My xtype 2005 se estate 2.0d has pathetic front running lights with the original bulbs.
I tried some new style 10 led,s which were brighter but they blew the fuses, my garage replaced them with the dim originals
after renewing the fuses. Am I stuck with a candle light or are there any suitable alternatives?
Cheers Wulfrun

 

I have basically the same problem. I thought about changing to LED's, but after hearing your experience am not going to bother. Are the exterior plastic headlight covers fogged over; that will significantly reduce the available light on the road. You might also want to check the headlight alignment. The headlight adjusters are a chronic problem causing the headlights to aim too far down. Good luck!

 

Wulfrun/Max, first off, you are suffering most likely from a combination of things. The first being that the lenses have fogged over. I would say to look into a product called "Perfect-It III". It is made by 3M. It comes in a few different stages: 1 (1500 grit), 2 (2000 grit) and 3 (3000 grit). You will most likely want to get the Stage 2 version. From here you can use a cloth like what you would wash/wax your car with and you can apply a little bit of the Perfect-It to the cloth and then rub the headlight lens. With a little bit of rubbing. The headlights will turn clear again.

The second issue that you are most likely suffering from is that the terminal on the back of the headlight has gotten hot over the year and is causing a high resistance connection. This is resulting in a lower voltage to the headlights, resulting in less light being produced (may even find the light a lot more yellow then a lot of other vehicles. The fix for this has 2 options (will depend on your ability to do wiring stuff):
1) your local hardware store will have new spade connectors (you want the female end). You can then cut off the factory connector (save as much of the wire as possible) and then you should be able to strip back say a 1/2" (12mm) of the insulation and then slide it into the crimping end of the connector. You can then crimp the wire in place. This will remove the high resistance connection and restore full voltage to the headlight bulb. Or,
2) you can do an HID bulb upgrade (this is the more electrically involved job). In short, you are going to need to find a HID kit that is meant to replace the H1 bulbs in the low/dip beam housing. This will come with a new bulb and a ballast for each side. You MUST!!!!!! use both the bulb and the ballast to make the HID bulbs work. So, you are going to end up removing the back cover off of the headlights and then removing the H1 halogen bulb. From there, you can cut off the connector that went to the back of the bulb. Again, strip off about 1/2" (12mm) of the insulation. From there, you can attach the red wire that goes to the ballast to the wire you just stripped. You can then attach a yellow fork connector to the black wire going to the ballast. From here you will need to drill a 1" (25mm) hole in the center of the headlight cover (check this size as you may have a slightly different size rubber plug on the wiring). You can then insert the rubber plug into this hole. The black wire can get attached under any bolt in the immediate area outside of the headlight. At this point you can attach the ballast to the frame rail under the headlight housing using zip ties or double sided tape. You will then install the HID bulb into the headlight housing (use the metal retainer to hold the bulb in place). You finally have the 2 connectors that go from the ballast to the bulb. Repeat for the other side.

A few things when it comes to the HID upgrade:

1) HID bulbs come in a few different colors. You can get yellow (aka, 3000K), a halogen looking white that is slightly yellowish (4300K), a pure white (5000K) and a white that starts to border on a blue tint (6000K). The 4300K bulbs are the brightest bulbs you are going to get. So, if you are after the maximum light, this is what you want. The further you get away from 4300K, the dimmer the bulb will get. You loose about 5% of the light output for each step away from 4300K (ie, if you go with the 6000K bulbs, that is 2 steps away from 4300K, so, you would loose 10% of the max light output)
2) when buying HID bulbs, you are after 35 watt bulbs!!!!!!! DO NOT!!!!!!! buy the 50/55 watt HID bulbs. These are illegal everywhere I am aware of. I know that goes against what most people would think. The wiring of the car is not really rated to handle the starting surge that the 50/55 watt HIDs have and can lead to future electrical problems.
3) it is best to buy a complete HID kit to make sure you get all the pieces you need. Not all kits are created equal. You will get what you pay for. The cheapo kits will be good for a year and then you are going to start having problems with the lights not turning on and most likely it will be because the ballasts failed on you. I would recommend getting ballasts made by a company called "MAXLUX". They are the OEM manufacturer for most of the car companies out there. yes, their ballasts are a little more bulky, but after doing this job, you will understand why paying the little extra is money well spent.
4) Finally, doing this job is going to be easiest done by removing the headlight assemblies. This will involve removing the front bumper cover. Not doing this risks damaging the internals of the headlights which will force you to remove the headlight assemblies (either buying new ones or at a minimum having to get the repair kit and repairing them). You will know you broke the internals as the headlight internals will be bouncing all over the place and your headlights will either point at the ground 5 feet/2 meters in front of the car or up into the sky. Either way, you are not going to get any usable light.

The final question that I normally get is whether the housing is capable of handling HIDs. Yes, the housings for our X-Types has the special lens inside of it for the proper cutting off of the light beam. This is required in certain places/countries.

If you have additional questions, let me know or do some searching in the forums as I have put out a lot of information relating to this sort of upgrade.

 

My HID's, now getting ready to pull the bumper off to get light assemblies removed to repair what Thermo described above. The crap Jaguar plastic adjusters have failed. I bought the fix kit to tear them apart and refurb.

 

 

Yeah, I seen the "bake lights" method, not for me. Bought a heat gun to go that route as well as found some butyl strip from back East to put new in just for g.p.

 

Hi Dell.
Did mine a couple of months ago. Separated the lenses with a heat gun. Just be sure to keep the gun moving at all times or you will burn the lenses. I found there was enough of the original sealer in the slot to re-heat and re-seal the lenses.
Not too bad a job to do, once, of course, you have removed the bumper cover. Biggest problem I found was re-fitting the bumper cover by myself.

Good luck.

Alan in sunny Malta (raining to-day).

 

My desire for brighter headlights was the initial result of the crap headlight adjustment system failing. I'm getting ready to tackle replacing the adjusters, as well as sanding the headlights, but obviously not looking forward to the bumper removal or the ensuing process with the heat gun (I watched the video, but being 77 years old impacts my attitude about this project). I considered picking up a used set of headlights, fixing them, swapping them out with mine, and then repairing them and selling them on ebay (found several repaired units for sale there). Unfortunately, it doesn't make economic sense.
I seem to remember that there was more than one source for the replacement adjuster parts with some of them being white in color while others were back. Any recommendations regarding the best vendor for these?

 

I think either will work. The white ones have metal imbedded "pins" that give the impression of more strength. I opted for the black ones. They got here to the U.S. pretty quick and were sent with a "sign you received them" posting. They are made of a heat resistant polymer material as are the white ones. Mine have a lifetime replacement warranty and were a bit less in cost. Think either will be good.

You can read my permanent fix for hazy headlights on page 2 (inc. Some pics of results) here =

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...dy-2281/page2/

 

it’s really not that bad of a job all way round, just lots of steps in proper order to do. I always find on ones like this that I write out each major step in the process from videos on legal pad and follow them religiously checkng them off as I go.