Maybe AJ or someone else that works at a dealership can help on this one. I am under the 6 yr /100,000 warranty from GM until July of this year. My HID lights are opaque, but the dealer said they had to be yellow for GM to replace them. Now I find out that 3 of the 4 mounting tabs on the headlights are broken, well they are cracked in the center and have spread about 3-4 mm.

Now, these lights, which are dull from the INSIDE, not road nicks on the outside are being denied replacement by the dealer and GM. The dealer says the lights are not yellow enough to be replaced and that the cracked mounting brackets are a "normal" condition. GM customer service has told me that if a second dealership says the lights need to be replaced, they will cover it.

My question to you Cadillac Techs: Is there any TSBs on this subject or is there some sort of information I can bring to the next dealer that will force their hand on replacing these lights? I mean, 3 freaking broken mounting tabs and the fact the lights are dull SHOULD warrant replacement. Those tabs are going to eventually break all the way and the lights are going to wobble. I can't believe a Cadillac engineer would consider 3 broken tabs that HOLD the front head lights in to be a "normal" condition.

Any help will be appreciated...

Mike

A: the man you dealt with is NOT a engineer, he is most likely a technician
B: Go to a second dealer, just ask to see a tech, and ask him if the headlights look as if they need to be replaced, if he says yes, time to start talking to him

I personally think the dealer is screwin ya around.

Actually, I had GM call the service Manager at the dealership in question. Being a son of an automotive engineer, I even pointed out the technical reasons to the GM rep, but she has to go on a "dealers" recommendation!

Mike

Went to second dealer and service manager insisted he would look up any relevant information for the replacement. I am taking this one all the way up!

Mike

So the second dealer is helping ya, huh?

GM has a long record of disregarding the safety factor of broken headlight brackets .........apparently it is perfectly safe for the headlight brackets to fatigue and break causing the actual hadlight bulb units to fall forward so that the lights only illuminate the road directly in front of the car.

I had this problem on my 1976 Seville which required replacement of each side headlight buckets every two years at a dealer cost of $250.00 (1970's $'s) per side. It was not just Sevilles that had this problem, as my friends who had variuos models and years from 1975 to 1984 (at least) experienced the same problem with the bucket housing brackets failing. Cadillac refused to do anything about this obvious long running design edngineering flaw. This obvious and willful disregard for a basic safety issue on the part of GM was largely responsible for my friends and associates becoming confirmed German and Japanese luxury car owners for the next twenty five years. THERE IS A REASON WHY CADILLAC AND GM LOST THEIR PRE-EMINENCE AS A WORLD CLASS AUTO MAKER!

I have GM customer service involved, the second dealer's service manager is "looking" into the problem. I told the GM service rep that if this dealer does not replace the lights, I want an ENGINEER to tell me that broken mounting brackets and Dull headlights (from the HIDs melting the polycarb lenses) is a "NORMAL" condition as stated by the dealer.

I was also told by the first dealer that the lenses were not "yellow enough" to be replaced under factory warranty. The GM representative that I talked to did not see ANYTHING under their replacement specs that would have a Yellow test for the headlights. Might be able to go that route as the lights look like there is a coating of salt spray on them when they are clean.

I am not giving up on this one, I am going to the stinking president of the company if I have to! GM has NO idea how persistent I am, nor the capabilities that I have to track down people to get the right answers. I just LOVE how they can say the MAIN mounting tabs that are cracked big enough for a toothpick to fit inside of them is a "NORMAL" condition!

The sad fact is that if they had used a metal bracket or even a Large WASHER on the bolts holding in the tabs would have distributed the load a bit better and probably could have prevented this condition.

Mike

Well, 2 dealerships have called this condition "NORMAL"! GM customer service has told me to shove it basically. I said to them, "if my engine block had a crack in it, but wasn't leaking, would you call THAT normal?". I also told GM, if almost EVERY 98-04 Seville coming into the shop has BROKEN mounting tabs on the headlights, wouldn't you consider that a RECALL issue, or at least a TSB, NOT a "normal" condition? I am SO Ticked off at them now, I got the address of the president of the company and another department so I can write a letter. You would think they would at least cover this defect in the headlights!

I am sorry to hear you got the same runaround on the same issue that I got over twenty years ago! However, let me say the German companies are no better. Once the warranty was out Audi forget it, despite obvious safety issues. I had one problem on the 5000S that was never solved during the 8 years i owned it.

And to think, GM management actually pays consultants big bucks to tell them why their flagship car division is no longer even close to being in the forefront of world prestige!

This is one of those crappy issues that pretty much NO car company wants to deal with..... Especially if it usually happens once the car is out of the standard warranty period....

It's just simple economics. IF they were to admit there was a failure in design that required replacement (on their dime) on say the 200,000 or so 98-04 Sevilles floating around, most of which are well out of warranty now, at let's say 500 bucks a pop conservatively (for both headlights, and labor, inspection etc)... That's 100 Million Dollars to fix the problem, that 90% of the owners will NEVER notice, because they wont ever take the engine shroud off...

So they take the stance of oh well we'll upset a few "picky" or "unreasonable" consumers who will never be happy anyway in their eyes, rather than cough up that kind of cash.... It's only if there is something SO evident, and so a danger to safety that the NTSB gets involved that companies will actually recall something...

Every car has design flaws, no one can get it perfect. And there are a LOT of reasons why. First engineering can only predict real world failures to a certain degree, the true failures are shown in the real world. Secondly the inability to maintain proper quality control over vast outsourced parts suppliers. A prime example of this is the crank sensor failures that have plagued these cars... No one realized a supplier wasn't up to par, until it was way too late and these cars were out in the field...

I think the original Northstar Head bolt issue is another design flaw, not in terms of anything but the fact that these cars can suffer critical engine damage if overheated (especially before the redesign).... Yet there aren't enough fail safes built into the car to prevent it....

I've had several BMW's and inevitably the pixelated displays on their Electronics go bad. Dashboards end up losing pixels, radio displays, HVAC, trip computers, everything..... Once the car is out of warranty, good luck with that.... It's an obvious design flaw, we have taken the defective displays apart, and KNOW what's wrong.

Not only will they refuse to even entertain the concept of replacements, they haven't even gotten the OEM supplier to redesign an updated part, to prevent the failure in the replacements....

Let's not even talk about the 3 series cars that rip their rear subframe mounting bolts out of the unibody if driven somewhat aggressively for extended periods.... Once again BMW is of no help..... Some ultimate driving machine there. Drive it hard and it self destructs!

The aftermarket has come up with a solution, but it needs to be installed BEFORE the cracks start... Otherwise it gets very expensive and labor intensive to basically strip the rear of the car down to the unibody and weld in reinforcement plates. BMW even makes a poorly designed "repair kit" for this condition - gee I wonder if they realize it exists...

Oh and my buddy's 2003 Denali, which had water in the headlights, and failed inspection for it, and GM under warranty issued a letter to owners, and DMV's stating this condition was in fact NORMAL and inevitable...

Stupid stuff like this really does leave a sour taste in people's mouths when it comes to the brand and the marque. But no car company is immune from it...

I guess the internet is slowly changing the world, and possibly may have an effect in that as people can congregate and share information like never before it no longer becomes simply dissatisfaction spread by word of mouth.

Personally I'd fight the issue with GM.... Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Take care,

George

You are entirely correct, George, and it accounts for why so few of us have any brand loyalty ......particularly when it comes to luxury cars. I have found, over the years, that the worst offender is Mercedes Benz and their dealers with their "Vot did you do to our car!" attidude. You are right there is no such thing as a perfectly engineered car ......... but you would think GM could get headlight buckets or attachment phlanges right after 30 years!

You are entirely correct, George, and it accounts for why so few of us have any brand loyalty ......particularly when it comes to luxury cars. I have found, over the years, that the worst offender is Mercedes Benz and their dealers with their "Vot did you do to our car!" attidude. You are right there is no such thing as a perfectly engineered car ......... but you would think GM could get headlight buckets or attachment phlanges right after 30 years!

That does seem remarkable, although I think it's specific / models headlights that have experienced the problem, especially since we have left from standard "sealed beam" type halogen headlights where pretty much all cars used the same headlight, to each individual make and model using its own unique headlight lens.....

I've had nothing but bad experiences with pretty much dealers across the marques, moreso with the luxury car dealers.....

Let me say this, as I really don't consider myself to be the average consumer by a longshot, so maybe I am expecting too much. I have never bought, nor do I ever think I will buy a brand new car off the lot. This is for several reasons. First I love cars, and I've had a LOT of them. Cars tend to bore me after a while and I tend to change cars every 12-18 months... Variety is much more important to me than age. Usually there is a rotation of two in the fleet that I have... Currently the Seville, and a 2003 Jaguar X-type.

The brand new car thing just does nothing for me, although it does provide a sense of accomplishment and pride to a significant portion of the population... It's not a matter of money, I can afford a new car no problem, but I probably wouldn't get the best bang for the buck. My wife was of the new car variety, and still wants to buy new cars, but I've slowly converted her. I usually buy cars that are 3-5 years old, with middle of the road miles for the year. I've had 4 Mercedes, Jags, Audi, 3 BMW's, a couple porsches as well as a slew of American cars and trucks. The only Japanese car I have ever owned is an Acura, which was basically a Honda in a suit... Decent car but just no soul, if you know what I mean...

One of my very good friends is a used car dealer, so I have pretty much unlimited access to the dealer auctions and wholesale pricing which does facilitate this significantly.

I have customized, modified, or otherwise tinkered with pretty much every car I have ever owned, and I consider myself a pretty accomplished DIY mechanic even though I'm an Electrical Engineer by profession. So 90% of my interaction with dealers has been either with warranty claims, OR at the parts counter. At least here in the Northeast, ALL dealers seems to care about is new car sales / leasing, and the original owner. IF you didn't buy the car new, and god forbid not from them, they could care less.... The parts guys usually seem incompetent, confused, and some have been downright nasty....

First is it too much to expect a parts guy to want to help me?
To want to do his job and find me the part that I need / want?
Is it too much to have a service writer or tech talk to me as if I could possibly have a CLUE as to how cars work? You won't believe some of the stories or straight bs that they have attempted to feed me, and I can only feel bad for the average consumer that puts their faith in these people to repair their vehicle.... Now I'm not saying that all dealers / parts / service guys are bad, just that there are a LOT of bad apples out there....

Especially with the advent of leasing cars have become disposeable, and the dealers simply do not care about 2nd and 3rd owners....

The other thing that has to be said for brand loyalty, is that the auto business, as well as business in general has become dynamic in nature.
I think this has been proven in terms of there is not one dominant "king of the hill" brand nowadays, but rather there are successful, attractive, and highly desirable models from each automaker, and some are hits and others are misses...

I think this idea of I buy brand X cars and only brand X cars, is an outdated, unrealistic expectation of the auto industry derived from an era where there was much less competition, many fewer brands, AND the brands were segmented much more so along socioeconomic lines... Any automaker trying to rest on its laurels instead of spending money on r&d is doomed...

Look at what happened to Mercedes post DC Merger... quality went to crap, and customers responded.

Ok I'll get off my soapbox now...

Take care,

George

Suggestion: Pick your battles selectively. Persist if and when you have a drive train problem. GM is more likely to assist you with a problem like that (provided that they have already forgotten your name in relation to the headlight situation).

We all think differently, but I would rather be that persistent with an issue that costs thousands of $$ rather than something that costs a few hundred.

The list price for each headlight is around 600.00, dealer price is probably 1000.00 each, PLUS labor. So, we are not talking about chump change for this problem.

Mike

My mistake. Try a few national junk yards that will guarantee good qual used headlight housings. Hopefully, you will find a bargain or two.

What we really need are headlights that are attached to disposable lenses, so that when the light burns out, or if the lens fogs up, we can just throw the whole thing away and buy a new one for $10. Oh wait, we tried that... And what was the reason we STOPPED doing that?