I hit a snag today. I was going to swap out my front fog lights for LED bulb units. Removed the wheel well liner partially to gain access but my fog light doesn't resemble the unit shown in the workshop manual and appears not to have the connector type I expected to find. They look as if they are sealed units.

I couldn't take a useful photo of the back of the units, but this is the unit that is fitted:



The photo shows the unit 'upside down'. The screw adjuster for aiming the lights is at the bottom in my installation (left hand side). On the back is a connector held with a metal spring clip. When the clip is removed, the connector pulls off to reveal a two pin socket. But that's it. There is no evidence of the H11 light fitting that is the same as the cornering bulb. I tried grasping the entire unit and twisting to see if it opened up but it didn't.


This is what I was expecting to see - you can see the H11 fitment in this illustration...


I know this is the fog lamp from a different model, but it's what I was expecting to see - the H11 unit which simply needs to be rotated a little and pulled free so that the new LED bulb can be fitted.




For reference this is the type of bulb that is supposed to fit this fog light:




Can anyone shed any light (no pun intended ) on this? My car is an early 2008 MY coupe, 4,2 supercharged XKR.

 

My 2006 XK has those foglights. Does your manual state that the foglights are H11? Have you felt if there is a cap of some kind to remove?
I'm pretty sure your foglight are OEM.

 

Hi - thanks for the reply. The light unit shown (with the H11) is the one used in the XK but the unit for the XKR is different for some reason. As far as I can make out, and I did try really hard, there is nothing on the light unit that can be removed, other than the connector that joins it to the electrical system. It seems that on the earlier XKRs they used a different fitting (like the one I have) - the XKRs from 2010 MY don't have these fog lights at all, since they have air intakes there instead. I believe that my unit is sealed, yet it does appear to have a conventional halogen bulb in it when looked at from the front. This would tie in with my owner handbook which describes how to operate the fog lights, the dash warning lights etc, but has no mention at all of changing bulbs or of the bulb type.

If my theory is correct, I won't be able to swap the bulb for the LED I want to use. I can't swap the light fitting for the type your car has because it won't fit. I could buy a replacement unit for each fog lamp but they are ridiculously expensive and there is no indication that they have gone over to LED with them anyway. Seems my car will be all-LED other than the fog lights. It's no big deal as I rarely drive the car in really bad weather so don't use the fog lights - I just wanted to make the car all-LED.

I wonder why Jaguar fitted a totally different fog light unit to the XKR than they fitted to the XK?

If anyone has any other ideas, I am all ears

Thanks again.

 

I am wondering now if I can modify the XK light unit to fit the XKR. The fog light in the XKR is held by just two screws as far as I can tell without totally dismantling it. It should be fairly easy to make a bracket that matches the screw holes and then fit this to the XK unit using its own mounting holes. If you look at the photos of the two you can see what I mean. Maybe not worth it?

 

I haven’t studied them, but it’s my impression that the lens diameter, and therefore likely the lamp housing as well, is smaller on the XKR.
It was probably a design decision to reduce the lamp area so that the grill/intake around the fog lamp didn’t have to be huge. It could be tasteful and useful.

 

That makes sense. I have a friend who has an XK. Next time our cars are together I will compare the sizes of the lens. For now, I have put all thought of changing the fogs to LEDs out of my head. All my other bulbs are now LED (except the turn signal bulbs which are chrome, and the stop/tail light bulb which doesn't really need changing to LED) so I am very happy with the big improvement in appearance that this brings. And as it is unlikely I will ever use the fogs, it's no biggy.

 

I find it hard to believe that the bulb is not separate. I found these on Hella lights and looked at the pictures and to me it looks like it is some kind of cap where the connector sits.
You could ask the seller what kind of bulbs he says it uses.:-)
As it's only held on with 2 screws, I'd take one off and examen more.:-)

 

Thanks for that link. It looks like that cap with the knurled ribs on it unscrews, but there was no way I could unscrew it with the light in place. Maybe if I removed the light I could, who knows. Thing is though, even if it does unscrew, the electrical connection is on the outside of the unit as you can see, so there is going to be no way that the H11 bulb will fit inside and/or have an additional connector. Next time I have to remove a front wheel, I'll take off the light unit and have a proper look. I checked out the eBay page but unfortunately the seller has sold out of the units so I am guessing he won't be able to help me much.

EDIT: I have emailed the eBay seller to see if he can shed any light (!) on the bulb used by this unit.

 

Hello Barnsie, et al,

Did you ever resolve the LED Fog Light debacle with your XKR? It looks like I am about one year behind you in the upgrade of my 2008XKR and going through similar growing pains!

Thanks and Happy Holidays all!