On Tuesday I discovered that my drivers side headlight wasn’t working, so I bought a light-bulb and went to replace the light. It turns none of the wires are still attached to the light holder and so the light is obviously not attached to the car. Is it likely that they all broke off at once or that someone cut them? (I have some nasty neighbors). Is it going to be really expensive to get this fixed? Can I buy the part that attaches to the light-bulb that has the wires attached and attach the wires to the car myself? If so, what is the part called so that I can order it? Thank you very much for any help.
We need the model year, please.
Are you pretty handy?
If your car uses a fairly common bulb, major auto parts stores will probably have the pigtail in the “self help” aisle. The pigtail is the socket with a length of wiring harness attached. You then reattach the pigtail to your remaining harness with wire crimpers.
There are a lot of ways to screw with a car that are faster than opening the hood and cutting the headlight wires. I doubt your neighbors did it. Rodents, on the other hand, have been known to do petty acts of vandalism to cars.
a replacement pigtail might be available to attach.
You can cut one off a car in the junk yard and solder it and use heat shrink or use crimps.
Where are the wires severed? Is it right at the back of the connector or are there a couple inches sticking out for example?
Unless the pins are broken off, you could repair what you have rather than buying replacements. If there are wire ends sticking out of the socket, just do what you’d have to do with the replacement pig tail- inline crimps with sealant are easy. If there’s no wire sticking out, you could extract the pins and redo the crimp and solder. Then reinsert. That’s how I would deal with it. Then, if the damage was from chewing, time to go critter hunting!
Shadow made a good point. Rhodents like to chew on wires.
If the wires appear chewed on, than after the repair you could spray it with Critter Ridder (available at any home store). It’s supposed to make the area uncomfortable to critters, chasing them off.