I recently took my 2011 Jaguar XJ to be repaired from a reputable shop in town. I was told that I needed to replace the upper and lower control arm with bushing and also I needed front and rear brakes. The total repair for the brakes and control arms was $4,000. A couple days later I realized that the driver side headlight and tail light was out. Also on the passenger front headlight only 1 of 3 bulbs was working. The only light that was fully fuctional was the passenger tail light. I did not have this issue prior to bringing my vehicle to the shop and I'm sure they are not willing to take liability. Can anyone tell me from a mechanical perspective if it's possible that the technican possibly caused this as a result from changing my brakes and control arms. I'm asking before I say something ot the shop.

 

jagman75, from the looks of things, this is not something that a tech would do unless he had a lot of time on his hands. You are looking at LED based lighting. There is no way to really take out LED lighting other than getting rid of the power or the ground. Because you have so many lights out, you are looking at having to cut multiple wires. Not to mention that if you think the shop may have done it, this would have to be intentional as the wiring is not run anywhere near the brakes. I would need to verify with my schematics (do not have them in front of me at the moment), but you are looking more at something like a body module failing and taking out all these lights than mischievious fingers. Let me look at the diagrams and see if I can come up with a logical explanation of why this may all be doing on.

 

Do you have to move the engine bay fuse box to get to the upper control arm bolts? Just a thought.

wombat

 

Thank you Thermo I really appreciate your feedback. What about changing the control arms ? Could that have possibly caused the problem ? I just find it very strange that my car was working fine beforehand and within a matter of days of picking up the light issues started. This would not be such a big deal but when I checked the price to replace the light I'm looking at 4K. Is there something that I'm missing here in terms of pricing. I saw a used tailing on ebay for $250 however the headlights can I just purchase new bulbs or do I need a whole new assembly. I watched a youtube video where a guy had a 2012 xj and he took the bumper off and changed the bulbs. Is that an option for me as well ? After just paying 4k to have new control arms and brakes I can't afford to spend another 4k on lights smh.......I appreciate your help.
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Good thinking! Yes, you definitely have to either remove or finagle the fuse box to reach one of the passenger side upper arm bolts.

 

Jagman75, to give you a general idea of how your lighting system works, pretty much each light "bulb" (LED array) has its own relay to turn it on and off. The fuse box has a brain (computer) that then turns on and off the relay to power the lights. A lot of the lights you talk about are all powered off of the same connector that plugs into the fuse box. I would start with accessing the underside of the fuse box in the engine bay and then checking to make sure that all the connectors are tight and seated properly. I would then follow the bundles down to where they go near the control arm and make sure that the outside of the bundles is not damaged (a wrench will destroy the small wires in a heart beat and not offer a lot of resistance).

From there, I would want to know exactly what lights do and don't work and whether your car is left or right hand drive. I can then get into the prints a lot deeper and see if I can narrow things down even more.