Today's discovery is that the alternator is likely bad since the battery tested good but dies after sitting for like 4 hours

 

The running lights still come on with the brake lights - & vice versa; that's because I'm waiting for my LED's to arrive (ordered just before discovering the fault) before investigating the tail lights as it seems likely there where the problem is.

Well the LED's finally arrived (last weekend) which were to let me convert the rear foglights to double as supplementary tail lights. I thought I'd fixed the shorting problem but it now seems to happen as soon as I touch the brakes - but only momentarily: very odd.

However that's now on a backburner because sudden nasty noise from right front was the wheel bearing on the point of disintegrating. Might explain the curious, accelerated tyre wear on that corner, but there was no other warning & nothing was said at inspection in September

Anyway, went to remove complete axle shaft from parts XJ - but that's got play in the U-joint so seems like I'll have to faff about just sapping the bearing. Oh well, could be worse, could have to buy one