It’s time to change the headlight bulbs. Both the hi beams and the driving lamps. The market is saturated with all the options to replace the bulbs. My main concern is to have as much reliable light while driving. What do you think the best approach to changing all 4 light bulbs would be? HID, LED or Halogen? After I’m done with changing the bulbs I intend to recondition the lens surfaces to original clarity and clearness. Your comments are appreciated! Thank you, all

 

I've moved your question from General Tech Help to X-Type forum. Members here with the same model will be able to help.

Good advice for ONE model of Jaguar doesn't necessarily apply to ALL Jaguar models.

Graham

 

I like mine...

Osram bulbs, HID mains, LED running lights, fogs are also changed to the same color.

 

Let's start with limiting down what the options are. The X-TYpes came with 2 different styles of lights and you cannot really go between the two (more on this). So, first, do you have HID bulbs or do you have standard H1 (halogen) bulbs? If you are not sure, then the below things will differentiate between the two:
-When turning on the headlights, do they go to max brightness right away? If yes, then you have halogen (H1), conventional bulbs. If you see them come on bright, but then dim some, then come back to full brightness over say 5 seconds, then you have HIDs
-In the driver's door jam, do you have a sticker that says something to the effect of "This vehicle is equipped with High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights ........."? If yes, then you have HID lighting.
-If you remove the cover off of the back of the headlight assembly for the outer lens, do you see 2 electrical posts or do you see a box about 3x3" (8x8CM) in size blocking your view? If you see electrical posts, then you have H1 (halogen) bulbs. If you see a box, then you have HID bulbs.

The two lighting systems function dramatically different and you can't take an H1 bulb and put it into an HID system and vice versa. This is why I ask the question. Kinda like, if your car has the HID lighting system, without doing some fairly intensive wiring modifications, you are pretty much stuck with HID lighting. Kinda like for halogen (H1 bulb) lighting, you do have the option of going between LED and halogen lighting (continue reading please), but you will find that going up to LED lighting may prove to be a bit of a challenge because the LED bulbs have a fairly large heat sink on the back of the bulb and this makes fitting the bulb in the X-TYpe headlight housings a challenge. With this being said, it is possible to convert from the halogen (H1) bulbs over to HID. But, this takes a little bit of work (I have done it to a few cars). Not impossible, but it does take making sure you do good electrical connections, otherwise the HIDs are going to give you lots of grief.

Lets start here so we don't have to walk down numerous rabbit holes and really muddy up the water. If you do some looking, you will find that I have written a lot about upgrading the lighting on cars and have a lot of "look for this", "do not get that", here are the differences between........

 

As Thermo said!

I changed my mains to HID, not impossible but takes some time and modifications to headlight assembly and decision of where to mount the igniter box(s). High beams are still halogen regular color. All of my exterior (except turn signals) & all interior were changed to LED with some additional LED strip interior lighting inside, under the hood and in the trunk.

 

Thank you so much