Similar Issues as other people have had. RHS lamp works but points down and to the right.
Took lamp out and pulled the covers off , OMG what a catastrophy. Im suprised the headlamp didnt burn the car down.
See Pics. Worst was / is the wires going into the main connector are bare with some touching each other
When I ran a scan LHS had a intermittent , but works OK , Yes I have AFS, LHS moves up and down during startup.
RHS hi and low beam work, which amazes me.
The question I have is the Pic im posting of the AFS driver. Is it the right one ? The ones Ive seen actually had AFS on the sticker.
To resolve the connector issue , I potted the entire wire group with 650F silicone and made sure no wires were touching, the coated all the hard to reach wiring and repaired the ones I could actually get to.
Removed the lens as all the crappy insulation, once I stirred it up fell right into the housing. Fun time.

 

Did it work after the repair?

 

Oh by the way, your pic (module on underside of housing) is the HID driver. The module behind the housing is the AFS driver. You don’t show a pic of that.

 

Yes the bottom module’s the high voltage engine ballast/igniter and the AGS module’s on the side facing the engine and next to the HID lamp access hole and labeled AFS power module

 

Damn…. Looks like I’d better take a look at mine. (a preventative measure)
I suppose it all stands to reason. Thinking of the heat generated in there, there is bound to be degregation.
Thank you for the heads up, @MudDog .

 

This ?

 

UH , hmmmm theres not one.

Now I gotta go pull the LHS and see if there is one there. I assumed that I had AFS because the lamp goes thru a leveling sequence on startup.

 

To the left of the big hole in your pic.

 

It doesn't (or shouldn't) all "stand to reason". I've had at least 3 other cars with adaptive (i.e. curve following) headlamps and none of them suffered this sort of degradation nor was headlamp failure a routine topic on their forums. Yes I know the headlamp units aren't built by Jaguar (Hella, I believe?) but either Jaguar had a lower spec than required or Hella messed up in this particular case.

BTW I had a 2003 Jaguar S-type R that also had very similar headlamp issues. So I am inclined to point the finger at Jaguar in this case.

 

I agree it’s horrible and certainly happens way too frequently as indicated on these forums. These are very expensive assemblies and I believe NLA. I’ve been fortunate not to have this problem but then I rarely use them.

EDIT:

Speaking of who’s responsible, I have no direct knowledge but I once posed this question to a friend in the manufacturer side of things. Why do these major manufacturers like Bosch, Denso, ZF, etc have parts fail more frequently on certain marques and not others, after all they ARE major brands and the marques on source the parts, they don’t engineer them and I was told that whilst this’s true, the marques actually set a budget and the manufacturers then use material and designs to suit. Seems hard to believe

 

This is a common problem in Hella modules of the era. Lots (!) of BMW's of the 2000-2010 have this issue with their Hella modules. My '07 530 does; but my '07 328xiT does not. Fortunately, my '07 jag X150 does not. It's a Hella problem -- more often in the Xenon's because of heat.

In the BMW world there were several attempts to get NHSTA to require a recall due to safety, but nothing ever came of it.

 

OK , so the car does not have adaptive lighting , oh well.

The attached pic is what i am dealing with and after going back in and seperating all the naked wires the lamp now works as it should.

Several wires were touching, whats interesting is upon opening the LHS lamp the wiring appears pristine.


Wires were naked all the way into the connector. Probably should replace the headlight but even a used one is 500-700 , Really could get by with replacing the harness, with another 15 year old harness ,

 

With respect, did you paint on all that insulating goop? Seriously, that would make me nuts to call my own work. Sigh. Well, as long as it works.

Anyone else: If you open up the pod and find wrecked wires, the pro way to do it is a soldering iron, about 20 ft of high-temp wire, and shrink tube.

Working one wire at a time, snip off the wire about a half inch from each end. That way you don't have to replace the connectors -- a very big thing to avoid.

On each end, slip on a 1" length of shrink tube, and slide it up wire about 3 inches to it's not affected by the soldering. Then solder each end to the stub from the connector. Your goal is to use every existing connector, not replace them. Try to keep the ends to be soldered flat, not tied in a messy lump of solder. When cool, slide down the shrink tube up to the connector and heat it to shrink.

And so on. You don't need more that one color as long as you do one at a time. The entire light can be rewired in a couple of hours.

Another solution is wire sheath. Has an long edge like a ziplock bag, so you wrap it around a bad wire without disconnecting it.

Even if you can't get the light apart, you can do many of the wires you can reach. If the wires have never been disturbed and are in their channel guides you can often leave them alone even if cracked. Disturb them and they will flake off.

Speaking from experience with Hella pods.

Good luck.

 

I’ve got a set of adaptive ones sitting in original factory boxes, I should dig them out and see if some one could use them for parts. From what I remember the wires were perfect, from lack of use. All that’s need is a config change in SDD, I think.

 

My RH light has started the flashing dashboard light sequence and I know that it had been damaged and repaired. My choices are to either cover the dashboard lens with black tape in order to not see the blinking...or remove the RH light, and try to alter the connection to make things right....or source a different light. Please PM me about your RH light assembly.

 

And I have sent you a PM about the LH one!

 

One more tip: on one light I was fixing and couldn't pull apart, I clipped the near end of damaged wire, then slid shrink tube all the way down it. Simply covered the cracked insulation, and because I was pushing the shrink into the unit, I could get pretty deep in there and often all the way to the other end.then a slightly larger piece of shrink slid over and far enough away from the solder point not to shrink. Solder the near end up, cool, slide the larger piece down to the solder point, and heat to finish.

 

What's your secret process to solder two tiny wires together? Soldering has always been a dark art to me...and not in a good way!

 

Use a sharp-pointed, adjustable temp soldering . They're pretty cheap, but watch reviews. Heat the solder and the soldering surface at the same time, and solder will flow onto both. Use the right-size wire: in a Hella pod, it should be the same size as the wire that's in there, and it should have a heat-resistant insulation. No, 12 gauge lamp cord it not the right thing to use.

You need the right heat for the job: small heat for a small connection, more heat in a larger one. Important: you need soldering flux to clean the oxidation or other crap off the surfaces you solder. If you don't, the solder won't stick and flow to the actual clean metal, but will end up in a bubble resting on the surface of the oxidized or dirty connecting point. Flux is especially important in linking wire, since it's often old and oxidized. So, make sure every wire connection is fluxed and clean.

Look for heat-shrink tubing. Very cheap on Amazon. Get longer lengths (8" or more). Cut as needed.The rest is in the video.

Practice on some wire lengths until you can create a nice end-to-end wire connection.

Start with this:

 

I'm more of a chainsaw kind of guy, so anything delicate is a challenge, but thanks for the link!