AtWhatMileage
Lighting · 3 owner reports

Headlight failure or clouding on the 1998 Honda Accord

Only 0 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 3
With an odometer reading 0
Reports per 1,000 built 0.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $150–$1,800
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 54th

When headlight failure or clouding gets reported

There are 3 reports of headlight failure or clouding on the 1998 Honda Accord. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

It is the 54th most-reported problem on this model year.

None of these reports included an odometer reading, so there is no mileage distribution to show. NHTSA's form does not require the field.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $150–$1,800 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 15 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2008, at a median of 33 miles, and latest on the 1999 at 140,000 miles.

By volume the 2016 carries the most reports, with 60; the 1998 has 0. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1998 (this one)
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1999 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 140k
  3. 2000 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —
  4. 2001 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 50k
  5. 2002 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 88k
  6. 2003 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 43k
  7. 2004 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 59k
  8. 2005 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 2k
  9. 2006 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 38k
  10. 2007 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 42k
  11. 2008 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 33
  12. 2009 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 100
  13. 2010 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —
  14. 2012 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 20k
  15. 2013 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 2k
  16. 2014 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 51
  17. 2015 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 2k
  18. 2016 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 40k
  19. 2017 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 39k
  20. 2018 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding 3k
  21. 2019 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —
  22. 2020 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —
  23. 2021 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —
  24. 2022 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —
  25. 2025 Honda Accord headlight failure or clouding
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

Also reported on the 1998 Honda Accord

Other powertrain problem

157 reports median 91k

Other electrical problem

135 reports median 127k

Other engine problem

82 reports median 116k

Complete transmission failure

75 reports median 85k

Other body or interior problem

70 reports median 107k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 3 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 3 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed