Well, this is a strange coinicidence, but the other day I went to remove the inside (black plastic) cover off one of Greenie's taillights, and discovered it was just laying loose inside the boot. I quickly figured out that this was apparently b/c the PO had the very same issue with it that I had with Scrapper's ('96), back when I owned her. Namely, how to get the damn thing to snap back on in place. I don't know if this issue was due to a poor design on the part of Jaguar, or what. The owner's manual makes it look like replacing them is a snap (no pun intended), but they are anything but that. Unfortunately, Jag seems to do that with a lot of parts in their owner's manuals. So is there some special trick or technique needed to achieve this feat, akin to the special knock to get a juke box to play a free tune? I used to call those kind of things "Jag-jitsu" moves .. smh ...

 

G'day Paul,

When you go to remove the black plastic cover you release a grey catch towards the top centre of it. What I do to replace the cover is fit the slot in the cover over the grey catch tongue, which should position the cover correctly, and then apply even pressure over the black cover and it should pop back into place.

Cheers,
Jeff.

 

The catches on my RH cover were unreliable. I sharpened up the points with a hot screwdriver.

It is a pretty substandard design. A thumbscrew or quarter turn fastener would increase part count.

 

Over time, the rear light covers deform and it happens that the joints do not work... I solved it by carefully heating the plastic with a heat gun (hairdryer for bodybuilders) and trying to make the plastic slightly letters towards the part that did not match, then I cooled with cold air or water to keep the shape... 👍😊

 

mine has a tab or 2 broken off the light housing.
they will sit in place but quickly fall off.
i just use a small little self tapper in the corner and screw it to the plastic boot trim piece that runs on the bottom edge.