First, my apologies for not taking as many pictures as I did for my Daymaker XJS conversion, but I was trying to get this done ahead of Hurricane Nate getting here.

First, the links to the items I'm using for this. Keep in mind my car is running Euro-spec low/high beams (i.e., the larger bulbs) so do not buy the particular Hella H4s I used if you're running the American setup. Get 4 of the Hella H1s (if you can find high/low beam H1 bulbs) or two of the smaller Hella H4s instead (link here:
Hella H4 low/high beam chassis for 7-inch lights (see link above for American-size setups):
Hella H1 high beam chassis:
DWVO H4 low/high beam LED bulbs:
Turbo LED H1 high beam LED bulbs:
As for the third and fourth links, the LED bulbs, there are dozens if not hundreds of different bulbs that will likely fit this application, but I used the Turbo LEDs in my XJS conversion and the DWVOs are at the top of review lists, so I picked them. These are all plug-and-play applications and require no modification to existing wiring.

If you don't want to go LED, both Hella kits come with halogen bulbs. I briefly used the H1 bulbs in my XJS before continuing on to an LED conversion, and for halogen bulbs, they're some of the brightest I've used.

While plenty of LED bulbs should work, I would *strongly* advise not deviating from the Hella chassis. They fit in our cups with no modification needed, they are robust chassis with real glass fronts and strong latching hardware.

All in all, this conversion will cost you approximately $300 and can be done in 3 hours or less with minimal tools.

First off, here's what you'll get when you order the Hellas (both versions):



All the boxes look alike. The Hella H4s I received were actually cheaper than the H1s. The H4s were marked "Made in Romania" while the H1s were marked "Made in Germany." The H1s have a large metal ring around the back where the clip anchors in, and it sticks out 1-2 inches behind the light. Let's play worst-case scenario and say my H4s are knockoffs (although, being in Hella boxes with Hella stickers, someone went to a "Hella" lot of trouble to make it look like a knockoff), I actually prefer the H4s to the H1s, because you need all the room you can get behind these things (more on that later).

One of the things you'll have to get used to with Hellas is that they're flat-front, not rounded like the Sylvania low/high beams and the Wagner high beams I had in the car. This design difference is pictured below (please excuse the messy workbench):



Up close, this changes the look of the front of the car a bit, because it removes some curvature in the lights. You might not like it; I'd rather have brighter lights. And you can't notice it from beyond 10 feet anyway.

The next thing to understand is that all good LED bulbs come with three parts: A light that has a big fan motor/heatsink on the back, then a ballast, and then the actual plug. Here's a shot of that:



Those are the DWVO low/high beams. The Turbo LED high beams, which I forgot to get a shot of, have a much smaller heatsink and a smaller, flatter ballast. And I'm glad for it (again, more on that later).

Here's a shot with the DWVO low/highs mounted in the Hella H4 chassis:



So you've got to get all that installed into the factory cups: The light, the heatsink, the ballast, and the plug.

On the outboard (low/high beam) slots on the car, that's actually not so much an issue. There's plenty of room there, and you could theoretically make some more room if you removed the cups and cut some of the metal out of the back of them. But with the DWVO units, there is no need. You just have to be patient and more or less wrap the snake of wiring sort of in a spiral configuration behind the light.

The high beams are a different story. The plug Turbo LED supplies for the H1 bulbs is not wide enough to marry up to the Jaguar light plug. Fortunately -- and this is another reason I *strongly* suggest using Hella chassis -- is that Hella is good enough to send adapter/extension wires with its H1 units. This allows you to clip extenders on both prongs of the H1 LED and plug the other end of the extender into the Jaguar factory plug. But in doing so, now you've got yet another thing to have to hide behind the H1 light -- The 1- to 2-inch metal ring behind the bulb clip, then the heatsink, then the ballast, then the plug, then the extension plugs (which you'll need to wrap in electrical tape to avoid shorting/grounding on anything), then the factory plug. And by the way, you DON'T have a lot of room behind the factory high-beam cups, and there is virtually no way to cut/grind metal to buy yourself any more room.

I also had a much harder time getting the Turbo LED lights into the H1 chassis, even with the shorter heatsink. If you have the American setup on your low/high beams and need to use four H1 chassis across the front, I don't believe you'll be able to get the DWVOs in those chassis units. For that reason, you should look into buying the 135-mm version of the Hella H4 chassis (the top link I edited into this post). The longest part of this process for me (other than having to redo the driver's side low beam, more on that in a minute) was getting the Turbo LED H1 bulbs into the clips on the Hella H1 chassis.

Now, here's a shot of my DWVO low beam (driver's side, on the right in this picture) and the old factory halogen on the passenger's side (left in this picture). This kind of speaks for itself in regards to intensity:



The interplay of the Hella H4s and the DWVO low/high beam bulbs is interesting. DWVO's bulbs already throw light down for low and up for high beam. Meaning -- if you mount them upside down like I did at first -- you have to rotate your Hella chassis 180 degrees (see my previous comment about what took the longest to do with this job). At least I knew what to do/not to do when I did the passenger's side of the car later.

The other thing to mention is the Hella H4 chassis has some asymetrical cuts/markings in the face of its glass. This allows you to rotate the light around a bit and throw light different directions, so you can tailor your actual light pattern. A very nice feature for the price, indeed.

So I have my low beams now set to prioritize a wide field that goes out to about where the old halogens were able to throw light. But for high beams, I have prioritized a narrow throw and a long-distance pattern. This accomplishes two things: I light up the road for a long way, and I don't send much light into oncoming traffic and take a chance on blinding drivers. The one thing I'd note is that the edges of the beam are sort of jagged, rather than a dead-horizontal cutoff like on my wife's Lincoln MKT.

Finally, here's a shot of everything put in, on high beam. I can't tell you how much better this is than the old sealed-beam junk I was running before. These lights are now about on par with the factory setups in both my XF and my wife's Lincoln MKT. I actually like this better than the Daymaker conversion I did for my XJS and will probably replace those with Hella H4s if I ever need to. I strongly recommend this to anyone thinking of making the switch, it really modernizes the car for nighttime driving.



Jess

 

Great post. It is really good to have clear, detailed instructions with photos on stuff like this available on the forum for us to refer to for years to come.

 

Me too. Although upping my lights again is no on my present task list, the illustrated tutorial impressed me. I particularly was impressed at the aim of the lows. Blinding other drivers is just bad. I strive to avoid it and get irked when done to me.


As a lower level light improvement, a fresh set of Halogens to replace the 30 + year old lamps in my 83 did wonders.


I'd not driven my Jeep at night for months. I polished it's awful plastic lamps a bit ago. Gee, a whole lot better. With the cloudy plastic night driving was definitely a hazard.


Carl

 

UPDATE:

First thing to note is I went back and edited to say that, if you have the American light setup on your car (i.e., four identically-sized lights rather than the larger 7-inch lights on the outboards), you can buy four H1 chassis *IF* you can find an H1 high/low beam light bulb. All of the H1 bulbs I've ever bought were high-beam only. But Hella H1 chassis come with a "third rail" ground feature, meaning that in addition to the two-pronged plug, there's an earth ground mounted to the chassis itself. I'm guessing that means you could wire an H1 bulb in a three-wire configuration so that it would light up differently in low vs. high beam, but I have never done that myself and won't recommend it until I know it works.

You can also try to find Hella chassis that are the smaller (135 mm) diameter yet still accept an H4 bulb. In fact, here's a link to one:
Now that it's daytime, I shot a picture of the car up close so you can see what design difference the lack of curvature on the front glass would do to the look of the car. If your screen resolution is high enough, this also offers you a nice look at some of the beam-aiming properties of the H4 lens.



Jess

 

Hey-what color is the xj6?

 

I believe it's code JEX, Tungsten Metallic. I can go take a look later to confirm but I'm pretty sure that's it. Looks blue in some light, gray in others.

EDIT: Here it is in a "blue" phase. Note my XJS, which is a gray metallic, at the top-right of the photo for comparison:




Jess

 

 

I thought it might be same as mine but it looks a little more blue than mine...which also changes in the light-which i love about this car