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I have just purchased a 2003 XK8 Coupe and would like to ensure it has some protection underneath. It appears to have been waxoyled 10 years ago - was wondering if a process to remove all that and re do it with Dinitrol was a good or bad option?

Congratulations on your XK8 purchase - can you share a picture?

Given the Waxoyl was applied ten years ago it will likely have lost a lot of the solvent that keeps it waxy.

If the Waxoyl surface layer is relatively thin and not flaking you'd probably be ok to clean it up and spray with Dinitrol but if it's thick and or cracking you'd need to remove it first. The bigger challenge is then working out the condition of the Waxoyl in the cavities and box sections - generally the Wayoyl will tend to be thicker in these sections and much more difficult to inspect and remove.

On balance I'd probably go for a Waxoyl top up especially if the car is in good shape as a result of the original treatment.

I hope that helps.

Mark

I was unable to make the recent XK Seminar and I wonder if there was a discussion on rustproofing the X150, particularly in relation to the chemical reaction between the sub-frames and the chassis. I know this is of great interest to us X150 owners and would appreciate any available advice.

Based on much dialogue around this topic in recent months with various members and technical experts - there are some steps you can take towards longevity:

1. Keep the underside clean and in particular the interface of steel brace bars to the aluminium shell just in front of the rear wheel arches. The ones behind the front wheel arches seem to be less impacted but still worth keeping clean.

2. Use underbody protection, there are pros and cons and different costs to which you use. With many products on the market the front runners are the Dinotrol System, Lanoguard and Waxoyl. For ease of application and better salt water resistance I use Lanoguard, down side is it requires bi annual topping up but it is very fast.

3. There has been some discussion regarding applying a neoprene membrane or some such material between the steel and aluminium interface. It's would be a very big and expensive job - you would be looking at three days labour. With my experience of Land Rovers who use membranes a lot I'd think in that location you would need a fairly thick membrane to minimise bridging by dirt. At which point you may start to interfere with vehicle dynamics and set up. Perhaps Jaguar had thought about it

In all likelihood if a car is going to fail it will be the steel subframe that goes first. In the April issue of the club magazine you may have seen Robin Colenso's friend's car that had front and back subframes replaced , with the exception of the Norfolk hole car possibly one of the worst cases we have seen. The steel was in a pretty bad way but the interface points between steel and aluminium were pretty good.

To date we have not had reports of cars that have had underbody protection suffering - in time of course they will - all we can hope to do is slow the process down.

I hope that helps


Mark

Thank you Mark for your thorough and encouraging reply. Chris