Hello everyone,

2 weeks ago I picked up a Silver 2005 Jaguar X-Type Sport with 62,000 miles on it. It was by far the cleanest Jag I had seen in my many months of searching. The paint looks new and only shows a couple of very small blemishes, the interior is immaculate and looks like it was barely used. Overall, I am thrilled with the car. There are a couple of minor fixes that I need to address, but overall the car looks and drives like it just rolled off the showroom floor.

I've been on this site for months as I was trying to decide if the X-Type was the right car for me. The helpfulness and knowledge on this board made me confident I was not going to be in the dark about the inner workings of this car.

I've searched on the forum and haven't found a solution to a minor problem I'm experiencing, so I thought I'd ask... I have the interior dome light set to come on any time a door is open. This works fine with all the doors except the front passenger door. When that door opens, the interior light doesn't illuminate the interior of the car. Anyone have any ideas what could be "stuck" in the door mechanism that could be causing this? Are there any remedies that I could try to resolve this, or is my best bet going to the dealer? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Luckout, from the sounds of things, your problem lies with the "door ajar" switch. IT is located inside the door and if this switch does not make up, it will not turn on the overhead lights. You can try locating the switch (door latch mechanism as I recall, just follow the wires to the latch mechanism) and then squirt it with some WD-40 to free it up. But, it may be possible that you will need to get a new switch (possibly a new latch assembly.

If you want to prove the switch bad, you can remove the plug off of the switch and then using a small jumper wire, go between the two pins. I would need to double check the drawings (don't have them in front of me at the moment), but with the plug undone, it should have the lights off, with the pins shorted together, it should force the lights on (car thinking the door is open). If shorting the wires together does not cause the lights to come on, then you have a problem with the wiring, not with the door itself. But, we can handle that as we get there.

 

Another question covered under the thread topic but not related to the originating question...

I've had trouble with my dome lights for a long time. The three switches don't work consistently. I sometimes have to push the switches multiple times to get any of the lights to turn on/off. Other times a single push will do it. The passenger map light is the most trouble, the other two less so, but none of them are reliable.

Any ideas?

Thanks
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Jaguar: Grace, Pace, and Space - Sir William Lyons

 

I have problems with my front dome lights too.
The centre light does not come on when the door is opened. One of the map lights ( driver side in US) also does not come on.

However if I gently press the whole unit the lights do work.
I did attemp to gently pull the unit down by easing the roof lining and getting fingers above the unit.
Result - sliced finger so be careful. I have yet to return to the problem so am watching with interest.

 

Thanks Thermo, I'll check on that later today with WD-40 in hand to see if that fixes it.

 

pab, I know you are not going to like this answer, but unfortunately, you are looking at buttons on the light that are starting to fail and the only fix is to get a new light assembly. You might be able to get into the switches and use some contact cleaner to possibly make things better, but then you will also need to apply some lube in the correct locations to make sure that the latching mechanism for the switch is able to function properly too.

henry k, in your case, it is sounding like you have 1 of 2 issues. IT is possible that the plug for your light assembly is not fully seated and by pushing up on the light assembly, you can push the plug on just a tad bit more and it will make additional contact. The other possibility is you have a broken solder joint (or two) and by pushing on the light fixture, you are flexing the circuit board just enough to make the electrical connection. Either way, you are going to end up having to pull the light fixture down and seeing what you spot. If it is the plug, that should be fairly obvious. The broken solder joint, that may be a little more difficult to spot. In short, what you normally see is a black ring in the solder and if you flex the board slightly, you can see the black ring grow. A quick hit with the soldering iron and you can fix a broken solder joint.

 

Luckout, I have looked at the drawings for your car and if you open up the door, you should see 2 black wires going to the door ajar switch. If you have a multimeter, you can set it to VDC (or DCV) and then attach the black lead to the chassis of the car. Now, using the red lead, probe the black leads 1 at a time. What you should see if the wiring to the car is good is that one of the leads will have 12 VDC on it (over 11.0 is good) and the other should read 0.000 (if not 0.000, read below). From there, if you take a small piece of wire and short the two together, it should cause the interior lights to come on. This will confirm that you door ajar switch is bad and you need a new one.

If you do not get 12 VDC but it is not less than 1 VDC, then I would check a different door just to verify that the voltage that you are seeing is correct. If the passenger door voltage matches the other door, then again it points back to the door ajar switch. If it is reading less than 1 VDC, then you have either a bad wire between the GEM module and the door or you have a bad GEM module (highly unlikely it is the GEM module as it will tend to take other stuff with it when it fails). if it is the wiring, then let me know if you plan on tackling the job. Otherwise, let the professionals fix it.

If you did not get 0.000 on the one wire, then you will need to do a resistance check of this wire. Set the multimeter to the diode range (has the funny looking arrow with a line at the point of the arrow and a line running through the arrow) or set the multimeter to the 2K scale. Now, touch the red lead to the black wire that should have been 0.000. Does the multimeter drop to a very low resistance (less than 5 ohms) or does it show overload (ie, flashes or shows "OL"). If you are showing less than 5 ohms, then the wiring is good and it points back to the switch if all other checks are good. If you are showing over 5 ohms of resistance, then the wiring inside the door is bad and you need to run a new ground wire to a good spot inside the door.

Please keep in mind that you should also do a check of the plugs to make sure that the contacts are good in appearance (have a silver look to them). If they are dark, you will need to clean them (scribe to scratch the corrosion off or the use of contact cleaner) so they have a silver appearance again. Your problem could be nothing more than a contact in the plug being corroded, leading to a high resistance.

In case you are curious why I am so picky about the 0.000 VDC reading, in my experience of working with electronics, you can get a pretty good idea of whether a wire is grounded properly by doing a voltage check by whether the wire goes to 0.000 (grounded and therefore both leads are at the same exact potential) or if it hovers at a voltage just above 0.000 (ie, there is no electrical path and you are seeing induced voltages).

 

Thermo, thanks for the great insight. Upon further review, I think I'm going to let the professionals tackle this job. I just hope this doesn't get too expensive.

 

Pab and henry k, you both might like to check out the connections between the removable part of the dome light and the base unit that it clips in to. Remove the light unit by getting your fingertips under the front edge of the unit and easing it down - the spring clips will eventually give up their struggle if you persist!

Then check out the pins on the removed part and the copper strip contacts in the fixed base that the pins have to fit into for a good connection when replacing the light unit - it can be very fiddly to get it right and if you don't, you get the symptoms you report.

 

I need to buy a replacement dash vent and am looking for the part number. I started a thread in General Tech help. Any insight would helpful and appreciated.

Here's the thread:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/g...-number-90549/

 

2003 JAGUAR X-TYPE Parts - Direct JPLV Porsche Parts.com

 

Thank you Bud Tender for pointing me in the right direction. Apparently, there was an updated vent that was introduced probably for my model year(2005) because I found a service bulletin addressing the defroster vent issue for 2002-2004 X-Types.
Here is the link for the bulletin:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/a...ster-vents-pdf

The final page lists the part numbers for the updated vents for anyone who is having an issue with their vents. Hope this is helpful to others.