Hey J,
Very sad to hear you having issues with the lighting on your fine ‘new’
ride.
I (unfortunately) have quite a bit of experience with this type of repair.
The short story is that each light is a complete assembly and cannot (will
not?) be serviced as anything but a unit, with the exception of the bulbs.
Each assembly is available new only through Jaguar and will set you back
about $900.00 a side, plus installation. Installation involves removing the
whole front clip, which while not that hard is a couple hours of work.
Based on the $2000 figure this sounds like what the dealer is proposing, and
it may unfortunately be the path you will need to take.
As we all know the normal dealership’s department is not designed or
intended for particularly complete troubleshooting and analysis, so it is
probably useful to verify their prognosis.
First thing to verify: Do the lights go through their initialization
procedure when the ignition is turned on. (Should dip down then raise up).
If they do not do the ‘dance’ then the issue is likely with the control
electronics. If a fault has been detected such as a height sensor problem
etc, the control module needs to be reset (only possible with special dealer
tool). It is also possible that failed adjustment motors cause this but it
very unlikely that both motors have failed simultaneously.
If the lights go through the setup dance but simply are directed to the
ground in front of the car it may be a broken adjuster. The whole internal
reflector and bulb assembly is held up by a rather fragile plastic adjuster.
This can break in the case of an extreme jolt such as hitting a big pothole
(though wheel would likely be bent too). You can check for this by removing
the trim panel in the engine bay over the lights (4 plastic ‘screws’, then
grabbing the high beam bulb wiring and pulling back and forth. If you can
move the headlight reflector up and down then this is your issue. (This
scenario is not that uncommon with these light and is not unique to Jaguar,
but really sucks, when a 2 cent plastic piece snaps inside a sealed $900
assembly). If this is the case, the only viable long term path is to
replace the light assemblies. For emergency use the light can be aimed up
by used a zip tie between the high beam wiring and the radiator bracket to
pull the reflector upward.
Of course your issue could be something completely different that I have
described above.
If it does turn out to be a broken adjuster, and you have time, and are
mechanically handy and are willing to rip into your new car, you can replace
the lights yourself. Taking the front clip off is pretty straightforward
(and well explained on the service CDs available on E-bay) and HID
assemblies for the S-type show up on E-bay and other sites from various
dismantlers from time to time.
Please do update us all on what comes of this.
Also check out: http://www.styperregistry.com
The site has a somewhat active forum exclusively for the S-type R and lots
of common issues can be found by reading the past entries.
Good luck,
Chris
03 S-type R
65 S-type-----Original Message-----
the headlights are ‘‘looking’’ down. I took the car to a dealership and
they are telling me that the ‘‘motor is broken’’ and wanted $2,000 to
fix the things!
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