Hi all. I have just joined the forum. I have a 2005 x type diesel. The left rear lights are not working and keeps blowing the 7.5amp fuse. Would appreciate any help.

regards.
chris.

 

Hi Chris,
We have an 02 X Type and we had the same problem. What our issue was, was the ground terminal in the lamp connector was melted. We never blew any fuses however. Perhaps your connector melted enough that the ground terminal is touching other terminals thus causing the fuse to blow. Just a thought. Hope it helps!

 

Thanks for that, its somewhere to start.

 

Finlayc, like was mentioned, the plug for the rear tail light can get hot and/or corrode, leading to what you are seeing. Pull the plug apart and see what you see. It will be fairly obvious if there is an issue. If you need more help, let me know and i will help make this better.

 

I will be working on it tonight. Let you know later how I got on.

Thanks.

Chris.

 

Hi. With the rear light disconnected it is still blowing the fuse.

 

finlay, then odds are, you have either a problem inside the plug or you have damaged the cable where it runs from the front of the car to the rear. Have you recently done any work where you removed the covers off of the door sills or pulled the carpetting back near the door openings?

 

I now have the rear lights working. I removed the battery to check the left front dip light and i noticed a blue and green cable with a plug on it trapped under the battery. I disconnected the dip light bulb and replaced the battery. The fuse did not blow and all the rear lights worked. The dip light bulb was blown which i replaced. The only light not working now is the left front dip light even with a new bulb. Any idea what might be wrong and what the blue and green cable with the plug is for.

Regards. Chris

 

Chris, the plug that you are looking at is something that is used only when shipping the car around the world. It is a battery tender connection. If you look on the back side of the battery box, you will see a dummy plug where that will plug in. Otherwise you can just let it dangle where it is.

As for the light, it may be that the wiring is damaged and you need to run a new wire. I would first start with a new connector for the bulb in question. You can also do some multimeter checks to verify that the wiring is good at that point (ie, connect multimeter to the black wire and the other end to the body to do a resistance check and make sure that it is reading near 0 ohms, under 5 is good). Then you can connect up the multimeter to the power wire and chassis ground (not the ground wire for the light bulb) and see if when you turn on the lights, you get 12 VDC there. That should tell you where your bad wire is if you have one.

 

Thanks, found the plug for the blue and green wire. Earth reading is ok. No power at bulb lead(yellow) when dip is selected.

 

Where could I run the new wire from ?.

 

finlay, I think your best bet would be to grab power from the other side of the car and go from there. All the other lights are either powered way back inside the cab of the car (not out of the question, but much more work to get the power there) or they are associated with the turn signals and therefore do not have the right power that you are looking for.

 

there is very little room to work at the back of the right head light. would it be easier to remove the front bumper.

 

Going back over your dip beam problem, you've never said if the fuse is OK. It's Fuse No 29, 20A in the Engine Compartment Fuse Box.

You need to be wary of tapping off the righthand lighting unit. The side and turn circuits are unsuitable, but so is the dip beam one as each dip light is separately fused at 20A, so running both dip beams off one fuse would be wrong.

I just hope it's the fuse that's gone, but not an awkward problem that's blown it!

Fortunately, the later X Types - including MY2005 - have an improved fuse box arrangement whereby the wiring to the dip beam fuses can be unplugged from the bottom of the fuse box, allowing the original wire to be removed from the plug and replaced if necessary - the Orange/Yellow one from fuse No 29

 

You are a genius, did not know there was a seperate fuse in the engine bay. number 29 had a 10amp fuse which was blown. I replaced it with a 20amp. Problem solved. It also solved a problem I was having with the dip switch. All lights are now working. Many thanks for all the advice received.

Best regards.

Chris.

 

finlay, you need to remove the 20 amp fuse and replace it with a 10 amp fuse. If the 10 amp fuse is blowing, then that is an indication that you have an ongoing problem. To leave the 20 amp fuse in there, you are putting the car at risk of an electrical fire as the wiring for that circuit is not really rated to handle that much current and can lead to the wire becoming hot and leading to other issues.

 

That's an interesting point you raise Thermo. Certainly one wouldn't expect a 55W lamp to consistently blow a 10A fuse at 12 - 15 volts, but on the other hand the X Type has always been fitted with a 20A fuse for each dip beam bulb/lamp as standard. Have you downsized yours by any chance?

Just to add to the confusion, the main beams get a 10A fuse each (Was 7.5A in early MYs) and the fogs a 15A between them!

Makes you wonder what Jaguar's electrical design philosophy was at that time!

 

now I am really confused. Is it a 7.5, 10, 15 or 20 amp fuse I should use.

 

astro, when it comes to selecting fuse ratings, the general rule of thumb is you take the total expected current the wire is to handle and rate the fuse at 125% of that. Then you round up to the next available fuse. So, if you have 55W headlights, each one pulls roughly 5 amps. So, the pair would pull 10 amps total (assuming that is the only thing on the wires). Take 125% to get 12.5 amps and that is the size fuse you are needing. Since they don't make a 12.5 amp fuse, you round it up to 15 amps and go from there. In the case of the X-Type, because the car has both halogen and HID options, to keep things simple, the engineers go with the higher rated fuse (20 amps) as the HID bulbs will pull 20 amps each (roughly) on startup for a few seconds and then drop to 4 amps each. So, the bigger fuse is to make sure the fuse doesn't blow on initial start up.

As you can see, it isn't a simple "this rated fuse for XXXXX application".

I can go into more detail if you want me to. But, this is the general idea.

Finlay, if your car was originally fitted for 10 amp fuses, then it should have 10 amp fuses installed bad in it. Going bigger can lead to problems you don't want.

 

Good points Thermo; thanks for them! Checking the fuse arrangements in my XK8 I find that with HIDS, 20A fuses are fitted to each lamp but if halogen lamps had been fitted, then only 10A fuses would have been fitted.

For the X Type however, Jaguar never bothered with the two different specs and 20A remains the 'official original fit' for all models! 10A is clearly sufficient and still might correct Finlayc's problem that might have been just a fuse that was blown with an accidental touching of a wire to ground!

Finlayc, 10A will be fine if the wiring is sound! Don't forget to keep F29 and F30 (One for each dipped beam) the same.