AtWhatMileage
Lighting · 3 owner reports

Other lighting problem on the 1998 Toyota Corolla

Only 1 report 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 1
Reports per 1,000 built 17 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $120–$1,200
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 22nd

When other lighting problem gets reported

There are 3 reports of other lighting problem on the 1998 Toyota Corolla, 1 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 86,000 miles. It is the 22nd most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 1 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 118,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $120–$1,200 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 11 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 100 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 120,000 miles.

By volume the 2015 carries the most reports, with 9; the 1998 has 3. 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. 1996 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1997 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 1998 (this one) 118k
  4. 1999 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  5. 2000 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  6. 2001 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  7. 2002 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  8. 2003 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 30k
  9. 2004 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 25k
  10. 2005 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 100
  11. 2006 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 88k
  12. 2007 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 40k
  13. 2009 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 67k
  14. 2010 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 35k
  15. 2011 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 39k
  16. 2012 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 200
  17. 2014 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 11k
  18. 2015 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 55
  19. 2016 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 100
  20. 2017 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 35k
  21. 2018 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 27k
  22. 2021 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 58k
  23. 2022 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  24. 2023 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  25. 2024 Toyota Corolla other lighting problem 3

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

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Tl* the contact owns a 1998 toyota corolla. While driving at night, the headlights were very dim and hindered the contact's visibility. The VIN was excluded from NHTSA campaign numbers: 09e012000 (exterior lighting), 08e050000 (exterior lighting), 06e065000 (exterior lighting), and 06e026000 (exterior lighting); however, the VIN was not included. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The VIN was unknown. The failure mileage was 118,000.

118,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1298353 filed 2016-07-14

Also reported on the 1998 Toyota Corolla

Other body or interior problem

29 reports median 84k

Seat belt or retractor failure

19 reports median 91k

Airbag failed to deploy in a crash

16 reports median 250k

Other engine problem

15 reports median 63k

Other suspension problem

15 reports median 97k

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.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other lighting problem happen on the 1998 Toyota Corolla?

Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 120,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other lighting problem on the 1998 Toyota Corolla?

3 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 17 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

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