During the extremely cold weather last winter, our area reached a record UK low of -19C. I wasn't too sure that antifreeze would work at this low temperature. We had been warned by the forecasts, so late that evening I ran the engines of both our cars up to temperature and then wrapped them up well and subsequently it seems that was enough and both engines survived. One area that did freeze was the windscreen washer on my XK8 which is well away from the engine warmth behind the nearside headlight. After that it only worked intermittently. My guess was that something had burst from the freeze so I worked my way backwards from the blades trying to find the cause. There appeared to be dampness under the washer bottle in front of the left hand front wheel so that was my focus. An MOT test intervened in the process and when I sent it in for the test I mentioned it to the garage and asked them to fix it. When I collected it the garage said that they just topped the bottle up and it worked. I was grateful but still suspicious and sure enough the next day it still didn't work. I tried to access the washer bottle through the inspection hatch under the wheel arch and then from below through the finishing strip under the front bumper, without success. This forum was down at the time so I contacted Mike H who was kind enough to tell me that I needed to remove the wheel arch liner. I decided to buy a new pump before starting (£70 +VAT from Jaguar). The stores man said "we sell a lot of these" but they didn't stock the rubber seal, so I needed to be careful with removal of the pump.
Come the day and I jacked the car up and fitted two additional axle stands under strong points to be sure. Removing the liner isn't difficult once you have worked out how to undo the multiplicity of different fixings. There was a torx bolt at the bottom rear of the liner; two push fit plastic fittings at the top of the wing which were a devil to undo; there were two more of these fittings at the front bottom edge of the liner that were easier to undo
- Fastening
and finally there were three odd plastic nuts that screw onto some rather rusty studs along the inner lower edge of the liner.
Now the bottle was accessible and I removed the connector. There is a locking spring on the right hand side of the connecter that is hard to see, but after you press it into the body of the connector it comes off easily by pulling it upwards.
I checked the wiring first with a multimeter. Having no wiring diagram I guessed that the black wire is the earth and of the other two wires, one had a permanent battery voltage on it (low water level sensor?) and the other went up and down when the washer button was pressed. That seemed to indicate that it was the pump at fault. The pipes are quite tight for length and, again, there was none of this in stock so I was careful not to force anything.
The pump lifts out vertically with the seal, an O ring, around the nipple at the bottom of the pump.
- Pump removed
The pump plugs into the blue platform at the bottom of the washer, which, of course, is at the bottom of the washer bottle, so you need to have a tray to catch all the fliud - and there is a lot of it! Re-assembly in reverse with some magic silicone spray on the O ring seems to have made a good seal and all is now well.
- Pump replaced
One piece of logic that fooled me for a while was that when I tried the washer after replacing the pump I got water at the wipers but they didn't do their 3+1 wipes. It took a little while to realise that this is correct if the fluid is low (which it was as I had just emptied it). Once refilled the auto wipe returned.
Given the lack of a forum at the time I dropped Mike a note with these detaiils and he suggested it might be of interest to other owners of these cars, hence this entry.
