Driving home on the highway the other night I thought that the XJ-SC headlights were nowhere near as bright as most other vehicles.
What is the best way for increased brilliance -new globes?
And my instrument illumination is almost non-existant.

 

Headlights: clean connections and good grounds present and accounted for? Have you checked that the lights are getting full voltage? Are the lenses opaque/weathered/yellowed?

Panel lights: these are notoriusly weak. Some see improvement by cleaning the rheostat. Others bypass the rheostat entirely fro more brightness. Weak/dirty connections at the cluster printed circuit can be a problem. Others install brighter and/or LED bulbs


Cheers
DD

 

You should mention whether you have the quad lights, or single lens.

You can do a search on recent posts for HID lights.

There are pros and cons for doing this conversion depending on who's posting.

 

If you're still using sealed beams then you should at least convert them to halogen bulbs with the associated housings that are made to receive the removable/replaceable halogen bulbs. Google "sealed beam conversions" and plenty of results will come up for 5 3/4" housings and halogen bulb combos.

Some choose to upgrade all the way up to HID. Here's the thing with HID, though. HID bulbs are meant to be used in HID-specific projector lens housings in order to focus and project the intense HID beam properly. 90% of the HID conversions I see involve the owner just shoving an HID bulb into a housing meant for a halogen bulb. The light goes all over the place, blinding you, me, my neighbors puppy, and bigfoot.

I don't know of anyone making generic HID 5 3/4" housings. Some make their own by removing the glass or plastic clear face from a halogen housing (usually by baking the housing in an oven for a few minutes to loosen the adhesive), cutting a large hole in the rear bucket portion, epoxying the HID projector housing into the back of the headlight bucket, and then gluing the clear face back on. This is what I will eventually do if I can't find someone making a 5 3/4" housing HID projector bulb setup.

 

With respect to the instrument panel lighting you may find that the bulbs have gone black on the globe. The gassed tungsten wanders around and settles on the glass.