Friends: I took a stone in my left high beam. I’ve ordered a replacement headlight unit rather than a single bulb housing because my local Indy sort of balked at trying to pop out the three aging ball/socket plastic posts to facilitate pulling just the single light.

In my quest to equip the shop with as much help as possible I’ve found the headlight assembly replacement material in the on-line manual. But I have so far been unable to find anything on the removal of a VDP grille. I find the four (torx?) screws, two on each side fastening the grile surround to the frame. But I cannot find screws that hold in the vertical VDP grille piece or pieces. Are they even there like they are on the conventional X308 grille? Could the VDP grille just be a single unit?

And, in the timing is everything department, my discovery of the broken headlight came as the car was being washed and waxed today in preparation for its first-even concours outing this Sunday in the “driven” class. Since I won’t get the assembly in until some time next week, could I argue to the judges that the dinged headlight is part of the patina of a driven category car?

Any guidance appreciated and/or citation out of the online manual that I can find and then print out gratefully accepted,

 

Eliot: no need to remove the grill (I don't care what the manual says): the glass pops out (Dave at EverydayXJ - shop.everydayxj.com - probably has one for sale). Both of my outers were so beat up inside (famous Jaguar yellow plastic) they would not accept new bulbs, took five minutes to replace both receptacles, including new LED lights (AutoOne perfect fit). Der be a Youtube out der!

 

Jim: Many thanks for the response. I thought that might be the case based on a video I saw. The everyday XJ place did not seem to have the part when I checked this morning and I have a full assembly enroute from a parts yard that I ordered last week. However, I could just pull out the high beam part. There is, of course, always the risk of breaking one of those fragile ball-and-socket plastic parts! The LED lights you described look pretty good and easy to replace, though I may save that for down the next project. I don’t use the car at night much any more and I just put some better regular H7s in it which have improved visibility. At least they’re a step up from what I had which was bordering on candlelight. I will say the price of the LED bulbs has come down a good bit based on that AutoOne site.

Again, thanks for chiming in.

 

That's what I did: they sent me glass, retainers, both dipped and outers. Just what I needed.