I am sure that many will see the title and say “we covered this”. I know. I know…
But with my 95 XJS I did the swap to the quads and it was very easy. I found a post that essentially told me match the red/blue wire to the blue wire, and the black, etc. etc. … (used coated spade connectors).
That was five years ago and that car converted to quads served me well and the lights worked great.
Fast forward to today and I sold the 95 and it left the day before my 96 came in, meaning I could not look at my old handiwork. I have secured a set of quad lights today and am ready for the operation. I dug in a couple hours ago and quickly found once again that all the holes match up almost perfectly. Five years ago I did not need to buy an adapter kit or install any relays. My issue is that tonight, after digging around on every post I can find on the web, I can find I can’t find the simple wiring recipe. I see many posts with people getting into the relay talk and the need for special order connectors, etc. I don’t think I need all that. Just need the simple explanation of what color wire goes to what ( I cut the wires on the quad set way past the connector, so no worries there.).
If it matters, I took the quads off a 87 XJS and am putting them in my 96 XJS, both U.S. cars.
Thanks in advance for any direction.
Day 2, no responses, so I used some common sense and stared at the wires for a bit. Got it figured out. Tested my best guess and it worked (really is easy). In a perfect world, it is a 1 hour process. For me, three nights after work. I have some plastic tabs on the chrome frame to fix (yeah, the upper tabs on the ring) and will have to buy a longer T30 to get one of the screws out. Specifically that screw at 11:00 that an engineer at the factory is still laughing at the thought of someone having to remove it years later.
Anyway, I am taking pics and will give the play by play in a night or two for the one or two guys down the road that may stumble on this link with the hope of the answer.
To start, confirm the old headlights work. It will add confidence to the work that is about to come in addition to making the person you pass them onto happy that what they are getting working lights.
Removing the euro light, you will need a long T30 Torx for the inside screws. There are four total. The quad lights mount in different holes. I can tell you from experience that the 95 and 96 have the holes in place to accept the quads. Very convenient.
The main plug is the green one pictured. There is another dark plug in there that I have no ideal what it was intended for.
(Keeping in mind I am newer at this posting. The Jag site has just advised me via a pop up message, that I can edit the same reply instead of multiple posts…I’ll see if that works now)
OK, apparently I did not have to do this in multiple posts…sorry about that.
So, I then clipped the wires between the light and the green plug, leaving enough for both sides to be spliced as needed down the road. This is the important part. There are four wires. One Black, one Red, one Blue/Yellow and one Blue/Red. The next picture will be of the quad light wiring. Note that the wires match up to the quad colors with the exception of the one rogue red wire on the quad set. That wire ran what I would call a running light on the quad lights as best I can tell.
I simply connected the corresponding colors together and capped the red wire off.
Three wires, to three wires. They were two separate sizes or gauges of wire size, but that was not an issue years ago, so my assumption is I am good to go again. I then plugged the connector back together and the new again quads tested out just fine.
Major pains & Learnings
The older quad lights I find alway need to have the upper screw bracket reinforce as they are broken or cracked. I highly recommend the fiber infused two part fiberglass from any auto parts store.
That very long T30 Torx. If you don’t have one, you will need to get one. I did find that taking the upper grill off made it a bit easier to access those hard to reach bolts.
Light bulb out warning on the dash. This may be on due to my capping of the red wire. Still looking into that.
I read different posts about the lights not being bright enough or the police having an issue w/ the lights not being correct for the car. All I can say is that for 5 years I drove the 95 with the quads in the Pacific NW and was never questioned and always had sufficient light for driving.
Hope this was a help to someone down the road and sorry for the hack job on the posting of the pics, etc…
The End.
