My headlights seem to have been getting dimmer. A couple of years ago I had them polished and that helped some; I plan to do this again as time becomes available.
Now, to the point of my post, I noticed the othre night when I drove into my driveways the lights seemed to be out of alignment as per picture. the driveway is flat side to side so the light should be fairly horizontal...but they are not. I was parked about 15 feet from the garage door.
It did not do this before and looking from the outside, the headlight assembly seems to be tight and not out of position, Is it likely that the bulb t is loose and not firmly attached to the headlight assembly? Fortunately seems to the one on the right so hopefully I am not annoying oncoming drivers.



Next question, as my eyes get older seem like they need more light at night and the current lights are just cutting it anymore.
I believe the X-type (2003 2.5L) comes with halogens bulbs standard. What is the optimal headlight upgrade that will improve the headlights without annoying other drivers (like many aftermarket kits do) and without breaking the bank? Improved halogen bulbs? Xenon? LEDs?
Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

 

VTGBoss, as for the misalignment of the headlights, I would pull the cap off of the back of the headlights and gently give the inside of the headlight housing a bump. If it moves really easy, you most likely hit a good bump and that broke one or more mounts for the headlight housing. At the age of the car, this is a good possibility. You can then touch the back of the headlight bulb and see if that is loose.

As for improving the amount of light that gets put to the ground, I would say for the price, going HID bulbs is probably the best bet. For a good set of bulbs and ballasts, plan on spending around $100. Yes, there are kits out there that are $30. But, you will also find lots of stories where the bulbs worked for about a year and then the ballasts went out, requiring new ballasts to be installed. I bought Xentec many years ago and they suffered from this. I stepped up to Maxlux and never had an issue over 5 years. Installing the HID bulbs is not hard, the biggest problem is simply drilling a 3/4"(?) hole in the back of the cover for the headlights to allow yourself to mount the grommet to pass the wiring in and out of the headlight housing. If you are after maximum lighting, then you are going to want the 4300K bulbs. Your car has a lens on the front, so, blinding on coming driver's is not going to be an issue. The part that is going to be a mind bender is that for HID bulbs, you only need a 35W bulb. 50/55W HID bulbs are not legal on the road and are extremely bright. They are roughly 3 times as bright as your current halogen bulbs. The big thing with the wiring is that you need to take the ground from the ballast and wire it straight to the body of the car. Do not try to connect it to the internals of the headlight housing as the existing wiring is not capable of handling the starting surge. This will cause the light to burn out quicker and sometimes result in a flickering bulb or a bulb that simply will not light.

if you need more info about HID bulbs, let me know.

 

Hello Thermo. I was chatting with you about the hid kit a few days ago. I’m looking for plug and play kit. Can you be more specific about the grounding of one of the wires please ? Thx

 

Thanks Thermo,
I did a search and found lots of HID kits from inexpensive to extremely expensive, most include the ballasts that will likely need to be mounted outside the headlight enclosures. I tried to fin MaxLux but the only thinning I found were links to a company in India and two no-longer available listings on Amazon.
I take it it would be a good idea to replace low, high and fog light at the same time? One my fog light is out any way but the truth is that I hardly ever use the high beam or the fog lights; maybe the low beams is sufficient?
I would like to know if you or any other forum members have a specific brand and model they have use and is readily available an not terribly expensive..

 

NYCJAG2006, the wire that needs to be grounded is normally the black wire coming from the ballast. The ballast is going to have 2 wires coming into it (the 12VDC and its ground) and 2 wires coming out of it (high voltage wires going to the bulb). The high voltage wiring normally has a keyed plug to it as the bulb needs to have a certain polarity applied to it to make it work right. The 2 wires coming into the ballast are normally color coded to red and black (red for 12 VDC, black for the ground). The reason why I say that the black (ground) wire needs to go to the body of the car is for 2 reasons: 1), it is simply easier to ground it this way as the wiring is already outside of the headlight housing, and 2) the ground wire(s) inside the headlight housing are not sufficient to handle the 20 amp current surge of the ballast starting (leading to the bulb experiencing random starting/flickering issues). As for where to ground the wire. Any clean metal surface in the area of the headlight housing is going to work. What I would say is to find a bolt that is grounding another wire and loosen that to use. With the age of the car, probably a good idea to remove the bolt completely, then use a wire brush/sand paper and clean up the metal surface to get it to a silver condition. Then, when you remake the bolt, put the ballast lead on the bottom (a lot of kits have a ring lug on the ground wire already) and the lead you removed on top of the ballast wire. This is done as you want the wire that has the most current flowing through it to be nearest to the body of the car. This prevents having junctions that get hot as they have lots of current flowing through them as the current flows through less junctions. If you need more info, ask away.

VTGBoss, do you need to replace low, high and fogs? NO!!!!!! This would be especially true if you don't really use them. Replacing the low beams is easy as all the necessary circuitry is built into the car (ie, the ballasts should be controlled via a relay due to their high starting current). The fogs are controlled via a relay too. So, they are pretty much wired to go. As for the high beams, this is where I have seen 2 lines of thought here. If you stick with a 35W HID bulb, then the car is wired already. But, when you need the high beams, you want as much light as possible and you are not going to have them on with people approaching, so, some people upgrade the high beams to 50/55W HIDs (these will put out around 4600 lumen of light, where you high beams now only put out around 1500 lumen). The 50/55W HIDs will pull too much current and destroy your relay. Therefore a new wiring harness is needed. You need info on this, let me know. Simple to make, but does add a bit of complexity to things.

From the sounds of things, upgrading only your low beams is probably sufficient for you.

As for finding an HID bulb that is going to be worth the money, I would say to look at the reviews and find reviews where the people talk about having the kits for a year plus. If they are happy with them at that time, then odds are, they are a kit worth having. If you see lots of problems where the ballasts have failed after 6 months/a year, then you probably want to avoid those kits. I can't say I have ever had a problem with a kit straight out of the box. They have all worked. It is the longevity aspect that I have always found questionable.

Doing a little bit of looking, I may have to eat my words a little bit. But, this is a quick summation of what I have found:
-DDM Tuning Pro HIDs: High marks for quality and longevity, but supposedly have a flickering problem on some cars (as long as you ground the black wire, should not be an issue in our Jags, good wiring connections will prevent any flickering issues)
-Innovited AC HID kit: LIked for their reliability and long service life, but get dinged because may need professional install as it is not necessarily a straight forward swap (shouldn't be a problem in the jag if you get an H1 specific bulb, if you get one that uses a generic HID bulb, then yes, this is going to be difficult to install).
-Xentec Green HID kit (yes, i am eating my words here): Good kit for the price. Seems they have upped their quality for longevity. The con for these is that their bulb color is not very accurate (bulbs are higher up on the temp scale than rated for, so, bulbs will have more of a blue tint to them than you would expect, stick with the 4300K bulbs and you should be fine). The Xentec kit uses a generic plug, so, you can buy other peoples bulbs and they will most likely plug right up.
-Morimoto Elite HID kit: The most expensive of the kits, but well built kit that has everything you need (even the wiring harness for external relays). Quality is there, but it is coming at a price.

As with any HID kit that you are going to buy, the HID bulbs have different bases to them (like your halogen bulbs). So, find an HID kit that has an HID bulb with the same base as you halogen bulbs. This will make install TONS!!!!! easier. Then with the bulb, cleanliness is vital. You don't want to get any dirt on the bulb as this will create a hot spot and shorten the bulb life. From there, good electrical connections. If you can, solder the wires together and then cover with a product called "Raychem". Raychem is a brand name and this is the superman of heat shrink. You cut a 3 inch piece (1" to cover where you joined the wires, an inch on other side to let the raychem join to the insulation of the wiring) you will never have an issue with that joint failing because of being exposed to the environment. As I have stated on other posts, I use this stuff to survive a nuclear reactor melt down. It will survive under the hood of your car easily. You are specifically going to want to use what is referred to as "WCSF-070" (shrinks down to 0.070" in size). It may be a little bit bulky once shrunk, but it will outlast the car. Otherwise, make sure that all joints are well sealed by whatever method you desire. Raychem can be found on e-bay. Yes, it is a bit on the expensive side when it comes to heat shrink, but the cost is well worth it for not having issues in the future. The big thing is applying enough heat that you get little orange "donuts" on the ends of the heat shrink (the glue inside the raychem will ooze out and form little o-ring looking bulges, the "donuts", less than that and the glue may not be adequately activated to give a good seal).

Hopefully this answers a lot of your questions.

 

Thanks again Thermo,
I was in a chat with Morimoto and they quoted me LEDs first an then HID for the Jag and also for my Expedition. I looked at the links and noticed none of them were street legal. I asked the person on the chat and he indicated that none of their lights were DOT approved or street legal..WHAT??? A big surprise and a waste of time; you would think the firs thing they ask is you need the light for street use or off-road. I can see taking the Expy off-road but don't believe the X-Type is meant for off-road use.
I understand that some X-Types had HID lights but most were halogen. I am pretty sure mine are halogen. Looks like a HID .35W, 5,000K might be the better option. Also, polishing outside lenses until clear. should be a necessary step.
Option are:
Replace halogen with higher quality halogen lights
Replace withe HID making sure the ballasts are grounded to the body rather than the existing negative ground wire. I understand that if you use the 35W version, the grounding part is not required but the 55W version might need the additional grounding.
Replace withe LED light and fitment might be an issue since they seem to come with a built in fan that may or may not fit and also will likely need to use an on line resistor to avoid flickering or triggering errors, although I am not sure this is true for the X-Type.
In terms of installation Option 1 is the easiest since it is just a simple swap. LED might be next assuming you can fit the larger light in the enclosure and HId probably would require the most effort since ballast need to be mounted and ground wire connected.
Does this sound correct?

 

One more question...what is the standard OEM Halogen light bulb in the X-Type mount type,color and wattage? Is there a high end halogen bulb that would be a marked improvement over the OEM bulb?

 

VTGBoss, if you do HID of any type (35 or 50 watts), GROUND THE BALLAST TO THE BODY!!!!!!! If there is one thing you do, that is it. That will solve 90% of your issues. The difference between the 35 and 50 watt HIDs comes in how you supply the 12 VDC. 35W HIDs, use the car wiring as is. The 50W HIDs, you need to use the power wire from the bulb to trigger a set of dual 30 amp relays (1 relay for each ballast). Once an HID is up and running, it will put the rated power (35 or 50 watts). But, the first few seconds, the ballast is going to pull upwards of 200 watts (15ish amps for a 35W HID ballast) and around 300 watts (25 amps) for a 50W HID ballast. The factory wiring will handle the momentary 30 amp surge (15 amps times 2 bulbs). It will kill the ballast of a 50W bulb. Hence the need for the relays.

As for the X-type, a halogen bulb is normally rated for around 3100K (fairly yellow in color, number per Sylvania spec sheet). The bulb base is a H1 style base. They are rated at 55 watts and on average output 1500 lumen. If you are after simply upgrading what you have to something a big brighter, then I would look at the Sylvania Silverstar Ultras. These bulbs advertise that they are going to have more of a pure white light and have a higher light intensity. Granted, looking on the Sylvania website, the basic bulb and the Silverstar Ultras both are quoted as outputting 1407 lumen. So, it may be more of a "trick of the eye" with the light being whiter that it is going to seem brighter. Keep in mind, as bulbs get older, they do dim over time. So, simply putting in new bulbs is going to increase brightness over bulbs that have been in for 2-3 years.

If you are not sure what type of bulbs your car has, here are a few ways to confirm what you may or may not have:

1) when you turn on your headlights, do they "snap" on (ie, got to maximum brightness and stay there) or do they flicker bright, dim down, then over say 10 seconds or so, come up to maximum brightness. The snap on light is a standard halogen bulb. If they burst, dim, then come up, that is an HID bulb.
2) open up the driver's door and look down at the hinge. If you have a sticker there that says something to the effect of "This vehicle is equipped with High Intensity Discharge (HID) bulbs.....", then you have HID lighting. If not, you have halogen bulbs
3) open up the back of the headlight housing. If you have a single wire that runs to the bulb, you have a halogen bulb. If you have a finned object blocking your view of the bulb, you have HIDs.

ONe thing to put out that seems to be a point of confusion for people. Halogen bulbs are filled with xenon gas. HID bulbs are filled with xenon gas and advertised as such. Xenon gas is a halogen gas. As a result, people think that if they have a standard halogen H1 bulb fitted to their car, they have "HID" bulbs. THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!!!! In a H1 bulb, the xenon gas just displaces oxygen so the filament does not burn and destroy itself. A side product is that part of the gas does become excited and as a result, will emit a small amount of light, increasing the brightness of the bulb. A H1 bulb only ever has 12 VDC applied to it. Where an HID bulb, you have 2 metal plates with a small gap between them and a mix of gases (one of them being xenon, the mix of gases helps determine the bulb color). When you apply a voltage to the ballast, initially the ballast will send up to 23,000 volts (yes, this is correct) to cause and arc to form between the 2 plates. This arc of electricity causes the mixture of gases to become excited and as they loose their excitement, emit light. Once the arc of electricity is established, the voltage drops to around 85volts and the arc is maintained. This is why you will see HID bulbs have a burst of light (the 23,000 volts is applied) then when the bulb switches to 85 volts, the gas is not fully becoming excited and the light output drops. Then as the gas warms up and all of the gas is becoming excited, the light intensity builds up to its maximum intensity.

As for what path to take, I see this as a 2 question answer that I think will make the decision easier. How much are you willing to spend/do? How long do you plan on owning the car. If you plan on owning the car till it dies, then upgrading to HID is almost a non-question in my mind. Where it gets tricky is if you know that you only plan on owning the car say another 2-3 years, then the effort and money may not be worth the upgrade to HIDs and simply putting in a good halogen bulb will fit the bill. I don't think a LED bulb is really an option for the X-Type. All I have heard about LED headlights is that the back is so big that you can't put the cover back on and this leads to other issues. If the only question is getting maximum light output, then HIDs are the only answer. Halogen bulbs output 1500ish lumen (for 55W bulbs, higher wattage obviously put out more lumen but are also illegal for low beam use) per bulb, HID bulbs output around 3000-3300 lumen per bulb.

 

Ok. Well I bought the same LED headlights that Matt bought. Thanks for the recommendation.

Before, I couldn't tell if my headlights were actually on or not. But they've made a noticeable difference.

I don't think my internal lenses were misted up.





But I decided to clean them anyway with the cotton pads I bought off Amazon.




They were indeed too short:



so I just taped two together:

a



And that did the trick. I did use surgical alcohol on one swab and soaked up the excess with a dry one and it seemed to do the trick, though I didn't notice much dirt on the swab tips.

When I connected them back up, there was a much stronger beam. No the 300%+ the manufacturer boasted, but significantly better. Apologies, I didn't take a before picture, as I didn't think I'd be doing it today, so didn't take a shot the night before. But here you go....