[Asinity]

Hey everyone, new to the forum here.

I tried to do a few searches for an answer for this question but had little luck, although while filtering through my searches I found some answers to completely unrelated things that were tucked in the back of my mind, so at least it wasn't a complete waste of time. :thmsup:

I've had my 99 Accord EX coupe, 2.3L Vtec for about 3 months now, it has 160,000km's. A few of the dash bulbs were burnt out when I purchased the vehicle, and about 2 weeks ago I finally got around to swapping them out. However, on the way home from work tonight the light that controls the fan vent position/windshield defroster burnt out. This was one that I had just replaced, and at $14 for the bulb (at the dealer) I'm fairly irritated by it.

Are these bulbs junk, right from the get-go? Or should I be looking deeper into fuses or other areas for the solution?

I was considering an LED conversion before I changed the bulbs out, and decided to simply spend the $30 on new bulbs. I think I will simply replace them with LED's now, but don't want to end up having them burn out because I missed something.

Thanks for any advice, sorry if I missed something in my searches, it's been a very long day. *yawn*

 

[nehonda]

Welcome to the forum.
You may want to check to see if the bulb is just loose instead of burned out already. Sometimes they dont seat real tight. I dont buy dash replacement bulbs from the dealer, I get them from Radio Shack instead. Last ones I bought were $2 for a 2 pack - Model: 272-1092. You need to install the radio shack bulbs into the old Honda lamp holder, but thats fairly easy to do.
LEDs would be a long term solution, but a little more work to do. Not real cheap either. You can also check the 6thgenaccord forums for details on how to do that.

 

[CDsDontBurn]

Welcome to the forum.
You may want to check to see if the bulb is just loose instead of burned out already. Sometimes they dont seat real tight. I dont buy dash replacement bulbs from the dealer, I get them from Radio Shack instead. Last ones I bought were $2 for a 2 pack - Model: 272-1092. You need to install the radio shack bulbs into the old Honda lamp holder, but thats fairly easy to do.
LEDs would be a long term solution, but a little more work to do. Not real cheap either. You can also check the 6thgenaccord forums for details on how to do that.

+1 on everything but the radio shack part. only because i'm not familiar with the radio shack part. if i were, it'd say "+1 to everything here" lol.

@ OP: I'm sure that they're just sitting loose. Something you may want to try is to use a hot glue gun once you've set the bulb in nice and tight in the ballast to make sure it doesn't move anywhere. It's a trick I do at work with some of the electrical components I work with.

 

[Asinity]

Thanks for the quick responses guys, much appreciated.

I was hoping to get it taken apart again later in the week as between work, and getting a decent night sleep tends to not give me much time to work on the car through the week, and I'd rather not be out there at 1am, especially now that it's dropping below freezing at night now.

I'll have a look and see what's going on with that bulb - hopefully it's just loose, damn things are expensive, lol. Thanks for the part number as well, that should really help if I need to go that route, but what exactly is the best way of getting the old bulb out of it's housing? I tried just pulling the old ones out, but had no luck.

Thanks again guys, I'll let you know when I find out more. Sorry to post such a simple question, the possibility of a loose bulb seems so obvious that I should have thought of that last night.

 

[nehonda]

The wire leads on the bulbs are wrapped around the small slots in the housing, so unwrap the old wires, pull out the bulb, install the new bulb and wrap the wire the same way. The new wires will be too long, so trim them off when finished.

 

[Asinity]

So, I feel stupid for not checking it before I came on here, the light bulb was not only loose, but it fell out completely (luckily it was caught on a wiring harness before falling into the deep abyss of the instrument panel) so I reinstalled and put a little silicone inside to prevent it from falling out again.

Now... a whole new issue has arisen when I went to pull my car into the driveway for the night. The clock light was out - I checked it and it was loose (these things **** something fierce...) and when I went to tighten it back up, the light flickered on, and then off, (clock itself is still functional, just no back light - bulb is not burnt out either, I switched it and my cruise control button, both bulbs work in the cruise button) and my odometer died, readout and backlight.

What the heck happened? I double checked everything I could to make sure that everything was tight, I wasn't even working with the odometer, what the heck happened? :dunno:

This is extremely frustrating :bawling:

 

[Asinity]

I burnt the 7.5A fuse for my instrument panel. All is well again

Thanks again for the help.