Who has two thumbs and replaced the busted fog lamp on her Bonnie without any instructions? THIS CHICK.

I didn't get home until 10:30 tonight, but when I saw the box from Rockauto.com on my doorstep, I couldn't wait. Immediately, I grabbed my Chilton'* and my Hayne'* and looked up fog lamps. To my disappointment, neither had any info on the specific type of fog lamp on a '99 Bonneville, but hey, I'm smart, I can figure it out. Grabbed a bandana (just chopped most of my hair off, so I needed something to keep the rest of it out of my face), head lamp, and Leatherman, along with the new bulb assembly, and marched out to the garage.

The top of the assembly has two rectangular holes, so obviously that had something to do with mounting. I scouted the situation -- part of the old lamp was still attached, so I had to get rid of that first, but otherwise was just a case of removing the temporary bulb I'd installed and cranking out two bolts. Then the new assembly slides in from under the bumper with the top of the bracket going OVER the mounting plate so the bolts could come up from underneath and hold it in place. The only complicated part (besides remembering where I put my socket set -- it hasn't seen any action in a while) was figuring out how to put the silver retaining clips that were in the rectangular holes on the broken assembly on the new one so the bolts had something to bite into.

Anyway, bolted everything into place, pulled the plastic film off the lens, plugged it in, and started the car. And it totally worked At first I thought the lens looked slightly different from the original one, but after smearing the mud off the undamaged lens, they're pretty much the same.

Clyde is symmetrical now! Yay! And the fog lamps will finally be useful when it snows again! I yanked the deer whistles while I was out there and had the tools on hand, too. My poor bumper. It'* gonna need some serious attention, what with all the paint scoured off the bottom and the holes from the deer whistle and license plate screws. That'* gonna be a bigger job than I can do in the half hour before my bed time, I'm afraid.

Now to use BILLBOOST37'* and KMALINICH'* to troubleshoot that rear window problem (thanks again, guys!). BTW, KMALINICH, I totally stole the idea for your clear front corners from eBay mod -- not trying to bite your style, but I Photoshopped them onto a photo of my car, and they're dead sexy. Still waiting for those and the chrome-look amber lights to arrive.

Anyway, half felt like sharing a success story (sense of accomplishment: LEVEL UP) and half figured maybe someday someone will need help with the same problem. It'* an easy fix, though. Even easier than installing a stereo in a '97 Malibu, and I did that over my lunch break (and still had time to make a sandwich before going back to work).

Being a handyman or "a handywoman" starts somewhere. U stick around here for a while and u will be rebuilding trannys in no time. Good Job. Rockauto is a great place to get parts

Congrats.

Is it wrong that I can tell from your procedure that you have a non SSE/SSEI? lol

I'm only going to say one thing...



BTW, good job and wait until the mod bug really bites!

Great job!

Well, I don't think so. Just says you know your Bonnevilles.

Haha, totally agreed. Pics forthcoming, once I can pull it out of the garage in daylight.

It'* waaay too late for that. I've got a grocery list of mods I want to do once the repairs are done.

Because Mike1995 demanded it 'em



The whole front fender. Needs cleaning and repainting, badly.



Close-up. That little smear of black below the headlight is glue from the deer whistle I unscrewed and twisted off.



View from underneath, showing the rest of the damage to the bumper.

Here'* a Google map showing exactly where the damage happened.

Ouch.

And your not stealing it from me... lol.. lots and lots of people have clear corners on here... I'm not sure where they get them though... It'll look awesome with white for sure.

Judging by those pics, do you go off roading much? LOL. Mine use to look like that when I took my 95 out in the woods.

Yeah, I do. LOL. Not as much as I used to in the '97 Malibu (which had a bit more ground clearance and a tighter turning radius), but only because I'm tired of coming home to find more gashes in the paint (and almost losing the splash guard and breaking the fog lamp and...you get the idea.)

When I'm rich (she says sarcastically, the day after getting laid off), I'll have my Bonnie as my project/highway car and a Subaru as my off-road car. One of my friends used to bring his mom'* Legacy when he visited me at college, and we took that thing EVERYWHERE. And that wasn't even AWD or anything, that was just a standard Legacy hatchback.