The light under the hood works but what is the big box? Thank you all Ric Engel

Probably the retractable extension cord. Sounds like you have the light you can remove and place it where you need light then retract the cord into that housing. Later XJ's had a hard mounted light that came on when the hood was raised and was pretty much useless.

Does it look like this?

Yeppers Thank you

Also has a magnet on it.

Old thread. Apologies

sorry for thread hijack

none of my 3x '96 XJs have the bulb fitted

what size is it ?

how does the light become activated ?

no idea why the bulbs are removed in all 3

I want it working

These were a thing before cellphones had a flashlight - maybe before cellphones even.

You didn’t hijack this thing. I dug it out of it’s grave by mistake. Apologies. I was trying to post on a new thread “ under hood light alternatives” .

Amazon has some nice 12" long adhesive backed LED light strips that I bought to mount under my hood because my automatic one never worked since I bought it. I need to remove the thermal blanket under the hood to have room to mount them, but I need battery clamp covers before I do that.