Advice please.
Yesterday I closed the boot (trunk!) of my 1995 X300 and something fell to the ground. Picking it up I saw it was one of the two number plate light units. Simple I thought, just need to re-fit it. I opened the boot lid and saw the left hand one was in place but where the right hand one had been there was just a hole in the bodywork.
Now here's the odd thing, the unit which had fallen out although looking the same as the other one, contained no bulb nor did it contain any holder clips or wiring for a bulb! In addition, looking inside the small hole in the bodywork behind the unit, there was no wiring there either.
In effect it looked to me that the whole thing was a dummy, appearing exactly the same as the working one which has a bulb, holder and wiring, but in fact containing none of these.
I confess I always assumed both worked as the number plate was lit when the lights were switched on but now it seems all these years maybe it was only one light that was working and I wrongly assumed both worked.
I find it very difficult to believe that Jaguar would fit what is in effect a dummy unit just to avoid the cost of a bulb and holder, but that is what it looks like.
Anyone any advice/information/comments please?
Thanks.
BTW it has occurred to me that if it is a dummy, I could perhaps take a connection from the working unit and pass wiring to the non-working one and connect to a bulb inside this unit to give me two working lights.

 

Update. Just looked behind the cloth trim inside the boot and lo and behold, there is the bub and bulb holder which appears to have separated from the main light unit and dropped down behind the trim. Bit of reassembly and fitting work should fix it.
Sorry to bother everyone with my OP before I had done some proper research!

 

Pleased to hear you found the answer and the bulb holder!

To add some detail to the thread, here's the Number Plate Lamps info from the Parts Catalogue:


(click on the image to enlarge it)

And another regular culprit for disappearing behind the trim, the Luggage Compartment Lamps:


(click on the image to enlarge it)


I've marked your thread title as 'RESOLVED'

Graham

 

Thanks for that, much obliged.

 

I have had a couple of these where the lamp holder melts due to someone having fitted a lamp of greater wattage than original. I am going to try LED festoon lamps as these i hope run cooler. About to attempt to remove trim to replace current melted unit!....

 

Good luck with that!

 

Why?

I run the Sylvania LED festoons, well made and designed as a 1:1 replacement for the incandescent festoons.



And on that point, the incandescent festoons get DARNED hot themselves.

 

I have the exact same problem. Right bulb holder melted. The electrical connection was exposed and shorting the rear light fuses as it was sitting between the body and carpet trim. I just taped the part and shorting was gone. Will fix it soon.

 

WORD OF WARNING: I haven't fitted the LED festoons to the Jaguar yet but I did fit two to a trailer last week. The trailer was connected to the tow vehicle (Land Rover) I blew the fuse 6 times before I fathomed out the cause. Some of the LED festoons are fitted with a ribbed heat shrink/dissipator which is made of a conductive metal! If the contacts for the festoon are too close together they contact the heat shrink which is a dead short. Simple solution is to bend the contacts to create a bigger gap so they both can not contact the heat shrink together.