What did you do to your UK S550 Mustang Today

[RoryS550]

Weather here mince today ha.

Nice one on the parts all arriving, iirc the Mustang ballast is 4 mounting holes but that outer case should be transferrable between units. Can't wait to see the results.

Yeah the circuit board is apparently swappable, just undo the 4 torx screws and put the ones from these into the mustang ballast housings. Forgot my sequential indicators for the mirrors are turning up tomorrow as well. Those however can wait until the weather's warmed up a bit as apparently pulling the glass in the mirrors can be sketchy when they're cold and I don't want to risk breaking them just for a tiny mod that's cosmetic rather than necessary!

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[RoryS550]

Update on the 35w headlight swap. I don't think my harnesses are going to be long enough The ballasts I'm fairly confident will work, but I'll have to lengthen the harnesses. There's a distinct lack of ballast to bulb harnesses for sale on the web, I did see some from a company called Xenons Online which are a lot longer, but I don't think the bulb connectors on those will fit with the way ours mount in the headlights. All fun and games! Will report back once the harnesses are modified.

 

[raptor17GT]

Update on the 35w headlight swap. I don't think my harnesses are going to be long enough The ballasts I'm fairly confident will work, but I'll have to lengthen the harnesses. There's a distinct lack of ballast to bulb harnesses for sale on the web, I did see some from a company called Xenons Online which are a lot longer, but I don't think the bulb connectors on those will fit with the way ours mount in the headlights. All fun and games! Will report back once the harnesses are modified.

A daft question. Would the US model ballast to bulb cable work since they use d3s units iirc and I presume fit same orientation and route to both ends the same way ?

 

[RoryS550]

A daft question. Would the US model ballast to bulb cable work since they use d3s units iirc and I presume fit same orientation and route to both ends the same way ?

It's not a daft question to be fair, they would more than likely work but I can't find a set of them for sale separately. I think because they're inside the headlight casings the only way to get them is out of a crashed one or buy some US spec headlights, which would probably cost a fortune when I only need the cables. In any case lengthening the ones I do have isn't too much of a drama, they only use 3 of the pins in the connectors so it's only 3 wires to lengthen

 

[SCP440]

I am sure I have purchased some ready made looms for another car a couple of years ago, they were from eBay or AliExpress I think.
These Ballasts are used on a lot of vehicles.

 

[RoryS550]

I am sure I have purchased some ready made looms for another car a couple of years ago, they were from eBay or AliExpress I think.
These Ballasts are used on a lot of vehicles.

I did see the aliexpress ones, unfortunately I'm not sure those will fit. They have 90 degree connectors at the bulb end and from the way our bulbs are mounted I think it might put stress on the connector/cable. I might order some anyway as they're ridiculously cheap, then I can give them a go if extending the harnesses fails

 

[raptor17GT]

https://www.americanmuscle.com/ford-headlight-wire-harness-1516.html part number FR3Z-13A006-A

 

[RoryS550]

https://www.americanmuscle.com/ford-headlight-wire-harness-1516.html part number FR3Z-13A006-A

Completely forgot about American Muscle, handy to have the part number. Unfortunately they don't ship internationally which is annoying, but if the ones I've ordered fail along with lengthening the wiring I already have I might pop into Ford and ask if they can order them, or potentially Nemesis as they get some parts from Levittown in the US I believe

 

[RoryS550]

Handbrake cable done so something has been achieved today. Hoping the longer wiring harnesses turn up tomorrow but I might have to swap the bulb end connectors from the short ones onto the longer ones. Will see what happens!

 

[SCP440]

Fitted some Powerstop front brake pads to my car today, still had plenty of meat on the original but the brake dust was drivng me mad from the Motorcraft original pads. https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=7132980&cc=3442762&pt=1684&jsn=6
I ordered some other bits from Rock Auto including a couple of oil filters, a Pollen filter and a set of plugs, not that I need them yet but the carriage was no more than just for the pads so made sense.
A quick run of a few miles to check everything was OK.

 

[RoryS550]

Update on the 35W headlight upgrade. The cheaper set of harnesses I ordered have turned up, and while they're longer the connectors are unsuitable. No locking collars to keep the connectors secure in the ballasts and bulbs which I'm not comfortable with (imagine those falling out at night!), and they're 90-degree connectors so I don't think they'd fit even if I were to try them. Nemesis have quoted around £130 shipped with a 3-4 week wait time to the UK from their US supplier for the OEM harnesses, however there's a minimum 1-2 week wait time on those and that's £140 shipped, so I'm going to look at lengthening the ones from the Evoque that I currently have. However Nemesis are decent to deal with and they're probably going to be the backup should the attempt at lengthening the Evoque harnesses fail. Dropping them off for the changes tonight so I can possibly have them fitted this weekend if the person doing the modifying can do them soon enough

 

[raptor17GT]

Update on the 35W headlight upgrade. The cheaper set of harnesses I ordered have turned up, and while they're longer the connectors are unsuitable. No locking collars to keep the connectors secure in the ballasts and bulbs which I'm not comfortable with (imagine those falling out at night!), and they're 90-degree connectors so I don't think they'd fit even if I were to try them. Nemesis have quoted around £130 shipped with a 3-4 week wait time to the UK from their US supplier for the OEM harnesses, however there's a minimum 1-2 week wait time on those and that's £140 shipped, so I'm going to look at lengthening the ones from the Evoque that I currently have. However Nemesis are decent to deal with and they're probably going to be the backup should the attempt at lengthening the Evoque harnesses fail. Dropping them off for the changes tonight so I can possibly have them fitted this weekend if the person doing the modifying can do them soon enough

never straightforward eh ?

 

[SCP440]

It rarely is on modern stuff, a friend changed his heater fan on his Land Rover, it needed coding before it would work. The fan was £450 and Land Rover charged him £200 to code it and they did it while he waited .

 

[RoryS550]

never straightforward eh ?

Never! But I guess this is what happens when you do something like this. I will definitely be making a guide for this though if it works, with part numbers, places to buy parts from and photos of the whole process because the information is available in bits and pieces across faceache/M6G/other areas, but not so much in one place. When I do that guide I'll absolutely just recommend the OEM harnesses for ease of use and the knowledge that they'll fit even if they are more expensive! Obviously my harnesses will be modified Evoque ones, but not necessarily everyone has access to the tools needed to do that and I'd rather make the guide and process as simple as possible for anyone doing it in the future. Plus with the OEM harnesses there's much less chance of failure, so if I were to do this again that's what I'd go straight to rather than messing about modifying other parts. I'm just fortunate I know the right people to do it

 

[RoryS550]

It rarely is on modern stuff, a friend changed his heater fan on his Land Rover, it needed coding before it would work. The fan was £450 and Land Rover charged him £200 to code it and they did it while he waited .

Jaguar/Land Rover products are a total ballache. Without going into too much detail, in my previous job I used to work very closely with JLR, and while the people I dealt with were perfectly fine to me and I actually still speak to some of them as friends, I got the feeling they were exasperated with the lack of quality and difficulty of repair and maintenance of their vehicles. Bare in mind as employees they could get JLR cars VERY cheap on an internal lease scheme, some refused to because they didn't trust the cars to be reliable enough, and they could swap them every 9 months for a new one! And the i-Pace electric car is a disaster, a family friend has one that's needed 3 new battery packs in around 60,000 miles, but no one will touch it second-hand so they've decided to just run it until it dies again, then scrap it. I'm told JLR's solution at one point for the battery packs was for a single faulty cell to replace the entire pack at a cost of around £25k+VAT just for the part, not including the labour to fit it!

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