Oh man am i mad.......

Lets see this is how it all started. A friend sent me a message on yahoo at 11pm asking for help because his companies computer just keeps rebooting so i say fine give me $50 and i will drive the 20-30 miles to the next county to help he says ok. So i thought i would drive my mothers Durnago because i just put $40 white headlights in it last week and i wanted to see how they looked so off i went at midnight to the place he works and i got there at 12:30am then within a min i find out its the PSU and i tell him its going out the door and so we sit there and talk and i see its almost 1:30am so i say good bye with the $50 in my back pocket. So i drive the half hour ride back to Hawkinsville and i keep thinking how much better you see with them and that they were worth it. So when i get in to Hawkinsville i think to my self don't just put gas in it also take it to the auto car wash seeing as it has not been washed in awhile so after i got my gas i got the 8 bills needed for the best car wash so i go down there to it and put the money in and pull on in and i think i should turn off the headlights just in case. So it went through the wash just fine and when it was done i pulled out and turned on the lights and what do i see. I see smoke come from them and i think of god so i pull to some light and get out and i see the car wash filled the headlights up with water and the first thing in my mind was oh S#$% i'm gonna have to drive home on fog lights alone (about 12miles on dark country roads with deer and what ever else) but thank god i kept one of the old lights in the dodge. so i turn on the fog lights and drive down to flash foods where theres light and people so i won't be jumped while i am changing it and i could not see any one coming up. so i get it changed and make my way home. Now comes the fun part going back up there in the morning when the guy that runs that place is there so i can B$^&* him out for my money back because it did not wash it all and also for the new headlights that was just a week old.

 

Before I say this, I wasn't there, don't know everything and so on, but...
How's the flooded light the fault of the car wash? I'd have thought that was a fault with the light units or (no offence) the way you reassembled them.

I'd probably be more inclined to see the light manufacturer/retailer.

On the whole though - bummer.

 

well how that is i know how to work on cars and i know how to put in a simple headlight and i knew they were sealed right because i checked them with a pressure washer pointed right at them and did not get no water in them but some how the car wash manged to get water in them and filled them up with water. I sure would like to know how that happen with the car wash when i could not do it with a high pressure washer.

 

I agree it probably has nothing to do with the car wash, and everything to do with the headlights or how they were assembled. Pointing a pressure washer directly at them is not the same as the several angles water comes at a car in a car wash.

You can go see him, of course, but he's going to point to the little sign that's at the entrance to all car washes that states they are not responsible for damage to custom work and after-market equipment on vehicles.

Sorry, but I think you're probably out of luck on this one.

 

Not to be a killjoy but almost any car wash i have ever been to, manned or manual, has disclaimer notices posted all around about how they are not liable for damages. Also come to think of it at least two of the dodges that I have owned have had craptastic seals on the lamp assembalies. I solved it by drilling very tiny vent holes in the lenses.

 

For both headlight assy's to fill with water after going through a car wash there can only be reason, a leak or poor seal on the headlight assy's, and seeing that you changed the bulbs. One can only assume you might have overlooked something. Hey I've worked on all my vehicles for fifty years, but that still hasn't stopped me from making the same type of mistake.

I would disassemble the headlight units and reassemble them again, you will probable come back with a whoops I missed this You should be able to see where the water entered on close inspection, and that will help you pin point what is wrong.

Have to say it "That may shed some light on the situation" sorry about that N5638J, and do hope you find the solution, before you venture out in the dark in a rain storm:eek

 

I think that's all that needs saying really... If a pressure washer didn't do it - how COULD the car wash be at fault? Unless the brushes had broken something - which one would expect to be obvious - I think it can only be something to do with the huge amounts of water pouring over your car and reaching the lights at different angles or something like that.

What I said in my first response wasn't a slight - just a thought on the situation. All too easy to make mistakes, like trapping a seal when closing a unit so that it won't seal properly (try it with a £2000 camera in an underwater housing and see how it feels compard to a £20 bulb ) or like a host of other possibilities.

I hope you get to the bottom of it.

 

Mistakes do happen. I've been a Ford mechanic for thirty years. Probably my biggest screw up was replacing an automatic transmission because of a vibration, which turned out to be bad plug wires. They would only misfire when the tranny shifted to overdrive. Assuming can be a problem in my business. The shop had to pay for the tranny.

 

sibeer - not good.

Ever watched The Garage? Dunno if it shows out there. It's a series about a garage in Spain run and staffed by English mechanics... One of them ordered THREE clutches for a Porsche fitted each of them - each of them failed to work. Turned out the fork was stuffed.

He wasn't a popular lad for that one either.