First of all, take a look at this:



This is what used to be the high-beam light on the passenger's side. About a year ago, that light suddenly started shining up in the trees. I thought the alignment system was broken and dreaded taking the whole thing apart to fix it.

Turns out the alignment screws were fine. The light actually broke, in a ring, around the lens itself. That meant the alignment ring wasn't actually aligning the lighting element anymore, but just the now-broken lens. But the element kept working. For an entire year and a half, in fact.

So anyway, I decided what I would do would be to take the opportunity to play around with LED light options. I considered installing dummy fixtures and using LED replacement bulbs (H4?) but then someone pointed me to these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Tonight began the installation. I ordered just one bulb for now, because I didn't want to waste a lot of money on something that didn't work.

Early spoiler: These don't fit. But they do "work."

I'll put up some more pictures as the weekend goes along, but I've got to find some special screws to hold in the trim ring (much longer than factory), and it doesn't look like I'll be able to put four lights in. I will probably have to do just the low/high light and then use a more conventional option in the high-beam-only slot.

I will say, though, that the light these things puts out is MUCH brighter than factory halogens and the light looks good on the car itself. Like I said above, more pictures are coming, including sort of a step-by-step on why this doesn't fit the factory housing and what could be done about it.

Jess

 

Alright, here's phase two...

First of all, I figured I'd give a look into why the new headlight doesn't fit, along with a shot of the innards of the headlight system in case you're going to try to replicate my work.

This is a shot of a standard sealed-beam headlight next to the LED chassis, shot from the side. Not hard to tell what the difference is here:



Now, here's a shot of the baskets that hold the headlight. I've taken both halves of the trim ring assembly out on the high-beam light so I can later illustrate some things for you. The outer half of the low-beam light trim ring has also been removed, but I left the cradle ring behind:



To begin with, it's very easy to see as you look at these two photos together what the issue is going to be. The high-beam slot has a very small aperture in the headlight assembly casing. The cradle ring gives you about a half-inch of room to work with. The trim ring fits tight over this, as you can see on the low-beam light, above. This demands the light body taper down quickly to the smaller size. Unfortunately, this LED chassis does not. On top of that, the metal that makes up the headlight basket assembly in these cars is very sturdy and thick. I lack the tools to modify the basket.

Here's a look at the headlight baskets with some markings to further illustrate this:



The green arrows are pointing to the anchor screws that hold the outer trim ring onto the cradle ring, which is affixed to the inner headlight basket assembly. These are roughly #6 machine screws (without self-tapping tips) of approximately 1/4 inch in length, with an exaggerated, squared-off head. With the fat LED light chassis between the trim ring and the basket, there would be no way to get those screws to hold all the parts together and secure the light.

The red circle on the high beam basket is point to where one of those machine screws is going to impact; the further you turn this screw in, the more the high beam light points up and to the right. It's sort of a combination securing point/adjustment screw that functions in addition to the two larger adjustment screws (the very large-headed Phillips screws visible here).

The cyan arrows are pointing to the three screws that hold on the chromed plastic trim. There are two at the high-beam light, one on top that you must pop the hood to get to with a 90-degree screwdriver; the other is just below and to the right of the high-beam light itself. The third is at 90 degrees to the headlights, on the outer side of the trim. This information will become important with my next post.

If you want to see a mock-up for what this light is going to look like in the basket itself, here it is temporarily installed:



I haven't yet secured or adjusted it in this picture, which is why it's pointed down.

Check back tomorrow for the final results.

Jess

 

OK, these will be the final entries here, as the job is done now.

First of all, here's what it looked like today with everything buttoned up:



You can see the LED elements inside the passenger's side headlight (photo left). Here's a close-up:



Sorry for the glare from the sun, but obviously I've got a west-facing garage.

Now, here's the issue with the chromed plastic trim. First, a shot of the driver's side of the car, which is still running the factory setup:



The cyan arrow is pointing to the screw in the side of the trim. Now, as we look at the passenger's side, you'll notice that the screwhole is empty, as it now is misaligned by about 1/4 inch. The other two retaining screws still fit as they should. As you'll note as you look back and forth between these two pictures, there is more of the chrome ring sticking out now than before:



Now, here's some pictures of this rig when it's all lit up:





As you can tell from above, the passenger's side (photo left) is a "hotter" light than the factory halogen setup. I'll give you a performance review in the next post.

Jess

 

Performance Review:

I took the car out tonight on some very rural, dark roads. One of the things the pictures are not properly showing in regards to my factory lights are that they're much more yellow than they appear in the pics. If they were the shade you see in these pictures, I would be happy already.

Having one new LED light and one halogen light installed gave me a chance to compare and contrast them. One of the downsides of the shape of these LED light bodies and the factory Jag light basket is there is a limit to how far up you can point the low-beam light. That's OK for me, because I plan to replace the high-beam lights not with more LEDs, but with these Hella kits: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001G76Q9K...I1HW082FUMDCKR

So with this setup, the factory low beams are throwing light about 5 feet further than the LEDs. But the usable light from the LED lights are much better. There is much better illumination of the ground immediately in front of the car. More or less, this is the area covered by most fog lights. On the passenger's side with this setup running, it feels like I've got the fogs turned on along with the low-beam lights.

The LED light also throws a trapezoid-shaped beam that goes curb-to-curb on a two-lane road. The factory halogen doesn't do that. I'm sure when I add a second LED to the setup, I'll be even more happy with the result.

Switching to high beams, the new light really starts to out-perform. It throws a beam further than the factory lights, at greater intensity. This, I was not expecting. LEDs typically get high marks for illumination in the immediate forward area of the car's hood, but struggle to penetrate down-road. I'm not detecting any such problem with this setup.

On the downside, the halogen factory lights provide some "soft" area around the edges of the main beam that help illuminate some things not in the actual focal path of the beam. The LEDs don't do this. This is also an issue with my wife's 2014 Lincoln MKT, which has a HID setup that provides great illumination along the focal path but has abrupt cut-offs, particularly vertically.

To summarize, here's the +/- on the new LED setup:

Pros
1. Much brighter than factory
2. High-beam throw range is surprisingly good
3. Fantastic illumination of the area just forward of the car itself

Cons
1. Can't use four of these across due to problems with the basket size
2. Limited range of adjustment due to issues with fit/sizing
3. Ultra-focused beam pattern may not be what you'd prefer

In short, I'd definitely do this again and I'm ordering another one of these lights as soon as I finish this post.

Jess

 

great job!

 

Thanks so much for this. It is a project I will take on soon.

 

Although this is not a modification I will probably do on the XJS, it is always interesting to read on various improvements.
I was just wondering why you did not consider a HID update?

I run HID's in my x308 on the low beams and the fogs (6000K), and the improvement from the standard halogens is huge, with no issues with blinding, and a clear cut-off.
Even the bright whites I use in the high beams are nothing compared to the HID's.

 

I replaced all 4 bulbs in the stock headlights of my wife's 99 XJ8L with OSHROM H7 65 watt off road replacements. Not sure what the bulb's "K" value was but it is whiter and brighter. I have not had any on coming cars flash their lights at me, so I don't think they are too bright for traffic. The owners manual calls for 55 watt.

 

I chose the LEDs over the HIDs for two reasons above all others: One, the LED is plug-and-play at the actual headlight plug. I'm still using the factory Jag wiring and plugs behind these lights and didn't have to cut or modify a single thing. What I've found over the years, both working with a lot of 80s Jags and a lot of 80s Mitsubishis, is once I'd start cutting into the wiring that had been exposed to the elements (i.e., anything not inside the cabin), I took a chance on doing damage I wasn't counting on; i.e., wires breaking, pulling apart, not crimping properly, etc.

Reason No. 2 was that I have cars with HID lights and between the fact they have a "fire-up time," meaning flash-to-pass still goes through an ignition akin to a halogen bulb, along with LEDs typically lasting longer, I wanted the LEDs if they'd work. But mostly, it was about reason No. 1, because every HID kit I looked at either had an issue with current draw or I'd have to hack up the wiring to do what I wanted.

Jess

p.s.: I should note that I am much happier with the LEDs than I am the Hella high-beams (H1 standard bulbs) that I installed. I may take a second swing at the Hellas and see if I can fit a more robust bulb. The Hella light chassis is extremely well built and is a perfect, drop-in fit for the factory high-beam chassis, but the bulb doesn't throw as much light as I'd like. Plus, now that I have LEDs on low beam, I'd like the highs to match.

I may update this with some pics of the tools you need to make this all work. I'll need to shoot the photos first.

 

Just wanted to update this old post because I went ahead and made a change to my setup.

Previously, I had LED =daymaker-style low/high beams in the outside slots and Hella H1s in the high-beam slots. I removed the halogen H1 bulbs tonight and fitted the following LED bulbs in the Hella chassis tonight:
Here's a shot of a halogen H1 in the passenger's side and one of the new LED bulbs in the driver's side:



I'm not going to expect you to be able to tell much from trying to take a side-by-side with a camera phone shooting straight into four lights, but you can at least tell the color of the lights are "hotter" now on the driver's side.

And then I took it out for a test drive. Holy cow.

The Hella H1 halogens did a fine job. These things, though, light up the world. Great throw and dispersion. Lights up the road, both ditches, the trees, the squirrels, Jimmy Hoffa's remains, everything.

They are also easy to fit into the Hella chassis. The Hella clips will snap these things in place with just minimal fuss (I had to use a flatblade screwdriver to push the clips the last couple of millimeters into the retainer holes). That big heatsink on the back has a cooling fan in it, and the fans have plenty of room behind the light, as do the ballasts, which are about the size of a package of chewing gum. This switchover took me 30 minutes and most of that was spent trying to find a screw I lost.

The only two downsides to this is (a) the light that is thrown now has the ever-so-slightest green tint to it, but you get used to it quickly, and (b) the cooling fans on the bulbs are loud. I'll also tell you that anyone you shine in the face with these things is going to hate you passionately. The daymaker low/highs don't have that problem but these things do. These lights are all about offense and don't care a thing about defense. But as I outlined in an earlier post, you can't run four daymaker-style LED lights across an XJS without heavy modification to the light baskets.

I love this modification. Cheap, easy, and my lights (when on high beam) are now competitive with the factory lights on my XF, which are the best I've ever had in a car.

Jess