And the OP was your father? That would have been a nice coincidence.

Sounds right up there with filed-down cards or connectors that had longer grooves cut in them!

I had a parking light burn out on my car. Went to the car store, and a replacement bulb was $$. Perused the lamps on tags in the aisles, and found one that looked the same but had different "ears" on the side.

Bought it, and filed off the ears so it would fit in my car's socket. Worked perfectly, for a small fraction of the price.

Of course, my car is full of aftermarket parts, so I am used to making "adjustments" to get them to fit.

They’ll have different resistance. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn’t.

I came to post this. The offset ears on the bulb base are used to specify either a dual-filament bulb, such as tail lamps and brake lamps combined, or high-resistance, low-wattage parking lamps that are designed to not run down the battery while the alternator is not charging.

That makes sense. The cheap bulbs I bought were just slightly dimmer. So they must have had more resistance.

But heck, even a parking light will flatten the battery if left overnight.

  > But heck, even a parking light will flatten the battery if left overnight.

Nominal modern car batteries are about 12.6 volts. I wonder if the high-resistance bulbs will completely dim once the voltage drops to a specific threshold, say around 12.0 volts. If they do, then they should leave just enough charge to crank, as most starter motors can safely crank over with about eleven and a half volts (and all the way up to over 14 volts).

That might be an interesting experiment to test.

I had to look up what a parking light is. It sounds totally unnecessary to me, but I'd say that about a lot of things put in cars after the 90s.

Probably not important in this case since it's just a light for parking, but lights for cars cost more due to having to meet exacting DOT standards/testing. I wouldn't do this with a brake light or real headlight.

> a lot of things put in cars after the 90s

True ... we just moved on from a car build in 1999 to one build in 2011 ... got the "non-extra" version which was half the price.

We still got an AC and bluetooth connectivity.

What we did not get was a multimedia center, a panorama roof, seat heaters and fancy front lights.

I can see that you quickly get used to that ... but tbh I think that most of these are just to justify a higher price because the actual service, getting you from A to B, has not changed in 30 years.

Parking lights are a lot older than the 90s. In Riverside, IL, they have "historical" streetlights that inadequately illuminate the streets (or at least did in the 70s). As a result, it was required if you were parking on the street in Riverside after dark that you left your parking lights on.

Apparently the light setting I always skip past is parking lights and I never knew. I always found the headlights/reverse lamps adequate in the dark though.