Well it’s yet another chapter in “Why I Hate My Acadia” and this car is becoming more and more of a problem than a solution. To be honest when crap goes wrong with this car, I’ve stopped being shocked or angry.
The latest thing to go wrong with this car? The headlight went out.
No, not the headlight we changed a month ago, this is now the OTHER side of the car. Great fun right?
Armed with the knowledge of how difficult this job is, I steel myself for another round of cursing and frustration. This time I cut to the chase and simply put the car on a lift to access the wheel well and bottom splashguard bolts and screws.
First remove the tire and rim from the driver side and remove the screws holding the wheel well panel in place.
Take care when removing the push pins holding the wheel well panel in, and the entire panel should dislodge and push to the side.
Thankfully, GMC did not completely eat up all the space available on the driver side as they did to the passenger side.
It seems as though the windshield reservoir being mounted on the driver side of the vehicle has given us enough room to get my hand up to the back of the headlight housing.
With the wheel well panel removed and pushed to the side, you should be able to access the back of the driver side headlight assembly.
The assembly cover comes off with twist of your hand, exposing the H11 bulb inside.
Upon removing my blown H11 bulb, I find an unpleasant surprise.
The H11 harness that holds the 2 pins in place simply disintegrates at my touch, which does wonders for my blood pressure. Further inspection reveals that something was definitely up with the headlights as shown on the bulb that I just removed from the drivers side.
To make matters worse, the Acadia’s high beam is secured to the low beam wiring meaning I cannot retrieve the low beam wires out to extend them.
What else could go wrong you ask??
Hold on……… let me finish.
It also appears that whatever was causing this burn-out also wiped out the pins for the H11 bulb as they no longer clip and / or hold onto anything, let alone a bulb.
Since I cannot reuse the old connector because it broke into a million pieces, and cannot reuse the single pins found in the old connector, I decide to repin the wires and use something that will hold onto the H11 bulb tight.
To repair this issue, I re-use the OBDI body harness we used to re-pin our 1992 Acura Integra Shock Engine harness.
After removing a test pin, I find that the OBDI pins fit onto the bulb quite nicely and snugly. I promptly remove 2 pins and wire them inline to the headlight harness after clipping and removing the old pieces of junk.
I install the 2 new pins by cutting away the older pieces and stripping down the wires, after soldering the new pins in place I use a strip of electrical tape to make sure they will not move or touch each other and put the driver side headlight bulb back into it’s place.
I still hate this car with a passion, but now you have 2 methods in which to service your Acadia’s headlights. Best of luck!
Okay if you hate the car get rid of it why do you still have it?