My penchant for originality might not stand in the way of installing them in an otherwise plain Jane Jaguar XJ as they are just so gorgeous. For what it’s worth I wouldn’t like to rebuild the cabin though - hence my questions to those who might have been there before: are the power wires for the reading lamps available in all SII LWB C-pillars? The reading lights are mounted by three screws, it seems. What does the the other side look like? The parts catalogue doesnt even show the screws or bolts.
Any insight welcome!
Enjoy another Sunday night in a strange atmosphere of crisis - if you’re affected by restrictive measures - and stay safe! Oil, fuel and antifreeze are highly biocide though and working alone on some piece of machinery is probably the best way to weather out that situation
Jochen, I can’t remember for certain but I do not think the wiring is in my C pillars. Of course, my C pillars (being a US car) are pretty full of fuel condenser piping!
Jochen,
If the SII rear seat reading lamp installation is the same as the SIII VdP cars, there are two bolts with washers and nuts that hold the reading lamp to the C pillar trim piece and a long screw that goes through the interior metal of the C pillar to hold the lamp firmly in place. I believe that long screw is also what provides the ground for the lamp.
I may have a spare VdP C pillar trim piece around, and if I do I will follow up with a picture of it.
I doubt that a SII XJ6 would have the wiring in place for the rear reading lamps, so you will probably have to improvise.
Wow, thanks Gentlemen! That is something to begin with!
Pete, the abuse of the “opera light” it is not just a D type feature - even mundane Spitfirse 1500 had the same thing mounted at the upper trailing edge of the dashboard passenger site … and, yes, I seem to remember a somewhat heated argument with a girlfriend when asked to tell the way through Lyon on our way back from Spain after a very short night getting drenched in a tent in the Pyrenées and a full day of driving through the French Massif Central. Being “intrepid” is probably just one quality it takes!
Paul, it would be great if you could document the C pillar trim piece to which that reading light is mounted! That would help a lot to find the place where the light attaches to.
I suppose permanent power would be required for the job. If it’s not foreseen in the loom it might be a bit of a hassle to get it there.
Jochen,
I looked for the spare C pillar trim pieces that I removed from my 1985 XJ6 Vanden Plas parts car about 12 years ago but I didn’t find them yet. I will look again tomorrow. In the meantime here are pictures of those reading lamps as installed in my former 1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas (Black trim) and 1990 V12 Vanden Plas (Doeskin trim) at the factory.
In the factory installation the reading lamps are powered even with the key off. I like Doug’s idea of powering them on a circuit that won’t drain the battery if they are inadvertently left on.
it’s always good to learn something new! In this case it was sort of frightening though at first, because, well, I wasn’t aware of the consoles and don’t have any. So that would probably have been the end of the story …
However, the SII parts catalogue doesn’t show them and when trying to find SII pics I found at least hints that during SII production run the lights were installed without consoles.
The pictures shows why I’m asking: where on earth do you find any backplate for the screws or bolts? Could it be the consoles were introduced only to hide mis-cut headliners?
As for the power it would be the back light/trunk light wire you could tap into without risking to drain the battery unless you leave the light on.
Jochen, when I did my headliner, I had the cantrails off and C pillar exposed. The attached photo shows a glimpse of the area in question. I can’t see anything metal that those reading lamps would attach to. Either the Vanden Plas bodies got an extra bracket welded on in that area or the reading lamps are attached via a nut and bolt through the cantrail only.
Not sure what you are referring to with ‘consoles’
As for the mounting, Paul already described it a few posts back:
“If the SII rear seat reading lamp installation is the same as the SIII VdP cars, there are two bolts with washers and nuts that hold the reading lamp to the C pillar trim piece and a long screw that goes through the interior metal of the C pillar to hold the lamp firmly in place. I believe that long screw is also what provides the ground for the lamp.”
sorry for any confusion caused by the terms: in Paul’s pic and yours (posts ## 7,8) the lights are installed through a kind of mounting, black in Paul’s case, doeskin in yours, which obviously lacks in the picture and vids of the SII cars I found. This mounting is what I referred to as “console”. These consoles may have been introduced for want of a more “solid” feel or as an element of passive safety serving to protect rear passengers’ heads from the protruding steel lights in the event of a rollover.
Initially, when I saw Paul’s and yor pics, I was afraid that the lights could be mounted only through the consoles which I don’t have. But - you’re certainly right - Paul’s initial description (post # 4) of the mounting seems to indicate that there is no “indirect” mounting (light to console, console to c pillar), but in substance the three screw/bolt mounting was taken unaltered from SII to SIII.
So I’m still in search of the metal backplate for the long screw that Paul described. Guess there is no other way than removal of the c pillar trim to find out.
Jochen, you CAN drill through that metal panel behind the cantrail trim (the one visible in the pic with the small metal mounting points welded to it that look like little boxes). I did it fitting my headliner mounts. It’s a bit stressful but you’re not going to go through the roof to the outside IF you pay attention!
Hi, I attach a photo of the correct position of the lamp for my -74 Daimler DD6 VDP. I retrimmed the headlining some years ago and remember there are small holes drilled in the metal roof panel for fixing the lamp. The trim panel is just drilled through with no separate metal plate behind.
The more I think about those screws I seem to recall only one out of three was threaded into metal, the two other just threaded into the soft trim panel, I can confirm that tomorrow…
The light itself is a nice piece of steel and permanently out of balance as the resting position of the light will always put load on the fixing points. So I’d suspect that there has to be at least one solid bolt to the metal roof panel as you - and others - wrote. It would enlighten a lot if you could find out which screw or bolt is mounted to the panel, and how. There can’t possibly be any nut, but only either a threaded backplate or one of these steel clamps used for metal screws.
Jochen,
I believe that the two attached pictures will answer your questions about the reading lamps in the Series III Vanden Plas (VdP) cars and how they are different than the Series II cars and base Series III XJ6s.
The pictures show a right Doeskin base XJ6 C pillar trim piece next to a right Black XJ6 Vanden Plas C pillar trim piece. Other than the color, both trim pieces have identical construction with metal reinforcement where the reading lamps could be mounted. The VdP trim has holes drilled through the trim piece for the reading lamp and the base trim piece does not. From the nut witness marks on the VdP trim piece it appears that the two upper holes had the shorter chrome screws with nuts and the lower hole has the longer chrome screw that went into the inner C pillar. The reading lamp is powered by a wire going through the center fourth hole and the lamp housing is grounded through the long screw going into the C pillar metal.
Hi Jochen! I checked the fixing screws and the lower is 38mm and the two others 20mm. Same set up on both sides of the car. Can feel the longer one entering metal and the short only fixed in the trim panel. This is most probably what it looked
like when it left Vanden Plas 1974. Hope that helps you a little.
On the Series 3 cars the reading light is grounded through that lower bolt and the other two do not contact metal.
This means to remove the C pillar (which I need to, anyways) I‘ll have to disconnect the battery as they always work per factory.
Nobody knows what Jaguar thought back in the day, but at least for the S3 I think all the in-car wiring looms are identical and the trim level was decided on, later… cheaper. So maybe look for the wiring first, possibly, you are lucky…
Also, I would like it powered with ignition „1“; if you are lucky, the lines to the window motor are always powered (and one is grounded respectively for up/down) as in my S3, and can be shut off with the windows. Or a long wire to the window lift relay, etc.
If you want to get sophisticated, two diodes and you have what I‘d consider perfect. I won’t go that far, but this got me dreaming.
The ground screw is simply threaded into the metal. No insert, just a little hole.
