining all of the repeated questions that I received about aftermarket light bulbs, whether I'd ever had another bulb installed, etc. They definitely seemed to want to blame the problem on something that I'd done. In the end though, they did the right thing and took care of it.

Greg