- Ignore blobs of Araldite , just a stick test
After 20odd years of Series XJ/XJ-S ownership I have just become all modern and aquired a 1995, 112,000 mile, full service history XJ12
Picked the car up in Norfolk and drove back to Surrey and all seemed tickety-boo, apart from the cigar lighter not charging my phone but that's now sorted.The following day a good look around the engine bay revealed a trickle of coolant which appeared to be coming from the hose at the bottom of the expansion tank but after a series of tightening, inspecting for splits, re-tightening etc I still had a coolant leak. So out came the tank and I found a small crack in the most unlikely of places, I'll try to upload a snap. Various forum searches led me to a discussion on Jag-Lovers which boiled down to this: early cars should run green, yellow or blue anti-freeze and later cars, 1998-on I think, should run red/pink/orange anti-freeze and under no circumstances should they be mixed or all sorts of nasty,clogging jellies will be produced in the cooling system. One contributor advised that if red was to be used in an early car, such as my '95 XJ12, there was an alternative expansion tank which should be fitted and failure to do so might be a contributing factor in the apparently not uncommon failures experienced in early X300s. My eyes pricked up on reading this as I had noticed when first looking at the engine that almost all of the hose ends which were visible showed tell-tale signs of coolant weep, red coolant
and the surrounding ally was showing signs of oxidization; at the time I put this down to the fact that the car had been standing for a few months prior my purchase and hoses needed tightening up, but now I'm worried that extra unnecessary stress is being inflicted upon the V12's already hard pressed cooling system by the use of the wrong anti-freeze. I am loath to spend £180 on a new tank until I can resolve this issue and would welcome any comments or suggestions from anyone with experience of these matters. My current plan is to flush out the cooling system and re-fill with olde worlde blue from Mr Halfords as I know that I will always be able to get matching stuff if needed in an emergency. I am going to try and repair the crack in the tank for the short term and possibly replace it with an ally tank at a later stage, as suggested by one of the better known Jaguar parts suppliers as they still see quality problems with new ones supplied today. Or does anyone know of an existing metal tank which would slot in?
One further point is that there is evidence of coolant leaking from the center of the top left-hand radiator mount which protrudes through the top rail, there is coolant in the hole in the center of this mount and the rubber/foam bush is partially eaten away. I haven't wanted to poke a screw driver down there for fear of making things worse if there is a crack down there. I have not yet got any workshop manuals/CDs on this model so could there be bleed screw or similar down there? Or is that just wishful thinking.
All helpful suggestions gratefully received.