www.jec.org.uk

Good evening,

I just joined this community. I am extremely passionate about classic and "youngtimer" sport cars (1950s-2000s), and just bought a 1995 XJR with manual gearbox. Will post some pictures soon, it comes in dark blue with light grey interior (please forgive me for my ignorance in terms of correct color names!). The car has 95,000 mi, and is in overall good conditions (no rust, original paint with a couple of scratches in the bumpers, near-perfect leather etc.). Unfortunately over the last 23 years it has lost its original, wonderful alloys and comes with a set of aftermarket Jag ones. Moreover, it has not been driven for a while, and I would like to perform a thorough "service" on top of a couple of small fixes (most likely the first ones of a long series...).

I started to search around the forum and found already lots of great suggestions, however I have a couple of questions where your expertise could be invaluable:
- which interventions would you suggest in a major service like this one?
- which are the most common weak spots?
- is there a good maintenance manual for this car? any good books / links on the X300 XJR?
- where can I find a good set of the original XJR6 wheels (in Europe)?
- the shock absorbers seem to be a bit too soft/worn out, do I have to order them at an official Jag dealer, or can I directly order from the manufacturer (in which case, which company is the OEM)?

I look forward to driving and enjoying as soon as possible
thanks a lot in advance!

Best,
Corrado

Hi Corrado.
Where are you located?

There is a set of wheels on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/jaguar-xjr-a ... SwYxBaR2T3

Hi Corrado.
Where are you located?

There is a set of wheels on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/jaguar-xjr-a ... SwYxBaR2T3

Hi Steve,
I am located in Italy (Rome and Palermo). Thanks a lot for the suggestion: I had been looking on Ebay for a while, but I didn't notice this posting which actually looks like a good deal!

Cheers,
Corrado

hello, welcome to very select band of owners, manual XJR6 is a very very rare car with only 267/8 being built worldwide
Italy took 57 cars, the largest market after the UK with 102/3 cars

Only 5 blue cars went to Italy with grey trim, 4 sapphire blue and just 1 kingfisher car

If you give me the last 6 digits of you 17 digit VIN, I will be able to tell you a bit more about your car as I hold all the build records for these cars

best regards Rob Jenner

Hi Corrado,
Welcome to the small group of manual XJR owners. I used to work for Jaguar on the development of these cars and now own two manual XJR6 cars. I would recommend that you try to find a second hand copy of the Jaguar \heritage CD JHM1180. It contains all the workshop manual in pdf form. www.jaguarclassicparts,.com is a good source of part number and illustrations.

If you plan to replace the dampers you may wish to consider fitting the stiffer German spec parts , if you want a firmer ride.

I have developed uprated front anti-roll bar drop links for these cars. Recently I had design parts to allow a much stiffer rear anti-roll bar to be fitted, also with uprated drop links.

If you want more performance, then I strongly recommend that you fit one of my revised crank sensor brackets. These advance the ignition by 5 degrees, giving both improved performance and fuel economy. Email me directly for more details.

When you are servicing the car, make sure that you only fit Champion RC9YCC spark plugs. Other plugs may cause problems. Also check the ignition coils for any signs of cracking in the plastic body. If you need to replace any coils, ONLY use GENUINE original equipment parts. Aftermarket parts fail very quickly. Check the state of the harness connection to the engine ECU. Water ingress, can cause corrosion to the connectors leading to various electrical related engine problems. I strongly recommend that someone connects a diagnostic tool to the ECU to check for any fault codes. If the oxygen sensors are original, then they are probably near the end of their life. Any problems with these sensors should show up in poor fuel economy and be picked up with a diagnostic check. If you change the sensors, be careful not the get the two connectors missed up, because they are identical !

I very much hope that you enjoy your ownership of your XJR6.

Hi Rob and Andy!
Rob thanks again for the info

Andy, thank you for the warm welcome and for the exhaustive suggestions! It is very interesting to find out about the different handling and performance improvements that you have developed. I will definitely reach out to you for more info on the crank sensor.

Meantime I have a couple of more "basic" questions related to servicing the car

- which engine oil would you recommend? I saw the maintenance manual does not indicate anything specific but only grade ranges depending on temperatures
- same question for transmission and differential oil

Thanks a lot!
Best
Corrado

Sounds like you are making good progress/ the right steps with servicing.
I would check all the front and rear suspension bushes as a precaution. Upper front shock, Vee Mount, and upper wishbone bushes in particular can wear out/ have play/ delaminate.

How about some pics of the car. Always nice to see.

Hello again,
thank you for all the suggestions. The servicing is nearly done, and probably in a few days I will be able to pick up the car from the workshop and finally start enjoying it. I am including a couple of (very bad) pictures of the car in its initial conditions when I bought it a couple of weeks ago. You will notice that, as I mentioned, it is sitting on a non-original set of wheels. I bought a set of the beautiful OE alloys and I am currently having them rectified and repainted (thanks again Steve for the ebay link!) so next week I should be able to fit them (can't wait!)

There are still a few things pending (and yes, I am abusing with impunity of your knowledge asking for further suggestions...)

Exterior
- fit a new set of hub caps; I was thinking about putting red/silver ones as these looked the most common choice in period pictures from official brochures and test drives... plus I think these match very well with the red pinstripe . Are these the right ones?
https://www.berkshirejagcomponents.com/ ... 2x18157295
- have the bodywork polished, as it is in overall good state but has lost some shine on a couple of areas (boot lid)
- replace the central chrome blade on the rear bumper (I am looking for a second hand one in very good conditions, without scratches/bumps... any suggestions on top of eBay?)
- respray the rear bumper (it has a couple of scratches on it) and realign the chrome trim on both bumpers
- replace the RH rear light (the glass is slightly cracked)

Interior
- have a full clean-up and treatment of all leather surfaces
- replace or repair the gear lever leather wrapping (it has a couple of tears above the underlying hard rubber ring... which however seems a bit disproportionate to the housing hence I am wondering if it's original or not)
- check the fuse of the radio system as it looks dead (hopefully it's just the fuse...)
- fix the clock display (the lighting works properly, but the LCD segments are fading away

Other questions
- as of now I am trying to keep the current tires as they are in good shape and mildly recent (2.5 years). However, I noticed these are 245/45 ZR17, which on one hand is one of the officially homologated sizes on the Italian technical document (also according to Jaguar Italy), on the other hand I reckon the car was originally fitted with 255/45 ZR17. The problem is that there are not too many alternatives on the 255s (basically only 1-2 quite old product lines from Toyo, Continental, Dunlop, Pirelli), plus these are relatively expensive (from 200 to 350 EUR per tire!). As a comparison, when it comes to the 245s there are 30-40 leading-edge product lines from established/premium brands (all of the above plus Michelin, Bridgestone, etc.), with price ranges from 100 to 180 EUR per tire.
Would it be better to fit 245s with a top product line (more developed hence with improved performance and safety, e.g., Pzero Nero GT, Pilot Sport 4, Potenza S001) or 255s with one "mature" product line (such as Proxes T1-S, Conti Sport-Contact 5, Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT)? I also remember some extended online discussions about the 8Jx17 wheels being a better natural fit for 235/245s vs 255s (which are usually fitted on 8.5Js). Ultimately, which tire size/brand would you recommend on a XJR6?
- I have no clue where the current wheels are coming from. Do you recognize them as OE wheels on any other Jaguar? Otherwise, are these generic aftermarket wheels with Jag hub caps? I also noticed that the hub caps look completely different in shape/size versus what is supposed to be fitted on the original 17 inches wheels.

apologies for the long message, and thanks a lot for your patience!

Cheers,
Corrado