www.jec.org.uk

Hi there

Just collected my new 2003 black on black XJR with 19 inch performance alloys.
I live in Ireland and these cars are few and far between over here. I had been intending to import one from the UK but this one came up and as you'll read it's not at all perfect but was I decided a much better bet than a UK import. VRT (Vehicle registration tax) here in Ireland is prohibitive and I'd have had to pay quite a few thousand more for something from the UK in a similar condition by the time I got it back here. Due to Irish VRT rates the new price of a 2003 XJR in todays money comes to around 140K Euro, no wonder there aren't too many around on Irish roads!

Anyway, great to find this forum, I've had an XJS for 10 years and forums are invaluable in keeping these ageing cats going!

The car has 75k miles and quite a few previous owners, 6.

Services history is marked in the book (no invoices though) up until around 64k. With odd invoices since then for a shock, brake service and parking sensor replacement

General condition is OK, the car has had kids in it so a few bits inside need replacing, rear left door card leather is torn and rear center vent needs replacing. The drivers door card has been off in the past and must have lost a few clips and it squeaks when driving over a rough surface. Oh yes and the rear left hand door permanently locked, wont open at all. Only 1 key and remote fob not working. Drivers seat switch is missing a couple of the black nobs

Paintwork only has one small patch of the aluminium corrosion on left rear window pillar, that's it. However we have a few chips around the car that need attention. Three of the four chrome blades have had contact with something over the years. Alloys are spotless. One rear lens cracked. Overall it looks pretty good.

I had a jag specialist look over the mechanicals before I bought. The car had been in storage for a couple of years so had no NCT (Irish MOT)
Driving and inspecting the underside on a ramp revealed all suspension bushes OK, no leaks from engine or gearbox, underside in very good nick but brakes vibrating as pads had welded to the discs before being freed up recently. One of the rear tyres was bald. Drives well, engine incredibly quite and refined on tickover.

So two new tyres, new discs and pads front and back, oil and filters changed. Door card taken off and rear door opened and lock had to be replaced. Drives well and wow its fast! The ride is ok on crappy roads and superb on better ones.

I'm taking it for its NCT tomorrow so fingers crossed shocks will be ok.

Problems that still need sorting;
CDC Fault, but just been outside and fixed this by getting the cartridge out and back in again.
Need to get the fob working and a second key?
Need to sort out the bits of trim/paint etc on inside and out over the next few months
Can only get cold air out of the passenger side of the AC? Any ideas?

So there you go!
Anything else I should check out?

All the best
Chris

2003 XJR
1992 XJS

Welcome Chris.

The X350 is possibly the best designed car Jaguar have ever produced. It is also one of the easiest to work on. We love these cars to bits.

I ran a V8 S-type for years and that was pretty good. Then I acquired an 04 4.2 XJR. The World changed for me instantly and probably for ever! Two years on, this car still holds my extreme respect, utmost attention and gives thrills by the bucket load. I`d not change it for anything.

You will note at the foot of this post that I hold an honorary position with the JEC as X350 Co-ordinator. I undertook a similar role when I owned the S-type. This means I tend to write quite a lot. If you are a JEC member you will receive a monthly magazine. In that magazine you will see a fair few of my technical articles about maintaining the X350. Similarly if you delve into the technical sections of this X350 Forum here on this site, you will find a mass of material that several of us have constructed to help X350 owners run their cars as economically as possible. You will find loads of material on suspension rebuilds, engine modification and tuning, water methanol injection, fitting fast supercharger pulleys, porting chargers etc, as well as basic servicing. There is not much that has not been covered.

Here is my XJR. Post a few images of yours for us. Very interested to see what you have. Keep in touch.

Mike K

Chris,

Good to hear about your purchase! I assume you're a club member? Go and get the gearbox sump and filter replaced and gearbox oil changed. An absolute necessity unless you categorically know it's been done in last 20k.

Enjoy the car - you will!

Paul

Paul is absolutely correct about the need for regular gearbox oil and filter changing. Ignoring the issue can significantly shorten the life of the unit. ZF recommend an oil and filter service every 60k miles. I would suggest that to help further, reducing that service interval to every 50k miles will ensure that gearbox oil quality is always kept at its best. Around £350 spent to service the transmission is small beer when compared to the cost of a replacement transmission...around £3000!

I would also recommend that supercharger oil service be applied again at 60k intervals. Differential oil also needs rather more regular attention. With that, I`d suggest an oil change again at 60k intervals.

Keep an eye on the condition of the two stub pipes on top of the coolant header tank. They embrittle with age and can disintegrate suddenly.

The biggest issue with the 4.2R is that of the valley coolant hose that runs under the supercharger. The charger needs to be removed to get at the pipe. It balloons and can rupture at the hot end of the pipe ie where it joins the back of the thermostat area. Getting the charger off the engine is not an easy job and from experience myself, would suggest professional help with removal. The hose itself only really has a safe life of about 85-90k miles. I`d suggest you should plan to have that hose changed as soon as possible if no evidence exists of a previous hose change.

Just a few ideas to get you started, Chris.

Mike

Mike and Paul,

Thanks for the welcome.
Yes I've read about the gearbox fluid/filter change and the hidden coolant pipe issues.
I'll add supercharger and diff oil change to that list. As soon as funds are available i'll be tackling them.
The Xjr isn't going to be my daily driver so i'll probably be only be doing around 3000 miles a year in it.

I'll post on the relevant sections of the forum with the bits and pieces I'm going to try and sort out in the meantime.
Thanks again

Here is what Paul and I said about our cars.
http://www.jec.org.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 80&t=10897
Mike

Mike

I read that, very interesting.
I've certainly had to re calibrate my right foot when driving the Xjr and I have none of the tuning mods fitted to yours!
Has anyone experience of putting 18 inch wheels on an Xjr to get the best of both worlds, ie maximum comfort and bonkers acceleration?

BTW the car passed its NCT yesterday so now road legal.
One thing to note on the test report was the suspension test results;

Front axle: Nearside 26 Nm Offside 19 Nm giving an imbalance of 27%
Front axle: Nearside 24 Nm Offside 18 Nm giving an imbalance of 25%
The imbalance limit on an axle is 30% so it was fairly close to failing this
It seems that one side of the car is 'harder' than the other?
Wonder whats going on there?

I`m not familiar with this type of test, Chris. To my knowledge, we don`t have this test in the annual UK MOT. Can you explain further please? Is this something to do with brakes or dampers?

Here is another link I constructed about 4.2R tuning and getting the best from the motor. viewtopic.php?f=281&t=10761

Mike

MIke

So I had to do a bit of research into this and you're right this imbalance suspension test is unique to the Irish NCT as far as I can gather. As I've discovered when looking into this, there's a bit of controversy about it. To explain...
The NCT includes two suspension damper tests, one is a visual inspection for leaking oil and general condition, the second being the balance of spring rates between nearside and offside for each axle.

The test uses a german piece of kit called a 'Mahameter' http://www.asanetwork.es/doc_equipos/ma ... wt1_en.pdf
This version of it doesn't appear to be sold by the company now but this is the one that's used in Ireland. The company makes all sorst of equipment used for MOT/NCT type testing of cars vans etc.

From what I can gather the machine produces vertical movement of the pad under each wheel, and then measures the resulting vertical displacement of the wheel/suspension when a standard force/vibration frequency is applied. The results from each side for an axle are then compared and if they are within 30% of each other then you pass the test. The unit measured is quoted as the Mm, not sure if this means mm or not.

It seems the higher the number of the Mm measured at each wheel the greater the movement. Some examples of test results from my Xjs NCT last year, the test results were;

Front axle: Nearside 39 Mm Offside 44 Mm giving an imbalance of 11%
Front axle: Nearside 72 Nm Offside 75 Nm giving an imbalance of 25%

(The xjs is fitted with adjustable shocks, looks like I have the rears set quite soft, thought I had front and back on the same number clicks)

So it seems from reading a bit around this on forums here in Ireland and a recent TV documentary;
1. the fact that the test just compares two wheels means that if you have two equally shagged dampers you'll pass it even if you care rides like Noddys
2. Nobody really knows what an 'Mm' is.
3. If you fail just go back again, you'll get a different result and you'll pass it without doing much
4. Lots of anecdotal evidence that cars with air suspension fail the imbalance test quite often, question (wrt air suspension) of whether the test should be carried out with the engine running or not. If you have a system that has different settings what should it be on, soft/sport?

In my case the results;
Front axle: Nearside 26 Nm Offside 19 Nm giving an imbalance of 27%
Front axle: Nearside 24 Nm Offside 18 Nm giving an imbalance of 25%

would seem to indicate that the nearside shocks are 'harder' than the offside. Also that the suspension is much harder than the xjs which is what you would expect.
So I wonder if when the air dampers have been replaced in the past have they been replaced with the 'comfort' units rather than the xjr 'sport' units. I had a look on SNG Barrat and the only ones available from them seem to be the comfort dampers.
Does anybody know if there is any difference in the physical appearance between the 'sport' and 'comfort' dampers and what are the other differences?

Mike I read your post detailing all the modifications you've carried out, very impressive. Your car must be extremely fast!

Sorry

Results for the xjs imbalance test in my previous post, the % imbalance for the rear axle should read 1%.

That test is completely unknown here in the UK. Your points about two worn dampers on the same axle line are in my opinion, very valid.

The compressor only kicks in to level the suspension which usually only takes a few moments. It then sleeps until it receives a demand for more air. Running the engine whilst on a ramp is unlikely to achieve much, if anything at all unless you have one leaky dampers or other air defect.

Yes, my battle barge does cut the mustard. Perhaps most noticeable is the rather quicker pick up from standing starts and at slow speed with low revs. The ecu reflash, small blower pulley and the porting out of the blower made the most useful differences which would suit most drivers looking for a little extra. The fast cats and the methanol add icing to the cake. Adding everything together makes for a car that is just that bit sharper and very useful for making a bit of fast progress. Slow speed liquidity is completely unaffected. Considerable restraint does have to be applied on occasions!

An interesting thread here.

Mike

I'm intrigued by that damper test and how it can work with interactive air suspension. If you load the underside of the two front wheels, unless, it can happen perfectly equally, it will initiate air spring initial deflation on coupled with inflation changes on one or both springs. Therefore, the ability to measure an independent damper reaction seems quite questionable. I'm not surprised they end up with weird results on air suspension cars.

Paul

Paul - but the air suspension is only the springing and the damping is conventional although the damping rate is of course computer controlled.
I wonder if testing the car static will get a sensible result as the dampers will be on the hard setting when not going forward?

While reading other posts on the suspension system there's an article mentioned which appeared in the May issue of the magazine.
I only joined in July so didn't receive the May issue. Is the article available on the website anywhere, I'd really like to read it.
I have the workshop manual on the chassis which explains all the bits but doesn't really explain how the system operates in detail.

Hello Chris,

There is a past magazine button above the picture header. If you use Mozzila Firefox as your browser, it may not be there! If you use Google Chrome, the magic button is there!!

Go to the magazine section and select the month you wish to view. In your case it is Vol 33, No 5, page 50. The article details overhaul of the X350 air spring compressor.

I bought my car a little over two years ago and started detailing some of the work I carried out. Bit by bit, it all gradually migrates to the magazine. However, as you are now operating here on this site, anything I do to my car usually appears here immediately I have carried out a job. The text often then gets copied to a Word document which I then edit to form the basis of any future magazine article. You will often see my work documented here rather sooner than when it appears in the magazine.

Of most use to you here on this X350 Forum will be the engine, cooling and suspension sections. There is a mass of material there with loads of information about how to successfully tackle the most common issues on these cars.

See if you can get to the magazines. If not, let us know and we can attempt to solve the issue with you.

Mike