The L/H front foglamp lens on my MY99 XK8 is smashed - presumably a stone kicked up on a French autoroute. I can buy a replacement unit but they aren't cheap so I'm looking at options amd have seen lots of LED units with DRL.

I've found several posts on the forums of where folk have succesfully installed something similar but none of them are in the UK. Has anyone done a successful replacement with items they have sourced in the UK?

It looks like a PITY to remove the existing units so would prefer to do this just once...

 

Lots of bullseye units on ebay quite cheap ..just measure the diameter and go for it . If you need wiring for DRL let me know ..fully automatic cost zero

 

Thanks! Yes, the units seems so cheap on ebay that I might as well just buy a pair, take the bumper cover off and give it a go I'm not going to mess arround trying to do it from the wheelarch.

Wiring approach for DRL would be great. I've seen a few write-ups but not from a UK owner so much appreciated @Pistnbroke !

 

Been in france with wi fi issues will post tomorrow.

 

Sorry for delay been in france and the laptop was not having forum replies
To the electrically disinclined this may seem a strange set up but I have it on my Jag and range rover and it works fine fully compliant with the law.



You need a standard Normally open relay which will switch the DRLs
Find an ignition switched 12v in the fuse box and connect to 85 and87 fuse if you like
Terminal 30 is your live feed to the DRLs.
Now for the clever bit
Connect 86 to the sidelight wiring .
When the ignition is ON and the sidelights OFF the relay has a live on 85 and is connected to earth on 86 via the sidelight filaments which being cold have a low resistance...Relay contacts close DRLs come ON
When you turn ON the sidelights both 85 and 86 are connected to 12v +ve so no voltage across the coil so the contacts open .turns OFF the DRLs
So there you go complies with the law.
If you have LED sidelight bulbs in the front no problem the rear sidelight filaments will provide the earth.

 

To close this loop, I thought I'd share what I ended up doing.

When I removed the bumper cover to remove the smashed foglight, I noticed that there was also a crack in the other light. The cost of replacing two foglights and bulbs is between £200 and £400 depending on new/used so I spent a little over £10 on a pair of 89mm Halo Ring Foglights - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/335405948...r=544799988937. I didn't want to spend any more money just in case I didn't like the results so I vowed to install them using stuff I had lying around. Namely: 10A "Piggy Back" fuse connector, a normally closed relay, some 4-pin waterproof car wiring connectors and some wiring of various colours.

With the bumper cover off, I removed the foglight assemblies and removed the lamps themselves from the three leg mounting rings. The new foglights fitted perfectly into the mounting rings with self-tapping screws and I sealed them with silicone. I snipped the old connectors off the original foglight loom (leaving long enough tails to connect them back in case I wanted to go back to stock). I attached the live and earth into one of the new male connectors along with a new blue wire which would be the feed to the DRLs. The new lights had four wires but two of them were earths which I joined up. They used up the three pins on the female.

Having a normally closed relay, I did a variation on @Pistnbroke 's wiring approach. I now have DRL's which come on with the ignition and go off when I turn the headlights on. This means they stay on with the sidelights - not strictly allowed but I think our local MOT tester will be OK with it - noone ever uses sidelights. The relay connections are:

87 - to the ignition switch live - piggy backed off the Transmission Control Module fuse
30 - to the DRL's - live when the ignition is turned on
85 - Earth
86 - to the power output from the Dipped Headlight relay. When the dipped headlights are turned on, the power to the relay turns off the DRLs. On the XK8, the dipped lights remain on when you go to full beam so the DRLs remain off. I guess I could have used the feed to the sidelights to be fully legal so that's an option if the MOT tester doesn't like it.

Everything seems to be working well and I'm pleased with the result, especially taking into account that the whole job involved an outlay of less than £11. I'll have to wait 'til we next have fog to check whether the foglights themselves are effective. It could be a while - we almost never get fog now...


Photos below:




New foglight installed in the original mounting.




And then connected and installed in the bumper cover




Wiring in fusebox showing the piggy back ignition feed and supply from the dipped headlight relay (blue wire)



Lights off. You can clearly see that they are not stock but I think they look OK - not too out of place.




DRLs on




Dipped beams with foglights on - no DRLs.

 

Me thinks he means a normally open relay...normally closed would not have the numbers quoted and it would not work.

 

My understanding is that it's a normally closed relay. The circuit between 30 and 87 is "closed" when the ignition is switched on so power runs across the circuit to the DRL's. When I turn on the dipped beams and power is applied to the relay coil, it opens the circuit between 30 and 87 and so the DRLs go off.

I promise you that it's working although concede that I may have got 30 and 87 the wrong way around (not sure that matters 'though).

As ever, I'm happy to be told I'm an idiot if I've got this wrong, but it seems to work and the car hasn't caught fire yet...

If the MOT tester doesn't like the DRLs being on with the sidelights, I'll have to break the piggy bank and go and buy a normally open relay so I can follow your original suggestion - thanks for that.

 

Sorry to go on but isn't your suggestion actually a normally closed relay too? All that's different between our solutions is how we apply power to the relay coil to open the circuit.

Definition of normally open or normally closed - that is the question.....

 

There is only one definition for each. Normally open is open circuit with no switching current, normally closed is closed circuit with no switching current.

 

Normally open or normally closed related to the condition of the contacts when its not connected to anything.

 

I think the confusion is that a standard normally open relay has 87 designated as the open contact, (and 87a as the closed contact on a changeover relay). The OP is using a normally closed relay (which he called a normally on), where the closed contact is designated as 87 (and there is no 87a). All of them have 30 as the common pin of the contact.

Whatever you call the pins, if it works, then it works and it looks like a really neat solution.

 

If you are talking 87a talking about a change over relay....keep misinformation off the Web

 

Thanks. Edited to clarify.

 

Realised my mistake - I stated "normally on" when I should have said "normally closed". I'll edit the original post.

I knew what I meant!