I feel like 04-09 all look the same but I see companies selling used headlights say 04-05 is different than 06-09?? Anyone know?

 

There are many different types of headlight on the X350 & X358

Halogen, LHD, NAS (North America)
Halogen, LHD, ROW (Rest of World)
Halogen, RHD, ROW
Xenon, LHD, NAS
Xenon, LHD, ROW
Xenon, RHD, ROW
Bi-Xenon, LHD, NAS
Bi-Xenon, LHD, ROW
Bi-Xenon, RHD, ROW

There have been numerous revisions over the 7 years that the car was in production.

There seems to be a cutoff at VIN G40556 where there was a new part listed and the old part not superceded, which usually means there was a major difference and the new one is not backwards compatible.

 

Well I have a set of (2) XJ8 non-xenon headlights from a 2004, will those only 04-05?

 

Will fit cars up to VIN G40556 I guess...?

 

There are differences between EU and US xenon headlights. Early (04,05) years have a mechanical flap controlled by a solenoid in the EU which removes the cut-off on the low beams when you switch to high beams. This is absent in the US version.

In the early xenon version there is a motor that moves the low beams up/down depending on the load of the car. This was removed in the 06 onwards.

These are the differences I know, I'm sure there are others.

 

That stepper motor was deleted at G39155 and onwards. There was a SSM (17841, 28 Oct 2004) about it because they didn't delete the wiring straight away, they presumably carried on until stocks of that harness had been used up. I guess finding the taped-up ends had confused some people.

I didn't know that the HID unit had been variously plain Xenon, and Bi-Xenon; talk about complicated !