My wife's 2000 Legacy wagon has a burnt out brake light in the passenger side tail light assembly. I pried off the little access doors on the car's interior and was able to remove the bottom of the two nuts that hold the assembly on with a small wrench. That nut fit my 8mm socket but I don't (yet) have a deep 8mm socket so I couldn't remove the top nut.

In any case, once I do manage to remove both nuts, are there any gotchas to removing the tail light unit? Some cars have plastic hooks and or sticky padding behind these assemblies. On the legacy, does it it just pull out or is there some trick one needs to know to get the tail light unit off the body?

Thanks.

You shouldn't have to remove that entire assembly all you need to do is change out the bulb... I have a 98' Outback and there is a little access door like yours and I can simply replace the bulb through that... If Subaru has any consistency your's should be the same way...

I could take some pictures to help better illustrate it if you want.

You shouldn't have to remove that entire assembly all you need to do is change out the bulb... I have a 98' Outback and there is a little access door like yours and I can simply replace the bulb through that... If Subaru has any consistency your's should be the same way...


They must have changed the design.

The bulbs mounted on the hatch are right under the access doors, as you describe. Unfortunately the bulbs mounted on the rear corners of the body are in a tail light unit which apparently must be removed to replace the bulbs. On the 2000 model pull off the two access panels behind a tail light unit and all you find are two threaded rods protruding in from the outside with nuts on them to hold the unit in place. There's also an electrical cable, of course. What concerns me is what else may be between the tail light unit and the car's body. There could be hidden fragile plastic hooks which must be released or they'll snap off (which you have to know about before yanking out the tail light unit), super sticky rubber sealing pads, etc. The owner's manual is especially unhelpful, saying only that changing those bulbs may be too difficult for an owner and perhaps it should be done at the dealer. But not WHY it may be too difficult - thanks for nothing Subaru!

So I took it apart yesterday and thankfully there were no unpleasant surprises beneath the taillight unit. Used a deep 8mm socket to remove the two nuts, unclipped the wires inside the car, and then pulled the unit off. The wires run through a rubber grommet that pulls out easily. After changing the bulb, just pull the grommet back into place and put the nuts back on. I put a little piece of masking tape around the nut in the socket to start it, as a dropped nut would have gone who knows where down inside the bodywork.

Bottom line - it isn't hard to replace the bulbs in the taillight assembly (no matter what the manual says), IF you have a deep 8 mm socket.