Hi,

I bought a 2001 X-Type 6v Auto 2.5 last week. It was pretty standard for a Jag. Tape deck, Cloth seats etc. My friend says that i should upgrade the tape deck, how easy is this to do and can i only upgrade it to a CD player or can it upgrade to the sat nav?

Also how easy is it to upgrade the lights?

Is there any other upgrades that you could recommend?

Thanks in advance.

 

You can put a single slot CD in place of the tape or put a 6 CD changer in the boot and leave the tape in the front.
The retro fit Sat Nav is not only possible but has been done and documented.
Lots of threads about it if you do a search or have a look here.
Retrofitting touch screen sat nav controls

 

FollowMe, I will take you down a slightly different setup as I see things. If you are looking to upgrade the radio, then don't be looking at the Jaguar factory setup. There are far nicer systems in the aftermarket world than you can find in even the latest cars available (XJ on down). The price is going to be fairly comparable too. The aftermarket will be slightly more in the long run, but you are getting brand new vice something that has been around the block a little bit.

As for the headlights, you have 2 options. You can get the factory HID setup, but this is going to mean that you will need to do a little bit of wiring upgrade as the factory HID system has 1 extra ground wire that is not installed in the non-HID cars. Easy to add the wire, but getting the parts may be a bigger challenge. Option 2 is to get yourself a 35W (NOT!!!! a 50/55W setup) and then wire that into the non-HID assemblies. Check your local laws as I recall doing that where you are may raise some issues. If you go option 2, the price of the kits and what you get are pretty much inline with each other. Sure, you can get a kit for cheap, but you are going to have a hell of a time long term keeping things going. I have done quite a few setups and I am finding that the bulbs are not the issue, it is the ballasts that are your trouble. So, stick with a kit that has Maxlux ballasts in them. These seem to work for a long time with no issues. The only "downside" that I can give the Maxlux ballasts is they are a little bit on the bulky side (especially when compared to the slim line ballasts). But, they are not that bad. They will still fit in the void under the headlight assemblies.

If you need more info, let me know.

 

Thermo, I'm curious why 35W and not the stock 55W? What's the insight on that?

I had bought an HID conversion kit a few years back, but ended up also buying some PIAA 4600K 55W bulbs since I was procrastinating in doing the HID conversion. The PIAA's lasted me a good year and I'm on my second set which have lasted me nearly 16 months so far. I've been pretty happy with the brightness. I just assumed 55W was the alternative if I wasn't putting in the HID kit, so I'm interested in hearing more about Option #2

 

ugotmale, the next time you are looking at the 55W HID bulbs, see if you can find on the box where it says "DOT LEGAL" or something to that effect. You will not find it. The 55W HID bulbs (not halogen bulbs, complete different story there) output too much light to be safe on the roads. 35W HID bulbs output around 3000 lumen of light. Your typical halogen 55W bulb outputs a "mere" 1500 lumen. The 55W HID bulb outputs in the neighborhood of 4300 lumen. As you can see, you are putting out tons more light and that is where the safety concern comes in.

A true HID bulb is a much more efficient way of converting electrical energy into light energy when compared to halogen bulbs. In short and not trying to get too technical here, a HID bulb passes a current through a gas (xenon, hence why you will see HID bulbs referred to as Xenon bulbs) and this causes the xenon to become excited. This causes it to create a high "resistance" and the current goes on to another gas particle. When the excited gas particle looses its excitement, it emits a little bit of light. Now, imagine this happening millions and billions of time each second. There you have the simple workings of an HID bulb.

On the flip side, your halogen bulbs with a wire filament on the inside makes light by heating up the wire filament to the point (around 1400F) that it will glow white hot. This is the same sort of effect as a toaster does, just not to that extreme. The reason for the halogen gas (which can be a number of the noble gases, one of which is xenon, so, need to be very careful here in not mixing up your bulb types) is to remove any oxygen which is what leads to filament failure (essentially the filament gets on the hairy edge of becoming liquid).

The other piece to all of this is with halogen bulbs, changing wattage is pretty straight forward (due to bulb design). You find the wattage that you want, the bulb has the needed internals and you plug it in and you are done. HID systems are not that easy. Notice I have made a slight word change here, HID lighting is a system, not a simply bulb. The HID system consists of a ballast and a bulb. These two things work in conjunction with each other. I liken it to have a passenger car with a diesel engine in it. When have you seen a passenger car with a 6.7L diesel engine in it? You don't. The car is not equipped to handle something like that. It has something in the 2.5L range. The same can be said about a HID system. The ballast is your car body. It can only handle but so much power. The HID bulb is your engine. You have to match the HID bulb to the ballast. If you look on HID ballasts, they will say "Use only 35W HID bulbs". If you stick in a 55W HID bulb, you are going to trash the ballast.

Just to add a bit of confusion to the above, some lighting manufacturers have been playing with words and confusing the general public on what a "HID Bulb" is. Just because a bulb is filled with xenon gas means absolutely nothing. The gas serves a function, it is not the defining aspect about a bulb (as explained above). So, pay attention to the internal design of a bulb. Most HID bulbs have a small glass bulb (about the size of a pea) in the center where you can see 2 electrodes coming close to one another. Your halogen bulb has the corkscrew metal filament in the center. Use that to define what an HID bulb is and isn't.

If you need to know more, let me know.

 

Oh, on a side note, the stock HID headlight set ups are 35W. The halogen headlight systems are 55W. The confusion that you were under explains why you will notice that some vehicles (especially trucks for some reason, Toyotas at that in my area) have those very intense headlights. that is because someone is putting out wrong information and people are installing the wrong equipment into their vehicles.

Another thing to reinforce why you need to only use 35W HID systems on stock wiring is due to the current draw that HID systems pull on start up. If you look at a halogen bulb, when you apply power, it will pull an initial 6-7 amps (due to the filament having less resistance) and after a second or two, it will come up in temp, get more resistance, and the current drops to around 4-5 amps. This all happens at 12 VDC.

Now, lets look at a 35W HID bulb. When you flip on the light, the ballast immediately outputs 23,000 VDC (yes, 23,000). This causes a small spark to jump from one electrode to the other, starting the exciting of the gas molecules. Once the excitation occurs, the voltage ramps down to around 85 VDC and stays there. Due to creating 23,000VDC, the ballast pulls an initial 20 amps (per bulb). When you start thinking about the poor 20 gauge wiring to the headlights trying to pull that kind of power, you are stressing the wiring pretty good. Not a major issue because it is only for a second or so. But, also think about the relay. It is rated for 30 amps. When you turn on your headlights, you are dropping a 40 amp load on to something rated for 30 amps. Again, it stresses the relay, but not a major concern due to shortness of the duration. Once the bulb is up and running, then the ballast is only requiring around 3 amps.

Lets now look at a 55W HID system. Things are simply bigger in this case. You are still going to get that 23,000 VDC spark to get things going and will be maintained at 85VDC once things are established. The difference comes in the initial starting current. Instead of the 20 amp for the 35W bulb, you are now looking at 30 amps (or 60 amps total for 2 bulbs). You are still using the same 30 amp relay. Now you are starting to really push what that relay can handle.

The beauty of electricity is it will attempt to make things work, regardless of the outcome. So, if you can imagine, when you drop that 60 amp load on the 30 amp relay, you are creating a little spark like what you get when you connect up jumper cables to a dead battery. Every time you do that, you are eating away a part of the relay. Then you also have the fact of heating up the internals of the relay and the wiring. The wiring isn't so much an issue other than when you push it like this, it tends to cause a nice voltage drop from beginning to end. This makes the ballast work harder (leading to shorter life of the ballast) and ironically, makes the ballast pull even more current. See where this is going?

Technology is great. But, it isn't so much a simple plug and play world any more when you start looking at the new lighting systems coming out. The old rules don't apply any more when you look at things on a basic level.

 

If you are upgrading to an in-dash CD, look on eBay for a U.S. deck. We have no codes here. I bought an in-dash CD and it went in without a security code. I did however have to have the CDC button re-programmed so it would recognize my ACM.

Good luck.

 

thanks for the lesson. you answered several questions that i had concerning the 55 w ballast.
I have a 05 STR with HID 35W thinking about going to a 55W system, however now just going to put in new 35 HIDs
you probably save me much from #%%^&*#

 

Carlg07, I will admit that you can go to the 55W HIDs for say your high beams. You should never have your high beams on when getting near anyone else and it will make for easy seeing at night, especially if you are out in the middle of nowhere. The one thing that you will need to keep in mind though is that you won't be able to use the stock wiring. You will have to get a harness that pulls the power directly off of the battery. Then you are using the high beam wiring to simply turn a relay on and off. If you need more info, let me know. A little more work, but if you use your high beams a lot, can be very rewarding.