"It can't be done," they said.

“Take it to the dealer.” “You need special tools.” That is what I kept hearing when discussing burnt out bulbs for my Jetta. The very first time a light burned out, it was a turn signal. I went and bought the aproprate bulbs only to open up the car manual and it read “see dealer.” After asking around, I learned that it was a complicated process and the only way to get a new bulb was to take it to the dealer.

Now maybe that is the case with turn signals or tail lights, but I figured they were all this way because the manual has the same message “see dealer.”

As you can expect, this becomes expensive and time consuming. Earlier this week, to my utter dismay, I discovered that one of my headlights burned out. Great. I do not have much money and I already knew I needed my car to pass inspections, in order to get my new title and registration, in order to get my new drivers license. Now I knew I needed to replace the bulb so the car would pass inspections and begin to knock down the line of dominos.

I asked around at work to see what other VW owners do. Eventually this started a conversation about VW bulbs and how I might find help online. Turns out, a co-worker found a great “how to” site. So this afternoon, I purchased a $10 bulb and changed it out myself. My hands got extremely dirty, it took me about 30 minutes, I was worried at one point that I broke something, and I had to amend the “how to” steps as they did not work for my car 100%, but in the end, I changed my own headlight bulb! Yeah, saving myself around $70. Sweet.