I was stressed with a burnt out signal light

With an impending trip being planned on 4 wheels, I was getting my car prepared.  I am thankful for a good friend stepping up to help me.  He actually did all the work with me getting in the way.  Some substantial maintenance work was done over the past 6 weeks where my car was mostly being driven here and there to have the work performed.  I thought my car was ready so I decided to drive it to work on Friday when I must have burnt out my right turn signal bulb

When I made my first right turn the signals clicked at double speed so I knew something was wrong so I stopped at a local auto parts store to buy some bulbs

I nearly fainted when the girl told me how much they cost.  I put away my $5. bill and charged the $16. to my credit card.

There's the burnt out bulb on the bottom.  I had to make sure they gave me the correct ones.   I got home and surveyed the situation.   I mean, how hard would it be to change a burnt out bulb.   Well, it seems it is a BIG deal.  I opened my hood and there is no access.   I tried to get my hand behind the grill and I also crawled under the bumper hoping that I could reach up but NO,   there was no way  I could determine how to get to the bulb socket

Every so often our Corvette Club goes to a drive in to have hamburgers,  White Spot Fridays , and tonight was the night.   So off I went to enjoy a hamburger and ask if anyone knew how to change the bulb.   The first 6 people had no idea.

Those are the Corvette girls enjoying each other's company.  We were lucky to get the shady side as it was HOT out.   We are not accustomed to blistering 25°c temperatures here on the Coast.  It was too hot to put our top down.

I guess that's the way it is, the Corvette girls congregate in the parking lot and the guys sit in their chairs in the shade

There is quite the mix of Corvettes in our club, from old to new(er)

Anyway back to my burnt out bulb.  I was lucky that Jim was there with some tools and a phillips screwdriver.   He said he could fix it in the parking lot.  So while I was enjoying my hamburger, he was busy taking my car apart

He seemed to know what he was doing so I tried to keep out of his way

While others just stepped back and watched the whole operation.   It seemed that you had to manually raise the retracting headlight and remove a bezel, and that gave access for your arm to feel around behind the lens and find the bulb socket.   Then you had to be a one handed contortionist to remove the bulb and put in the new one, using only one hand.   There was no way that I could have figured this out by myself

One thing about being in a Club is that you have people to ask when you need help and generally someone will know what to do.  It seems that Jim has done this before so he knew it could be done.  I was so grateful for his help and knowledge

While this seemed like an insignificant problem as compared to what had been done to my car over the past month or so, I am relieved that it seemed so simple, yet no one knew how to do it.  I have only been able to drive my car for the past week or so because of a stupid error code which we were trying to eliminate.  By we I mean my good friend Nigel who came upon the solution, which worked . . . thank goodness for the Corvette Forum

Thwarted by a single $8. amber light bulb.   I can now make right turns again

Also tonight was my family birthday dinner.   We dined in style and when we came home from the restaurant I was served home-made cake to the sounds of music

Notice I only had ONE  candle.   I can do that . . .