Hello guys, I'm in the process of converting my pre-facelift L494 to the 2018+ Facelift style.

I've already swapped the rear end to the facelift style and have now bought all the parts I need for the front end conversion. For the lights I took the risk and ordered some Aftermarket 'Matrix-style' Chinese headlights. They were delivered to me yesterday and on first inspection they look ok... quality isn't quite OEM. I'm not sure how to explain it but you can just tell that they are aftermarket by the feel and finish of them, but mostly that's at the back of the units all hidden anyway, the actual lenses/internals look good, I haven't tested them yet though.


Here's my progress so far:








I had to cut the chrome tips off the exhaust to fit the new bumper. Once fitted it looked fine but I painted the visible parts of the backbox black anyway using high temp paint so that it just looks totally black inside the exhaust cutouts.

The only issue I have encountered so far is that that the parking sensors from my old bumper didn't fit the mounts in the new bumper. I ordered some facelift rear parking sensors which obviously were the correct shape/size, but they just didn't work and it shows a message on screen that the PDC system is inactive. I think I need to use my old loom and old sensors, but i'll have to find a way to get them to sit tight inside the facelift mounts that are slightly wider.


With regards to the front end I was hoping that the bumper would arrive today so I could fit everything but the courier didn't turn up and is now saying Wednesday...(n)

Although I have't started the front end conversion yet I have a few pointers that it would be useful to have known earlier:

1) In addition to the parking sensors, the wiring loom for the front bumper is different to the pre-facelift. The connectors for the fog lights are totally different. I'm told that you can use your original pre-facelift bumper loom and sensors, but you will need to extend some of the PDC wiring and splice in the facelift-style connectors for the fog lights (unless you go SVR bumper route which has no fogs).

2) The intercooler ducts are also different, they're smaller on the facelift. Others that have done this conversion say that they have just left the ducts off altogether, but again I'd rather do it the right way if possible. I ordered 2 of the facelift ducts from JLR.

3) The bumper carrier is different. This is the long curved bar that runs underneath the headlights the entire width of the car. It might be possible to use the original pre-facelift one with some modification - I'm not sure what the differences are but I know they have a different part number.

4) The headlight washer system is different on the facelift, the caps and the washer mechanism from the pre-facelift bumper doesn't fit the facelift. I ordered new ones from JLR, not too expensive.

5) This is an important one... Most of the used front bumpers on eBay etc (even the complete looking ones) actually have a lot of the mounts removed from inside. Looking at them on eBay they look complete and ready to go, but since I bought my bumper I now realise that I'm actually missing :

-The mounts that the headlight washer mechanism screws onto
-The inner side mounts that the wheel arch liners screw into.

No problem I thought, I'll just order some from JLR. But once I actually tried to do this I found out that you can't buy these parts separately, they come as part of the bumper. Apparently when most aftermarket bodykits are fitted they don't come with headlight washer jet or side wheel arch liner mounts either, so the mounts are removed from the donor bumpers and bonded onto the aftermarket bumper. Now I'm aware of this issue I'm noticing that 90% of the bumpers for sale on eBay have the mounts removed.

I have asked advice on this and I'm told that the best thing to do is blank off the headlight washer hoses and just screw/bond the washer jet covers onto the bumper because the are not really needed. The other side mounts can (apparently) be used from my old pre-fl bumper with a little modification and plastic welding (which I'm not keen on doing if I can help it).

The obvious solution for anyone new attempting this is to make sure that you buy a bumper that has all these things still on... Most of the bumpers on eBay that don't have them are still described as "complete" because they have the grills, foglights, etc, but they're still not really complete because they're missing the vital mounts/components.


For example...this one below is bare in the corners (and you can just about see that there's nowhere for the washer jets to attach because the mount is totally missing):





Compare the 'bare' one above with the one below that still has the mounts attached in the corners. These mounts are where your arch liners will screw into:





It is possible to transplant the side mounts from your original pre-facelift bumper onto the new facelift bumper, but the problem with doing this is A: that you will massiveley de-value your old bumper (which you will want to resell to recoup some of your money) and B: the front arch liners on the facelift bumper are different. If you use the correct facelift mounts, you can fit the genuine facelift arch liners. If however you graft your pre-facelift mounts onto the new facelift bumper you can use your old pre-facelift arch liners, but they will need a lot of modifying with a Dremel to get them to fit the new bumper.


In my case I didn't fancy having arch liners that were chopped and bodged so I found a damaged facelift bumper really cheap (£40) on eBay. It had been stripped of the grills, lights etc, but luckily it still has the plastic mounts that I need. It looks like I'm still going to have to get the plastic welder out to fit them.


Also worth noting - I don't have the parking assist feature, and therefore don't have the two extra parking sensors at the edges of the bumpers. If you also don't have park assist, make sure that you buy a bumper from a non-park-assist model otherwise you will need to buy 2 extra 'dummy' sensors to fill the extra holes. Likewise, if you DO have park-assist and buy a NON park-assist bumper you won't have the holes there that you need.

I Imagine I'm going to have all sorts of problems with the front bumper wiring and PDC sensors just like I'm having with the rear bumper, but I knew that this wasn't going to be a straightforward conversion before I started.

Anyway, thought I'd share my tips and I'll update progress as I go on.

Wish me luck..

Last edited by CountJunkula on Fri Jun 25 2021 4:14pm. Edited 17 times in total

There’s been a few people done the back, but I don’t recall the problems. Thanks fir helping me decide not to even bother looking.

Good luck. Joined the X5 45e club
1994 Defender 90 300 tdi

Do you need a 2018 front bumper to fit these lights, or can you stay with the original one? --
2010 Defender Puma 90 + BAS remap + Alive IC + Slickshift + Ashcroft ATB rear
2015 Range Rover Sport Supercharged V8 HSE Dynamic



Defender Puma Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zZ1en9
Discovery 4 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zXrtKO
Range Rover/Sport L320/L322/L494 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zc58JQ

That certainly does look involved, well done for giving it a go and I look forward to seeing the finished item
If I read it correctly, it seems that you will end up with dummy headlight washers. Can I suggest that you take advice from an MOT tester, my understanding is if things are fitted they must work. Are the new lights LED?, Again, if they are Zenon, they will need working washers, I have no idea what the regs are for LED.
In the old D3 days, people used to retro-fit zenon's, because they were much better, then because they didn't have washers, at MOT time they would put the old halogens back in for the test. A bit of a mess about but doable on a simple D3, I would imagine less so for your conversion.

Is it worth all that work. Most people would not notice if it 2018+ or -. Saying that, its your car & you can do what you want. Good luck anyway

I previously had a 2013 Evoque which had the "round" signature DRLs at the front, I always thought when then did the facelift in 2015/16 they ruined the front end. Personally (and this is only my personal opinion) I feel the round DRL lights looked far less generic on the road and make the RR look different/more unique. Since JLR when all rectangular there just is not the same on road presence. MY17 RRS 4.4d V8 Autobiography - Aintree Green (also referred to on Topix as British Racing Green)

Dave-t wrote:

There’s been a few people done the back, but I don’t recall the problems. Thanks fir helping me decide not to even bother looking.

Good luck.

naks wrote:

Do you need a 2018 front bumper to fit these lights, or can you stay with the original one?

Oldandconfused wrote:

That certainly does look involved, well done for giving it a go and I look forward to seeing the finished item
If I read it correctly, it seems that you will end up with dummy headlight washers. Can I suggest that you take advice from an MOT tester, my understanding is if things are fitted they must work. Are the new lights LED?, Again, if they are Zenon, they will need working washers, I have no idea what the regs are for LED.
In the old D3 days, people used to retro-fit zenon's, because they were much better, then because they didn't have washers, at MOT time they would put the old halogens back in for the test. A bit of a mess about but doable on a simple D3, I would imagine less so for your conversion.

Lindab wrote:

Is it worth all that work. Most people would not notice if it 2018+ or -. Saying that, its your car & you can do what you want. Good luck anyway

Probably not, I'm not fussed about other people noticing, I just prefer the look myself and enjoy a project I'm hoping that once I'm done I can recoup some of my costs by selling my old front/rear end. That's the other reason why I don't want to start cutting bits off my old bumper if i can help it.

Ask me again in a few weeks and I'll tell you if it's worth it or not

Hi how did you order headlights from China have Hou a link and how much are they ? Thanks

Remember you also need to change the wings to the 2018 on ones

Hello again all, it's been a while and I meant to update this thread sooner.

Since the last update I've now completed the facelift (and done a few other bits such as body coloured door mouldings and black 22in wheels).

The rear bumper upgrade was a fairly simple job, but the front end conversion was a much bigger undertaking (paricularly doing it by myself on my driveway).

Having said that, the front end would have been significantly easier if I'd had all the information and part numbers etc of exactly what was needed. That's half the battle as loads of people have done this conversion but the information online is incomplete/sketchy and often incorrect.

There's lots of things that can be 'bodged' or just simply left out if you are happy to do that and save some money, but I wanted to do this job properly.



First off, below are the parts that are needed to do the job properly:

Front Facelift Bumper (complete with grills/fogs/brackets - see info above for more information about the brackets!)
Front Facelift Wings
Facelift Bonnet Vents
Facelift Side Vents
Front Bumper Mount/Carrier (PART NO LR117396)
Washer Jets and Hoses (PART NO LR109996 & LR109997)
Washer Jet Covers (PART NO LR099329 & LR099324)
Intercooler Ducts (PART NO LR100578 & LR100580)
Facelift Parking Sensor Rubber Gaskets (I don't have the part number for these but they are very slightly different to the pre-facelift ones)
Front Bumper Fog light connectors (If you're fitting SVR bumper this isn't needed. In my case I couldn't source just the connectors so I just ordered a facelift front bumper loom and used the fog light connectors off that)
Front Wheel Arch Liners (PART NO LR116780 & LR116779)
Front Headlights (I bought mine on Alibaba, but there's various different options you can do here so I'll leave it at that).





As I said above there's some parts that you can either leave out complete or just modify your original - For example:

-The front wheel arch liners are only needed if you use the facelift front bumper brackets, if you transplant your old brackets off the pre-facelift bumper you can use your old arch liners without modification. You can also 'modify' your old arch liners to work with the facelift bumper brackets but you need to cut them to fit with a Dremel. In my case I just bought the facelift arch liners.

-The intercooler ducts are different on the facelift, you can either order the ducts from the facelift 4.4 V8 from the dealership (the facelift 3.0d variant only has the duct on one side so order the 4.4 versions that have ducts both sides) or you can just leave the ducts off completely which is what most people do. I bought the facelift ducts and they fitted straight on with no modification.

-The washer jet covers can just be screwed into place if you don't want to bother with buying the extra washer jets/hoses/bumper brackets etc. In UK at least you don't actually need to have working washer jets on LED lights (at the time of writing, could change in the future).

-The front Fog Light Connectors. If you are fitting an SVR bumper you don't need these anyway because they don't have fogs at all. The UK MOT rules state that you don't actually need to have Fog lights on your car, but if you DO have them, they must actually work. If your country law is different you could get away without sourcing the new fog light connectors.



The actual process of installing the kit isn't hard once you have exactly what you need, it's just a big lego set. The hard part is trying to offer things up and trying to work out why it won't fit or what's missing. But hopefully you won't have the same problems I did because I've just told you exactly what you need


Jack up the car, whip the wheels and arch liners off, take off front bumper, unbolt headlights, unbolt bumper carrier, unbolt wings (right side is harder because you need to take the washer bottle out to access the last bolt).

Repeat the above process in reverse fitting all the new parts, that's easy.


The next hard part is the front bumper wiring loom and parking sensors. You will need to first fit the new (larger) rubbers onto your original parking sensors. Drop the sensors into the bumper brackets, they will sit snug but they are not secure so you will have to take a hot glue gun (or some other adhesive) and squirt that between the bracket gaps and the sensor. Originally I used hot glue as a temporary fix, but because it sets rock hard and fills the gaps and contours of the sensor/brackets it actually is much stronger than I expected, the sensor is certainly not going anywhere so I would definitely recommend this approach. Within a couple of seconds the parking sensors are set in place rock solid.

Here you can see the old (pre-facelift) sensor rubbers on the right and the new (slightly thicker) rubbers on the left:





The next bit is the front bumper wiring loom. As above, you might not need to do this is you're fitting SVR bumpers or if you're not bothered about using the fogs at all. In my case I needed the fogs and was fitting a standard facelift bumper. The facelift bumper wiring loom 100% definitely does NOT work with the pre-facelift parking sensors and the facelift sensors don't work with the pre-facelift wiring. You therefore need to use your old sensors and old wiring loom, but one of the sensors wires (the outer left one) will need to be extended so it can stretch to reach the hole and the fog light connectors are very different, so you will need to graft the new connectors onto the old loom. I did this using those waterproof connectors that have solder inside, you just join the wires, heat it with a heat gun and the solder melts and the outer plastic forms a strong and waterproof seal. It's self explanatory where the wires need to go as the colours are the same.

You now just fit your facelift headlights (hopefully you have bought a set of plug-n-play ones rather than the ones that involve soldering/coding etc), refit the bumper and you're away.



Once I had all the parts above I did the entire front end conversion on my driveway (my myself) in just over half a day. i could do it even quicker if I did it again. Particularly if I had someone else there to help..

Here's a few pics of mine pretty much finished, I will be getting the grey bumper trim wrapped/painted black at some point:






Last edited by CountJunkula on Mon Jun 28 2021 11:09am. Edited 4 times in total

How much did it cost you to do the whole thing? 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

hey mate, congrats on the conversion.

are you happy with your headlights? do they seem "off" or do they work as they should?

do the indicators on the headlights "sweep" or do they just "blink"?

how much did this all cost you?

prince2150 wrote:

hey mate, congrats on the conversion.

are you happy with your headlights? do they seem "off" or do they work as they should?

do the indicators on the headlights "sweep" or do they just "blink"?

I've had a bit of a game with headlights...

Firstly, as I mentioned above, I originally bought some Matrix-style aftermarket headlights from Alibaba. This turned out to be a mistake. Once of the headlights had a loose screw inside, the other had a cable tie stuck in there with no way to get it out. I fitted the lights anyway until I could get some replacements and the light pattern was awful, seriously bad. The seller insisted that they were UK legal so I took them to a local car garage here in the UK to get them adjusted and tested. 5 minutes in and the guy calls me over saying that he has had to set the beam as low as it will possibly go in order to meet the regulations, but even then - technically they would be classed as a fail due to the light pattern. He showed me that there should be a distinct sharp horizontal line on the wall, but on these lights it was just a hazy splodge (for want of a better word) of light. I could tell just from driving in the dark that the light beam on my original pre-facelift lights was significantly better than these Matrix replicas. He did say that "on a good day" he might just about pass them on an MOT, but that officially they were a fail. I didn't fancy much having headlights that may-or-may-not fail the MOT every year depending on how strict the tester is feeling that day.

In addition to the awful light beam, inside the cabin the lights also caused the indicator light to flash really fast to tell you that a bulb was out. On the outside the indicator looked great, worked fine and had the sweeping indicator light, but it was driving me crazy inside flashing at a hundred miles an hour every time I used the indicator. This could have been 'fixed' by cutting the wiring loom and soldering in some resistors apparently but I already knew I wouldn't bee keeping the lights at that point.

I ended up returning the lights to the seller for a refund which was a shame because they looked really good, the indicators looked good too and when you unlocked the car the lights did a little flashing dance/sequence that looked really good, but at the end of the day it's no good having a headlight that looks great but doesn't actually do what it's supposed to do.

Second time around I bought some Genuine MID lights from another seller on Alibaba. This time the lights were original UK spec RHD lights. They have all the Varroc/Land Rover logos on, LR part numbers/stickers etc, but the seller has to remove/scratch these off to get it through customs. I have inspected the lights and you can still see the logos and where the stickers were, they're just scratched over and covered with tape. Other than it's clear that these ared Genuine, top quality lights and the work brilliantly exactly as they should.

The first set of Matrix-style knockoff lights just had a pre-facelift connector on the back. Sicve the MID light sI bought are actually just genuine lights, they have the factory facelift connector on the rear which is totally different to the pre-facelift. It does however come with a plug-n-play wiring loom that piggy backs into the original wiring so fitting was really easy.

These lights don't do the little dance when you turn the car on (like the aftermarklet Matrix ones did) and they don't have sequential indicators/blinkers (neither do the factory L494 facelift cars with MID lights, so it's no different there), but I have had them tested at the same UK MOT centre (that failed the aftermarket ones) and they passed right away with no problems and no adjustment needed. The light pattern is a nice sharp horizontal line. The interior indicator/blinker also now works normally which is a relief, no errors. The lights are genuine UK RHD lights and they work exactly as you would expect.

In total the MID genuine headlights shipped including the plug-n-play loom was around £1500. The previous Matrix ones were around £900 delivered, but they were seriously not fit for purpose.

The main expenses were:

Headlights: £1500 from Alibaba
Taillights: £350 from eBay (they're the powerfulUK ones)
Wings: £400 from eBay
Rear Bumper: £180 from eBay
Front Bumper (complete with grills/lights/etc): £550
Intercooler ducts: approx £40 each from dealer
Arch liners: approx £44 each from dealer
Grill: £70
Various other bits/brackets: approx £150

I bought all of the bits in Santorini black and haven't had to paint any of them.

Also bare in mind that you should get around £1500 back by selling your old front/rear bumpers/headlights/tail lights/air ducts/wings/brackets/arch liners/grill/etc. Someone who's just bought a salvage car will likely buy all of it in one shot.

In total the whole conversion front and rear (once I have sold all my old stuff which is mint condition) should come in around £1800. Not too bad I think considering the prices of some of the awful aftermarket body kits etc.

Was it worth it? For me, probably yes, but I've always enjoyed working on cars so I actually enjoyed the project and the challenge of researching and sourcing all the parts. Some companies offer the full conversion for around £10k, but there's no way that would be worth it, just buy the facelift car! Mine is a 2014 so to buy a genuine 2018+ facelift Range would cost 2-3 times the cost of my whole car.

I also much prefer the look of the facelift car. Now it's pretty much finished I'm at a loose end, I'm now looking at face-lifting our downstairs bathroom to keep me busy...

One last thing I will say is that when I was looking for parts online such as the intercooler ducts, arch liners etc - many of the parts were actually far cheaper to buy direct from LR than they were on eBay. I almost bought ONE used arch liner on eBay for £140, I just happened to call the local dealership first to check that it was the correct part number and found out that it was only £80 for a PAIR directly from them!

If you keep an eye on eBay there are some real bargains that come up (bumpers, wings, etc) but for all the other stuff check direct with the dealership first!

For example, these are on eBay right now:

Click image to enlarge

Do you think this service will mean we do not need new bodywork panels etc. ?

Click image to enlarge

Heremyjill wrote:

Do you think this service will mean we do not need new bodywork panels etc. ?