My 2009 XKR has the LED rear fog light/reversing light combination on the boot lid. It was in for MOT yesterday and the fog lights nearly caused a failure. There are no LEDs lighting up on the left side, but 5 out of 8 are working on the right and side, so over 50% are OK and it will pass (the left hand side is not a legal requirement). The price for one new unit from JLR is a cool £316, so £632 to do both sides which is a bit steep I thought

The part number seems to be C2P21458. Does anyone know of anyone who can repair these units ? Just seems to me that someone who understands soldering, chips and resistors could fix these and have a good business, but all my research on the good old net has come up with zero.

Or does anyone know of somewhere to buy these at less of a rip-off price ?

Many thanks - all suggestions gratefully received

 

Mine are also missing a few LEDs. Not a big deal because I only turned them on ONCE just to see, and I'll never use them again ever.

 

Hey Cee Jay...thanks for the comment To be honest, I don't think it is use that makes them break - it is more likely just over time and with vibrations etc. I've owned mine for 13 years from new and can hardly remember ever switching them on. I have only done about 45k miles as it was garaged for a long time while I worked abroad. Update on that price by the way as it didn't include VAT so the total is a massive £379 for each cluster (excluding P&P).

Well that made me sit up and decide to investigate further !.

Hope this info will be of use to others on here. The LEDS are made by Osram. The ones used originally didn't last long (well I never !) and have been superseded by Osram part number LSG6SP.01 super red and they cost a massive 0.41p each (even cheaper than that is some places) but you can buy a bag of 25 from RS Online for £18 which includes VAT and postage. Hmm...not bad.

Now I have to admit that I do have an advantage here as I an amateur radio operator and so have some good mates who are very nifty with the old soldering iron. The units come off the vehicle easily and the circuit board is a simple one - not a layered one for example, so with a good bench setup (i.e. a good magnifying glass and also the right soldering gear) and an hour or so of time, I reckon these can be fixed or repaired.

Anyway, it is definitely something worth giving a go as it doesn't look difficult and may well save close to £800 quid in parts (which is a ridiculous price to pay) Here are some pics posted below. As you can see, there are just three plastic posts that hold the circuot board in place which have been heated and melted over to stcik them in place. Remove those and the two circuit boards come off as one and you have access to the eight v small LEDS. Soldering iron to remove them and then solder new ones in place and voila ! (if it all goes according to plan)

Worth bearing in mind also that soldered joints often go "dry" and soemtimes you can repair this sort of thing by just touching up any "dry" joints - it is what I did with a dash clock on another vehicle which had simply stopped workring.

I will post the result once I have done or tried to do the job....watch this space !

 

I've done my own fair share of melting tin and lead, but I don't see the need for me to do mine. Sure, it'd be fun to do, but I have SO SO SO many more things with a higher priority that I may never get to this.
I will follow along and see how you do, maybe I may have a blank period of a few hours some day to whip this out.

 

I will let you know........

 

Did I misread the original post? The XK rear fog light is only enabled on one side of the car. (driver’s side) Not both sides.

 

That was true for earlier models, but the XKR (new style) from 2009 onwards has two. One on both sides rear. In UK, the legal requirement is a minimum of one on the rear drivers side with more than 50% of LEDS (if it is lit by LEDS) working. So, my five out of eight was OK.

 

Thank you, Falkie, for providing the P/N for the upgraded Osram LEDs'. I have a similar problem with mine (LEDs' out / flickering). Also on my get-around-to-it--list when I get some spare time hahahaha...

 

No worries Tracee. I got the LEDS the other day and will give the job a go this week. I think we will be soldering them on the board with a miscroscope as they are tiny indeed. It will be interesting and I will post the result - good or bad ! - on here.

 

OK guys 'n girls here is the update !

Took the jag to a mate of mine who is a dab hand at soldering little things to circuit boards through a magnifying glass. On the back of the little circuit board there are a whole load of resistors, capacitors and even a pair of 6v relays, all of which serve to confuse. Could have done with a little circuit diagram. We put power to the board and the lights behaved really oddly.They would glow bright (the ones that were working previously) on low voltage - around 6v, but as we turned up the voltage most of them would either dim or go out altogether. LEDS don't require much voltage so we thought that maybe a higher voltage (up to 14v) didn't somehow suit them, but it was, in fact, worse than that as this would only happen randomly, and then at other times they would be fine with more volts. We removed and replaced one LED that never showed ay sign of life, but it still would not come on, so we suspected that the problem might lie in the numerous capacitors, resistors etc on the board rather than the LEDS themselves.

We suspected dry joints so "blobbed" a few joints that might have been suspect, but this also made no difference.

We consumed a few cups of tea and then, once emboldened, we decided to get rough with the board. Interesting ! We tapped away on the board and sometimes we would get extra LEDS light up Then we noticed that if you put something blunt (so as not to pierce the membrane or skin) on the very middle of the LED, it would come on bright as a button. We got six out of eight working on the rhs light so we then moved on to the lhs light which was showing no lights at all. We took out the lhs light from the vehicle (which had no LEDS lighting up) and tried the same thing. Guess what - we got six out of eight working on that side too. Put both clusters back on the car and still had six out of eight working both sides.

I drove the car back home and, even odder, i now have seven out of eight working fine on the rhs (insetad of six) and still have six out of eight on the lhs where previously I had none. I am pretty sure that the one LED that is not working is the one we replaced, so maybe if we had left it as it was I would have all eight working ? I don't know the answer to that one !

I think the moral of the tale here is that it is probably not the case that the LEDS have gone "bust". They are probably OK. We suspect that the little "legs" that the LEDS sit on need a bit of a push down, but through the "lens" or "membrane" rather than the plastic body so as to make a good connection again. This is probably why Osram upgraded them and Jaguar should also probably have done a recall to replace. I suspect that they will go again of course with time and vibration (not with use).

In short, did we solve the problem ?

No, I don't think we did as I am pretty sure that some of those LEDS will malfunction again over time. We applied a bit of thinking to this problem and think we may have sorted out a permanent fix. At present it is just a theory, but it is based on the fact that soldering new LEDS to that board is almost impossible given that they are so minute (please prove me wrong someone on that).

So, if I can find some bright red LEDS that are about 5mm wide with reasonably long "legs", we could pop those into the base of the light cluster, wire them up to the power supply and remove all of the complicated circuitry that is there at present. So long as the ECU is ignorant that this has gone one, we should be good to go

This could take some time, but could save that crazy £780 on new clusters that will no doubt fail again ! If we do some up with a simple solution, I will let you all know and we will go into industrial production.

 

and here are some pics if i have go


t this right

 

and remember....the photo makes the left look like right and vice versa

 

Hm...pushing in on the LEDs' and having them light would seem to indicate cold solder joints. Fortunately, I have access to a soldering work-station where I work, so will try to reflow the connexions. This is an interesting project - maybe I'll move it up on my to-do list. Not a legal requirement here in the States, but little things like this bug me.... Thanx for the inspiration!!!

 

You have convinced me to leave mine alone. I do appreciate that. Seriously.

 

Those buggered LEDs are a bummer. But reading this thread makes me glad that I still haven't gotten around to "upgrading" my 4.2L taillights to the 5.0L design.

 

I upgraded mine 6 years ago or so and have had no issues. These were sourced from SNG and were late model, 2015, I think, so likely already updated.

 

Hope you’re right, upgraded mine almost 7 years ago now, and so far, so good (from the same source, a mix of 2014 and 2015 lights).

 

I apologise in advance if I am posting too much about this, but I really want to find a permanent fix instead of paying close to £800 for two new units !

So an update....I did a bit more research on this one and found these push through LEDS from RS Components which they say are very bright, red and 5mm in diameter. The mcd value (brightness) does look very bright !

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/leds/9120585The idea is to fit these LEDS in the holes in the light cluster which are between 4mm and 4.5mm in diameter (they are not accurate holes) so I drilled out the holes to 5mm and tried an old LED of the same size and it fitted perfectly.

Next thing to do is find something that will act as insulation (electrical and possibly heat) to avoid any problems between the LEDS and the circuit board.

I used a piece of thin soldering mat which was lying around and cut out holes for the posts - and also for the reversing lights of course. It all fitted together fine.
So, my thinking is that if we connect the new LEDS together in series we will get 1.9 v for one, 3.8 v for 2, 5.7 v for 3 and up to 15.2 for all 8 which shoud fit the bill. Take off the power feed to the originals and send it to the new ones and hey presto - a permanent fix and, if an LED shuld fail, then very easy to fix. These are far easier to solder in position than those tiny ones I got,

Hopefully I will get around to doing this soon and will post back on here as to whether or not we are successful. By the way, I removed the light cluster completely and ran the engine just to check the ECU didn;t notice and all was fine - no warning lights came up (which woud have been a show stopper). I didn't think that woud be a problem as when they had failed I never got any warning on the dash.

Some pics follow that may explain things a bit better

 

 

Okay, this seems a bit more reasonable and worth doing.
Keep the thread going!