KACEY - roadgoing 4 litre facelift.
Part 2 : OJS – Old Jaguar Syndrome
Merely being road-legal does not mean fault-free. It took several attempts to get the charging system to actually put volts back into the battery on a reliable basis. Asking an alternator to part company with a car for the first time in 21 years was not a simple conversation. There was a crowbar.
The fault, inevitably, was in the actual terminals on the bulkhead anyway, but we had a recon alternator handy and it would have been foolish not to take the opportunity to throw it on.
A dip in fuel economy and the complete collapse of the headlining were inevitable. Being less than civilised, our solution to the headlining was simple. Remove it from the car and run without it. Our last XJS ran like this for about 2 years, and you get used to it in moments. What you do get in winter, for what it’s worth, is condensation forming and dripping off the inner skin onto your bonce. You might question if that’s what the problem is with the headliner to begin with for any car that’s sat unused for any period. Given the black mould on the reverse side of the board, I’d say so, yes.
We never did find a code for the stereo. Never mind. We did find the sport button after only having the car 3 months (we don’t really do automatics usually you see, how were we to know that any car would ever want to be anything other than its most powerful? I don’t really understand that even now. If you want to drive slower and smoother, use the pedal less, don’t disable the car) and that made this much more fun, finally it seems to actually work.
The car is pulling some decent service, it’s the Bear’s car, he worked out that if your idiot brother is going to insure and tax 2 Jags, why run about in an old Rover 200? Miles accrue, all weather, but with the passing months come issues.
The fuel economy mandated the purchase of a new lambda sensor, which cleared it briefly, but the car developed a peculiar habit. Ten minutes into your commute, you’d be cruising at, erm 70mph, pulling awful instant economy readings on the trip computer, then run rough for two or three seconds, clear its throat, give an engine management warning on the screen, and then run perfectly with far better fuel consumption numbers. It ran like this for months. All I know about the electronics of these cars can be written in about three lines.
The rear bumper starts to fall off. Age and rust at fault, the piece of bumper bolted to the car is still so bolted, it’s just no longer part of the bumper. Bear’s solution is to push it back on every time he stops. Well, it’s currently “his” car, so if it works for him!
The car whistles at motorway speed. The door seals appear to have had enough. It’s quieter after the screen was sealed up, but it’s still there. The solution is, sadly, new seals. Can’t actually find anyone selling them for sensible money. So we didn’t buy any. For money I will tolerate whistling, and sort it out as opportunity presents.
The strange thing is though, it’s actually not a bad car to drive. It’s quick enough, it actually seems to handle nicely with that new front end up it, it’s stable on the M1 in a way the X300 isn’t, wind buffeting and tramlining not in evidence, and it’s quite a fun car, that low-slung driving position is a novelty that doesn’t wear off.
All told she pulls about 18 months of service before we take a critical look at things. Economy is poor. Both the car and the world. We need rear discs for the MOT that’s looming. Not a 2-minute job. Bear has a better job but one that requires mileage. The sell-me-quick respray the car had before we got it was not a real job, the poor woman who spent all the cash on this car was seriously screwed over because there is filler busting out all over the lower front wings and the rear arches are flaking. It’s parked up in November 2013, having covered 195000 miles, 10000 of them with us for an overall bill that’s still under £800. It’s not exactly expensive motoring.
A choice now needs to be made. Sell it? Break it? Something else? It’s a sound shell, is it the next racing car donor? No, we don’t race facelifts. Too heavy, too expensive to fix the backlights when someone gets it wrong. Sell it? It’s worth about £1000, probably. Tart it up and flog it? Chuck £500 and some time at it and it becomes a £2500-3000 car, probably. Break it for spares? It’s a plan unless you save the subframes, which we would, in which case there’s not a huge payday in that. Money in the backlights and some of the interior/trim, most of the rest is scrap.
What we decided to do, obviously, was leave it sitting about for a little under a year until the XJ8 committed suicide and we had to get serious. Then we did something really stupid… We fixed it. Properly.
A typical scene during Kacey's early days back on the road.
The knees are for those of you with a peculiar fetish.
The charging system drove Bears to distraction.
Leaking screen revealed a car right on the cusp of about to go rotten. Caught this bit just in time. So many aren't, and it's a facelift-specific problem.
Doing her duties as workhorse involved hauling old racehorses out of their hiding places. This was not a car being babied.
Eight below, the thermometer claimed when this was taken. Kacey is certainly no garage queen.
Here are those three lines. These cars are quite stupid. There’s an airflow meter, and they can go wonky. There are 2 water temperature sensors, but only one of them talks to the ECU. I think there’s an air temp sensor too, so two that can go wonky. There’s an ECU, and it can go mad. There isn’t much more to this, one of these things is acting up. Yes, there’s an ignition amplifier thing, but that’s not going to do what’s happening here.
I don’t think it’s the AFM, which is either going to work or not. I think it’s temperature related, so sensors or ECU, and logic, right or wrong, tells me that the air temp sensor isn’t doing this. Swapped the sensor. Didn’t fix it. Must be the ECU. Haven’t got a spare, so I’ll just put up with it. We’ll put that on the “to do” list.
The screen leaks. Removing the trim and rubber reveals the usual “about to turn into a colander” syndrome, a scratch and paint and a lot of sealant puts that back, the leak is cured, but not before we’ve seen too long with wet carpets, and the wood has started to erupt on the ski slope. The rather nice interior is somewhat compromised now, no headlining, the wood’s buggered, the carpets moistened to the point that I pulled out the underfelt that was storing water and rotting the car to death in short order. It gets louder in here.
The fuel pump is noisy. But it works. Leave well enough alone then.
