Hi! Two days ago I bought a Jaguar X-Type 2.0d from October 2003.
When I went for a test drive at night, I noticed that there were no lights inside. The back dome was on the off position and with the car closed and me locked inside, it stays on in both the middle position and the far left position.
Yesterday I went to get a bulb for the front dome and guess what? It stays on! Both driving and locked...
I disconected the front dome to try and ser if it could be caused by a fault switch but the rear one is still on.
After further inspection, there were no bulbs in the footwell. Don't know where there could be more...
I am identifying the GECM as the fault...
Help?
Thanks in advance.

 

Can someone contact a user called Thermo? I have seen him in posts related with my problem and maybe he can help me...

 

I saw a diagram and the front and rear domes are apart. I have installed a light in the footwell and the same thing is still happening. Interior lights always on. I don't know if there is a short somewhere or it is the GEM.
I am starting to regret buying this car...

 

Tried removing the fuse nº35 and the lights stay on... removing nr.49 shuts them off.
Also, at the GEM, I compared the grey connecters cable layout in my car and it does not match the layout I found in the electrical guide ...

 

dani, what you are going to want to do is to access the 4 lights (2 footwell lights, front overhead, rear overhead) and unplug them. At this point, close all doors and plug in one of the footwell lights. Did it come on? If yes, unplug that footwell light, set it off to the side and plug in the footwell light on the other side. Did the footwell light come on again? If yes, then odds are you have either a grounded wire in the harness (black wire on each of the plugs in question) or the GEM module is toast and you will need a new GEM module.

Assuming you can plug in one of the footwell lights without the lights coming on, plug in the other footwell light. Then plug in the rear overhead light. Then the front light. With the front and rear overhead lights, do not put them into their openings. Let them hang. I say this as I have seen in the past where if the overhead lights get put in too far, the backside of the light will contact the body of the car and cause what you are seeing. If plugging in a light causes all the other lights to come on, then you have a bad fixture. It will need to be replaced. Just because you find a single fixture, do not assume the others are good. Follow this process all the way through.

Once you can get all the lights plugged in without the lights coming on, start putting the lights into their openings one at a time. If this causes the lights to come on and stay on, then you have a problem with the light touching the body of the car. At this point, your best bet will probably to get say some 0.005" styrene or other suitable insulating material and mount it to the back of the light fixture. This will prevent the grounding.

I realize that you may need to open the doors so you can access various things. That is fine. Just close the door and make sure that you give things enough time to ensure the lights should have gone out.

Silly question, are you trying to use LED lights? I have seen where in some cases, the LEDs require such little current to operate, if there is any sort of electronic switch (like what is in the GEM module), this will be enough to cause LEDs to light up. You don't see it with incandescent bulbs as they require a lot more current to reach even a relatively small level of light.

 

Dani, ok, I think you may have a red herring when it comes to X-Types. I want you to look at the passenger compartment fuse box. Are the fuses numbered 50 through 99 or are they numbered 1 thru 50 (or something of the like)? If they are numbered 50 thru 99, then you have the earlier wiring harness. If they are numbered 1 thru 50, then you have the later wiring harness. This may explain why when you look at the wiring diagram, the wiring will not match up.

 

Also, if using LED, remember they only work when inserted with correct current flow. Lots of people don't realize they only work inserted one way contrary to the standard bulbs (the 2 bent wire type) which illuminate either way inserted.

 

Yeah, I think thats that!
I am not trying to install LED's though.
I will try the above but with the right side footwell lamp only in there, this happens. Both the roof domes are disconected from the wiring harness so it can only be a short somewhere or the GEM.
Btw, it is the grey connector that is supposed to do the interior lighting right?
If disconnecting that one and even the second, they wont turn off. Only the third will...
And a friend told me that the headlining has been re-done in the past, so maybe that coud be why?

 

That is what the previous owner tried to do. But there are no lamps anywhere because they would stay on all the time...
At least they could have left them somewhere in the car....
Led's are on the trunk, number plate and headlights.

 

I will return my faulty multimeter that I bought yesterday just to diagnose the car.
But I have a question: in the front dome, there is a 5-pin plug with three wires. One of them is black so I am fine.
In the back dome, there are two black wires in one plug and a seperate 1-pin plug that is red. How can i ground check that one?
And both the footwell lights have both of the wires in the same color (black/brown, if I'm not mistaken).
Also, I want to believe there is a wire grounded somewhere since getting a new GEM and programming it where I live (Portugal) would be hard. What is the best eay to diagnose it?

Another one: is the middle button in front dome supposed to turn all the lights on (including footwell lights)?
Because if its black wire is grounded even with it disconnected, the lights would still be on right?

 

Alright, now I got a multimeter and am measuring resistance between the black and pink wires in the lights (I was wrong about the footwell and rear dome cable color).
What is happening is that with the f49 in or out the fuse box, all the GEM cables plugged in or not and doors open or not that there is little resistance between the pink/black cable and groud points in the car (metal plate next to GEM, sunroof motor screw).
Resistance is around 3 ohm.
I have also removed the A pillars covers and un-plugged some connectors. There is still the same resistance between the roof pink/black cables and the ground point next to the GEM.
What could this mean?
Bad roof wiring?

 

Since I have the roof connectors un-plugged and there is still ground from every one of the lights then the bad wiring isn't in the roof right?

 

Watch the video!!!
As I said , need help on how to remove the headliner...
Thanks!

 

dani, based on what you are seeing, if you are unplugging the GEM module and you are unplugging the light fixtures and then measuring the black/pink wire to ground and you are still getting a low resistance, then your problem is a pinched wire and it is grounding to the body of the car. Unfortunately, about the only thing I can say about this is that you will need to remove the headliner and the A-pillar covers and hope that you can see where the wire got pinched. This is going to be a lot of hand over hand inspections of the wiring. But, this is about the only way that you can do it.

Thinking, you may have an option. If you look on say e-bay, they sell what are called "sounders". they use them in the telephone industry. In short, you plug a sounding box to one end of a wire (with the second connector to chassis ground in this case) and then you use the probe to follow the wire (does not need to touch the wire, just needs to be in the vicinity of the wire). From here, you just follow where the probe tells you that you have good wiring. Where the wire is grounded to the body, beyond that point you should get very little if any soundings. This will give you a few inch area to look in.

You can play with the sounder by simply taking a long piece of wire and laying it on the ground and connecting up the sounder. As you move the probe closer and further away from the wire, you will see how the probe will pick up the inputted signal to your wire and tell you where the wire is. I know this is spending some money, but I think you may find the time saved is going to be well worth the money spent.

Here is what I am talking about:
MASTECH MS6812 Network Telephone Handheld Wire Line Cable Tracker Finder Tester | eBay

 

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/a...-headliner.pdf

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...emoval-130043/