A quick rant about car repairs.

I own a 2010 Mercury Milan. It has been a reliable and decent car the whole time I have owned it. Other than a recall notice for a VERY annoying engine issue and some brake work, I haven't had any problems at all. It's fairly decent but I have to say that it is also incredibly annoying to work on. I had to replace the passenger side headlight today and it was an ordeal!

For some reason the headlight is extremely hard to replace. Instead of coming in from the top like any normal car, there is so much crap in the way you have to come in through the wheel well. And the splash cover is attached by crappy screws that are plastic and fall apart easily unless you have a propitiatory tool. I managed with a screwdriver but I broke one of them. And I am pretty sure my hand touched the bulb which means the lifetime of the light will be shorter meaning I will have to do this all again soon anyways! It took my 25 minutes and it started snowing before I was done!

And it's not like the driver side is that much better. I was able to simply reach in and replace it the last time I had too but that's only because I have normal sized hands and arms. A bigger person would have to do what I did the first time, which is take apart the air filter. Normally that wouldn't be a bad deal since taking apart the air filter is usually the other thing that anyone can do. Not so with my Milan! Taking it apart was easy but the thing is so poorly designed I had to call my Dad for help. I couldn't do it alone, I needed him there to help steady the thing while I moved it into position. It was a two man job!

This is, quite frankly, extremely annoying. Back in the day even the most incompetent person could easily replace a headlight. It's one of the few things that anyone should be able to do but it seems like Ford made this as difficult as it could possibly be. Had they just made the car a couple inches longer, or even rearranged the engine and other parts under the hood it would have been way simpler.

Why do car companies do this? Very simple. They don't want you to spend $10 to $20 bucks and five minutes with a headlight from Wal-Mart. They want you to come in to their service department at a dealership and pay some mechanic $50 an hour to do something that is way too annoying to do yourself. It's a fairly cynical cash grab and though I am loath to say "there should be a law" I think this should be an exception.

Anyways, I know this is pretty far afield from what I usually write about, but hey, it's my blog and I wanted to rant! If nothing else it felt good to do so and perhaps there are other people out there who have had to deal with the same thing!