Opticell Questions
 

Finally got around to getting under the console and putting a bright white LED into the Opticell.


Things are definitely about 50% brighter than before which is good. However, there are still a few mysteries to resolve.


I notice the A/C temps dial on the left of the radio is illuminated in white light while the A/C fan setting on the right is green. Is this the way it is supposed to be? Where does the light in the fibers change from white to green?


The map and dome light dash switches do not illuminate at all. Are these lit by fibers or do they have their own bulb inside? If so, what type of bulb?


The light switch and the ignition switch are also dark. I was under the impression they should be lit by the fibers of the opticell but there appears to be no fibers connected. I'm wondering if the fibers are disconnected somewhere but can't see any for all the wires. Wonder what the fiber routing is between the console the these two locations under the steering wheels. I'm hoping the fibers haven't been cut but rather were disconnect and are curled up somewhere behind all that wiring. If only I can find them!

I recall same color on both so I'll say 'no, not supposed to be that way'.



I think the filters are located in the control dials themselves, at or very near where the fiber optic cable actually is inserted



They use a small screw-in bulb. As I recall the bulbs screws into a socket and the socket slips into a fixture which is located inbetween the switches. This illustration might help a little

Facia Panel Switch - Parts For Series III Saloon | Jaguar Heritage Parts UK



I can't remember the routing at all, sorry. Someone will come along who knows.

Cheers
DD

There is a green plastic screen sort of thing, crescent shaped, that goes between the light source and the lettering. Yours may have fallen down into the guts of the console somewhere.


These switches are lit by small bulbs that press fit into a thin reflective fixture that sandwiches between a pair of switches and illuminates them from the side.

Since you already have the console out, remove the radio, pull off heater control knobs, remove the oddments tray and the panel the switches mount in. You will see the backs of the switches, and between each pair what looks like a silver wafer about 1/4 inch thick with 2 wires coming out of it. This is the light fixture. It comes out by spring clips. You might have to take the wiring off the back of the switch, but if you do, be sure to make a note of the position of each wire bundle.


That's correct. The light pipes look like purple wires but feel different (a little stiffer), and have a brass end, cut off square, definitely not electrical.

There are 2, obviously, of greatly differing lengths; each with little slack, that run from the tunnel, among the ignition and other wires, to the ignition switch housing first. The brass end clicks into a split fitting on the top of the housing. That fitting was broken in my car but I successfully glued it back together with Seal All, reinforcing with cloth while I was at it.

The light switch also has this click fitting in the top of the back of the housing. To remove the housings loosen the screws on the bottom of the housings. DO NOT COMPLETELY REMOVE THESE SCREWS!! The housings will slide aft into your hand.

Track the light pipes from where they exit the tunnel. This may take a while as you might need to remove the crash roll for better vision, and even the speedo head and the tach for better access.

You might try turning off all the lights in your shop and turn on your headlights,(BEING EXTREMELY CAREFUL NOT TO SHORT OUT ANYTHING!!) with the instruments out of the panel, which should brightly illuminate the ends of these light pipes. Then you should be able to see them among the wires and stuff.

I hope you can understand what I've written here.
(';')

Finally located the two light pipes and in my case, they are black instead of purple (I have an 87 series III).

The funny thing is that when I turn on the lights, one of the light pipes has green light, and the other white. This is before I plug them into back of the light switch or the back of the ignition switch.

Confused by this. Is one supposed to green and the other white? It could be if there is a diffuser in one of this switches and not the other.

I did look inside the opticell when changed the bulb and did not see any green diffuser anywhere. Am I missing something green somewhere???

I'm glad you finally found the missing light pipes.

Do I understand you correctly? The light coming out of one of them green?? When you're looking at the open end of the pipe without it being snapped into the switch cover?

I'm not all that familiar with Series III (you didn't mention it was SIII that in your original post). In fact I had understood only Series II had fiber optics. So I guess one of the Series III Gurus will have to help you further.
(';')

Yes, I should have stated it was an '87 SIII. Interesting this is that all the light pipes are black from what I saw.

Also, yes, when I turn on the lights and look at the open ends, one is green and one is white. This was not expected.

It's a mystery to me!

Cheers
DD

The outside color is only the protective sheath on the fiber bundle, which is really quite fragile and delicate, and easily damaged.

You should be able to determine where the green pipe goes by its length, especially if it's either for the ign. or lights. Their greatly differing lengths dictate where they must to, because the fibers must not be sharply bent or they're broken and light is no longer efficiently transferred beyond that point.

Or, if the green one is shorter maybe it goes behind the heater/fan switch that lacks the green screen.

As a side note that may be on some interest, it takes highly specialized equipment to splice fiber optics. Perhaps you're seen the phone company laying fiber optic cable and the little trailer with the umbilical coming out of the hole, going through the trailer and going back down the hole.

I once knocked on the door of one of those trailers and asked what they were doing. The guys were Delighted that someone was interested in their job and showed me the whole process.

Basically, the cut ends of the fibers, that look casually like 22 ga. copper wire, are highly polished, matched up and then FUSED to the corresponding fiber in the next umbilical. There are Thousands of individual fibers in a telephone cable, encased in colored vinyl just like copper wire (hundreds of individual fibers in these little light pipes in our cars), and they all have to be Right! This all happens within a little machine about the size of 2 outspread palms and 3 inches thick, but it Must be Absolutely clean or it's ruined, hence the little trailer.

I hope you get your fiber optic system sorted out. One of the Many things on my Winter Jag Things To Do list is to put an LED in my own Opticell.
(';')

All the things one can learn here!! Wow. My telephone company touted a better internet service with a new modem featuring fiber optic transmission. well after getting the stuff, the tech that installed it "nixed" fibre optics. Not available in this older neighborhood. Just plain old telephone wires!! Only newer places with underground have the fiber optic things.


Sometime ago, we quite going to the tree farm and chopping a Christmas tree.
Started using three fake trees. One of which has a form of fibre optics and a color wheel. Slick.


I think I saw the bundle in my SIII's console. Early on, I fixed the lamp that illuminates the shift quadrant. New bulb and safety wired now.


LEDS intrigue me. One of the things to look into. I have a couple from a demolished booster box.


For now, The 32 Roto Hoe has my attention, now that it's little lauson runs!!!


Drive belt to find and tires.


Carl

:icon_hijack: Apologies to the OP but I just can't help myself.

Carl, I've attached some graphics I found that accurately depict what I watched them splice.

The first image shows the difference in size/bulk between Copper and Fiber-Optic. The space saving alone, not to mention the cost of Copper is driving this technology. The two carry the same broadband load, but fiber-optic transmits a cleaner signal by the use of light filters on both ends. Truly it's PFM!

The second image shows what I watched them splice. Notice the small color coded fibers are grouped in larger bundles, also color coded in specific arrangements around other bundles, specifically arranged also. In the center was something like parachute shroud but more dense.

The third graphic represents a segment of smaller cable, a scrap of which they gave me as a souvenir, but which was lost when I moved out here to the Stix. It was half to 5/8 inch in diameter, corrugated steel covered with a Very tough plastic, encasing 6 vinyl covered fibers which surrounded a string in the center that resembled a double strand nylon string such as used to mark construction lines. The filler was like crinkled up Saran Wrap, but very dense.

A couple years before I knocked on that trailer door, the phone company spent Millions burying a bundle of 9 (3x3) 4 inch ABS seamless tubes which they calculated would be sufficient to carry the forecast increase in service demand for the next 20 years, for the housing development just up the road from my house.

They worked at it all one Summer. The trench was 8 feet deep. One of the splicing techs told me that with Fiber-Optic they could service the WHOLE CITY with the capacity of ONE of those tubes!
(';')

if you remove the black rubber cover over the front of the unit, then you separate the cable unit from the light unit, you will see that there are green filters. You can remove and reposition the cables as you want them.

the cables that should go to the green filters are the TEMP and AC dials, a total of 4. The rest should all be white.

to make light reach the Headlights and Ignition switches, (the two longest cables), you need a powerful array of LEDs. In my car it took 7 LEDs mounted in the light bulb housing to make both switches (headlights and ignition) to light up.

Note that the DimmerRheostat does not affect the Opticel light.

This is the most helpful post on this topic. From the pics of the Opticell unit, there are 7 ports and a total of 4 should filtered with a green lens. All four of these green ports should be connected to the temp and A/C dials. The three remaining ports: Lights, ignition switch and ??? should all be clear.

So in my case, I need only switch the light tube in the ignition port with the one on the temp dial. That will make the temp dial green and the ignition white (although the ignition switch may have a lens inside that makes it green again.

LnrB: Thanks. All the things you learn here. New tech phone as well as old tech phone!!! For years, the house phone was scratchy at best and at times out. various telephone techs would mess with it and restore it sorta. One tech told me that it was a matter of finding another pair in the box down the street. As your illustration shows, the cables are a bunch of pairs. It also depicts what the telephone techs are up to when a line is cut. A multiple of splicing to do! As it is done by humans, I expect some is better than others.


I did have another two lines to the back office when I worked. One for Fax, it later shared with internet and the other phone. Result, a bunch of drops from the post!!!


So, last year, at the time of another house phone brown out and internet issues, I noted a droopy set of lines from the post. I spoke with the tech and suggested that they all be removed and replaced with one line to the house. He agreed that made sense. When done, all has been much better.


I suspect, I'll never get fibre optic telephone and DSL!!


Thanks again.


Carl

the ??? optic cables go to the DOWN BLUE ARROW and UP RED ARROW on each side of the AIR DIRECTION INDICATOR DIAL located below the radio. (or whichever way the arrows are). Since those have color lenses already at the indicator, (one red, one blue), there's no need to color the optic cables.

you could pull another opticell from a salvage XJ and remove the green filters from it if you want everything to be greenish. I would like them in RED

there are no color filters in any of the reflectors in any of the switches.

Thank you, Jose,
that all explains why nothing I wrote made sense to him. My car is Series II and only has 4 light pipes, no up-down arrows and has green filter screens on the switches. None of the light pipes are colored.

Yes indeed, that explains a Lot!
(';')

Jose,
Do you have a link or source for the LEDs that you used? I'M swapping out all my panel lights and there's a thread on the xjs forum about LEDs for panel lights, but im not sure if that works for the opticell

check this site: v12s - Official Website then click on LED UPGRADES in the menu to see if that is what you are trying to do.

the 7 LED's that were used in my own Opticell were something like 70,000 lumens each or something like that, the work was done by Mike Eck of Jaguar Clock

jaguarclock.com

You might contact him and ask him if he remembers what exact led's he used.