I’ve searched and read a lot about converting my Euro lights back to the four round headlights and I have to admit that I’m nothing more than confused about the whole thing. From what I gather the correct type of lights needs to have a “city light” capability to avoid messing with the turn signals. As far as I can determine splicing the wires should be pretty straight forward because the sire colors match up. The Book talks about Cibie lights, but it seems that Cibie went out of business (now what?) I simply want to purchase a good matching set of Euro E code lights (low & high beam) that will allow me to see better than those oblong Euro lights that came on the car.
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Hi AJ-
Just a thought: I converted the bulbs on my Suburban to HID using an EBay kit. They are going on 5 years old now. Works fantastic. This involved replacing the bulbs with HID bulbs, adding ballasts, and wiring in relays to feed everything direct from battery. We do a lot of night driving in the summer and the bright white light is awesome. I plan to do the same upgrade on my XJS euro headlights.
If you do go to quads I will buy your Euros as I am one of the weirdos that prefers the look of the Euros.
Regards
Bob
I tried the HID, but recently converted to the LEDs, which are an easy upgrade, plug and play replacement for the 9004 in the 94 facelift. You will experience a VAST improvement in lighting, and no interference with the bulb out indicator.
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would this idea be plausible for that summer night driving… convert the fog lights to something very strong and have a separate switch so you can control it in town or whatever…
AJ, if your 94 is wired like mine, the fogs are bosch, which use an H2 or H3, but only are factory wired to be on with the headlight switch on. You can also put H3 in LED in the fog lights, and that also increases the light output and reduces the current draw. I would put the LEDs in both, and since the current draw is less with the LEDs, you avoid the need for the extra relays and ballast with the HIDs. Both the Fogs and the main headlights can (and should) be aimed correctly to avoid bothering the oncoming traffic.
SNG Barratt sold me a kit, probably 10 years ago, that works great. The kit includes bulbs with a city light.
Another way to go, is to contact Daniel Stern Lighting. He can recommend a setup as well. I eventually upgraded my standard lights to something he recommended. Not inexpensive, but I’m very happy. Unfoirtunately they no longer make the headlights I purchased, otherwise I would have recommended it to you here.
As I understand it you kept the euro headlamps and just changed the build to HID, now LED, is that correct?
My car only came with the rear fog light and nothing up front, and this is part of the problem, because there is no supplemental front lighting
you could just buy the fog light for any car and wire it in… if I were to do it on mine I would just put a second switch to cut off the auxillary lights because that Jaguar lite switch is a… pain to rotate.
The thing is, my first and foremost driving motivation has everything to do with vanity. In my view the European setup on cars has always been the preferred way to go, except for this case. Again, in my view, the quad headlight setup is unmistakably Jaguar, and gives the car a lot of presence. So obviously I am looking to replace the euro with the quads.
Secondly, unaware of the ability to update the bulbs on the euro headlamps, as it stands the factory euro lighting sucks more than the sealed beam quads. When I first picked up the car in Sacramento I drove the southern route I40 back to the east coast (it was winter time December) I remember barely being able to see (most of my long distance driving somehow always works out to be done at night) on a lot of those unlit dark roads.
Thirdly, after reading through several passes of the lighting subject in Kirby’s book, (unless I am completely off the mark) it seems the fundamentals remain to be the same, but the lighting industry has made advancements since then, and some of the old players like Cibie that the book refers to are no longer, and there are obviously some new players in the game as well.
Lastly, I’m not looking for 5 ¾” round headlamp and bulb setup to compete with the luminescence of the sun, but I would like to find a high quality lamp & bulb setup that AFAIK offers a city light option that supposedly avoids tampering with the turn signal light.
Daniel Stern carries Koito 5 ¾ inch round lamps, and you can use the appropriate H1 or H4 bulb. That’s not a problem. You’ll want to add relays. Not really a problem. Where you may run into an issue is it’s my understanding that there are kits to convert a pre-facelift to round lamps… but not a facelift kit. I could be wrong on that, Arden lists a kit for for 6 liters… They are not inexpensive. Arden Double Head Lights for Jaguar XJS 4.0l, 5.3l and 6.0l
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my 94 was also without the front fog lights, BUT all the wiring and switch was there, so I simply added the lights on a bracket below the grill and connected to the connectors that were just behind the front spoiler. If you have the panel switch, yours might be the same.
I agree, the lighting was terrible with just the old 9004 bulbs for the front headlights. I think you will find that the LEDs are a vast improvement, particularly with the products offered now. At worst, you are out about 40 dollars, and 15 minutes to install them. No affiliation, but I used Leppein “s” series, 9004 bulb, marked as a Headlight conversion kit pack. There are several alternatives similarly priced on amazon or ebay.
By the way, technically the front lower lights are running lights (white bulb/lens) verse the fog lights that are typically yellow.
The front of your car with the fog light set looks sweet. For some reason fog lights seem to just belong on these cars.
As I tried to elude to earlier, it’s not that I hate the euro lights, I just prefer the quads. Having said that, the LED bulbs that you inserted really give eyes to those euro headlamps which seems to give it a more cat like appearance, I like it.
There used to be “driving lights” on some cars. Looked like fog lights except they were white and very bright. Threw a long, but low, light. Great for that drive the OP faced so often.
Front fog lights sometimes are wired so that the headlights have to be off…parking lights only. Or work only with low beams. When you turn headlights on bright, the fogs go off, and vice versa. I think the XF we had was like that.
I put led in my truck low beams. They are great. Gonna do the XJS.
Yeah, anything Arden is gonna be expensive. That kit does have an awesome look about it, though.
The set SNG sold me (10 years ago) are exactly the same. The lenses were Cibie e-code lenses too! I paid a third of the price Arden wants.
Yes, but only regarding the US DOT-spec Carellos. So, one option is to replace them with E-Code Carellos, which look nearly identical but provide excellent lighting. The problem, of course, is getting your hands on a pair of E-Code Carellos – here in the US, where importing them would be a no-no.
Of course, if you happen to prefer the appearance of the quad headlights – as I do – nuthin’ wrong with going that route. Gives you four headlight bulbs to power rather than two, if you really wanna burn the rear bumper off a car in front of you. I went with quads with driving lights in place of the fog lamps, put 100W bulbs in all six places, and you’d think I was landing a B-52 when I turned those things on.
There is supposed to be a fundamental difference in mounting. Fog lights are supposed to be mounted less than 18" off the road, the lower the better, to send light under a fog bank. Driving lights are supposed to be mounted high, like the ones in the grille of that iconic Mustang.
I installed driving lights where the fog lights go just because the fog lights were rusty and the lenses were broken and I didn’t care for the appearance of yellow lenses on my car. I’ll be the first to admit, though, that the driving lights were useless. They did look nice, though, IMHO, not unlike that pair in the photo above.
Yeah, me too! I still like the quad look better, but those dark dots help the Carellos.
Interesting that you went with 100W bulbs. I need to re-read that portion of the book where you talked about doing some type of update to the wiring (I forget what it was) probably something to do with adding relays. If I’m not mistaken I remember most if not all of it pertained to the Pre-Facelift models. Through the years I don’t remember hearing any talk about wiring shortcomings of the Facelift cars.
A few posters in this thread have mentioned satisfaction with LED and HID lights which don’t appear to be expensive at all. What I am not clear on is the headlamps that were used. I can visualize adding an LED or HID to the European headlamp, but you certainly can’t do that with a sealed beam.
Paying more doesn’t always equate to more, but in this matter there is a hefty premium to be paid for the E-Code lamps due to what I assume is the best light dispersion that one can get. If one were to chuck a set of LED’s into the European headlamps, I’m sure you’d get a brighter light, but you will not have accomplished anything in terms of pattern. I obviously don’t know much about lights, and of course I’m just thinking out loud here.
Before I forget, when ditching the European headlamps in favor of the quads there’s still the matter of dealing with the “City Lights” issue, there’s no getting around that.