new airfilters + headlight dip relay + fuse box

As I bought a new headlighht dip relay I also included 2 new air filters to make the package more economical for the shipping costs. The filters are actually quite cheap, about 11 Euro each

Maybe one of the easiest maintenance job of the XJS:

Old one out

 The filters are marked with front and this is also pointed out on a decal placed on the filterbox:

And presto:

Started up the engine and it runs smooth again.


On to the headlights. I have done a little further checking and it looks like the problems were caused by a dodgy fuse and a specific relay

The headlight fuses are located on little plastic black box on top of the left side of the front wing.
The cover can be easily removed and shows the following. They were still Originals by the look of it, including two spares. It does mention part code DAC 2569 but I coulnd't find anything related on the parts website. The fuses are numbered 1 to 5:

1) Radiator Auxiliary Cooling Fan Motor Relay 25A
2) LH Main Beam 25A
3) LH Dip Beam 10A
4) RH Main Beam 25A
5) RH Dip beam 10A

How nice, the Original fuse with a printed paper inside, I like that Original detail but am affraid I will have to replace them all:

Once the faulty fuse was replaced both lights were working again. However, the high beam light only worked on one side. I suspected this was caused by the headlight dip relay which I ordered new.

The old one is located at the front underneath a black cover:

56b - Blue/red wire
56 - Blue wire
56a - blue/white wire
81a red + brown wires
31b red + blue wires

After replacement the main beam light worked only to flash but wouldn't "stick"  And when turning on the fog guard lamp it goes into main beam mode and can be switched to dip beam. When typing this up now my guess is that I might have reversed a wire from the old relay onto the new relay. Something I will look into next week … sigh.

I had this checked in the manual and it seems indeed that the light switch position 4 is acting as nr 3.

And on a forum I just found the following schematic which I will include for reference as it might come in handy again, click to enlarge (or save locally and view it):

Oh, I and also wonder what this relay is about, which is located further up on the top of the inner left wing, marked Pektron 4183:

Headlights trouble, waterhose leakage fixed and last 6 spark plugs replacement

Finally some progress again. Today is a bank holiday at my work, so a day off which I spend on various things. First I went to the car parts shop and bought the new bulbs. To my surprise the new bulb did not work. Sigh! Checking and checking but I couldn't find the culprit. I suspect some kind of broken cable somewhere but the wiring harness has not been touched when doing all the other work on the engine. So I placed a new wire to the other side and presto it's working. Hard to believe there is a wire broken though. When doing further light checking I now noticed the normal light is no longer functioning? What is going on? And even more strange, the high beam is working but failing on the other side. Weird. I need to furhter look into this.

And last week I spotted as well a new coolant failure! GRRRR!!

 I was fearing this and mostly fearing it was leaking around the new waterpump. But when checking I found it was a the lower waterhose.

 At the time I had to buy a new larger clamp and I placed it such that I could reach the mounting screw. I suspect I did not screw it tight enough. So I fixed that and it looks like it's running leak free now:

One more thing I had to sort out is to replace the other 6 spark plugs. So I had checked the internet for advice. I have been reading about crafty people making specific tooling to reach the plugs. I wonder how they managed to do that. Knowing the other plugs were severely stuck I did not want to cause any damage with a adjusted homemade tool. Others dismantled the fuel rail which seems the best way to do it - a lot of work though. On closer inspection I figured I have only to remove the coil and the "gas mechanics" and leave the fuel rail in place. It was going to be a fiddle job but I checked if I could reach the screws on the bottom that holds the housing for the "gas mixture mechanics". Looks like this was possible. So here goes:

First have the coil removed. Disconnected the wires and unbolt the 2 scews, easy. 

 With the coil removed you can now easily access the 2 screws at the bottom that holds the housing

And the other side of the housing, these screws are slightly more difficult to reach:

For this I used the small wrench with 2 extenders and 1 cardan holder to make the corner to reach both screws:

And there you go, the housing came off pretty easy. Of course both gas rods had to be taken off as well, easy. Everything else can stay intact.

With the housing off all 6 spark plugs can be easily accessed.

With the large wrench and a plug socket they could be properly removed using appropriate force

These came out much easier then the other ones.

I did soak them a little with WD40 and afterwards I cleaned it with a blower pistol which I bought new at the shop as well.

And here you have the little buggers:

No wonder the maintenance costs is so expensive for silly jobs like this. Glad I managed to do this myself.

And when starting up the engine it ran very smooth again. Happy with this. Now only the headlights to be sorted.

Headlight bulb replacement

Last weekend I noticed the citylight was broken in the headlight. Clearly that would be a MOT fail. I had a quick look and couldn't figure out how the headlight was mounted. The headlight needed to be taken out as there is no other way to replace the bulb. Clever.

So I had the manual checked to see how this is done:

So yes, remove the chrome trim first, easy. Then you will see at left side there is a black clip, with two "clips" / "levers". With a screw driver you can push them aside and it will release the spring holder. So don't touch the screws that holds the mechanism.

Same story at the bottom side of the headlight:

And then the headlight comes out (it's also held at a third holder at the right but that one you don't need to unclip - you can't reach it either):

As the shop was closed late afternoon I will get the bulbs next weekend and get both headlights done.