In July I bought a 1998 Daimler Super V8 LWB. I have entered the details in the registry including a picture. I have been in the JEC a while, though I've only been to one meeting. I also have a 1993 Jaguar XJ40 (which I bought new) and a 1969 Daimler V8-250 (which my father purchased in 1970). I also have a couple of Rover P5s, a Land Rover One Ton, and a BMW528i (1987 E28, also bought new).
When I bought the car it came with a new left rear lamp cluster, which took 3 or 4 minutes to fit. I couldn't believe how quick it was. I expect a main dealer would have charge a bundle of cash to do it.
The next week I bought a load of spare parts at 10% off, JEC member discount.
A front indicator to replace a cracked one, took 10 minutes to fit.
A magnet for the fuel filler cap, fitted in seconds.
A Daimler badge for the B/C post, was gold instead of the original silver, but you can't see both sides of the car at the same time. Seconds to fit.
A vane to cover up the towing eyes as the original was missing. I don't know if this should be chrome or body colour on a Daimler, but as I didn't want to have to pay to get it sprayed the right colour, and as the chrome one was only a fiver extra, thats what I had. Had some new clips to fit it with. One side was very stiff and I had to get am engineer freind to fit it as I was afraid of breaking the clip, it was flexing so much.
A spare key and transmitter fob. The car had to be programmed to the transmitter and I got the main dealer to do this. They collected the car this morning, the chap came and got the keys but came back two minutes later saying it was the wrong key. I said, no it was the wrong car. He had taken my XJ40 for service many times, had not read the paperwork and assumed it was the Jag again and was confused when neither the key fob nor the key would unlock the Jaguar
The air vent assembly for the middle of the dash, because the vanes were facing in random directions. I took a quick look at fitting this and realised the passenger air bag was perilously close. I examined the new part and realised that maybe the original was not so much broken as deranged. I managed to clip the two plastic strips back into place. They clip to the back of each of the vertical vanes, and I had to work along from one end, one at a time, holding one roughly in the right place whilst getting the one before it properly clipped in. Anyone want to buy an air vent assembly?
Front and rear mudflaps - not fitted these yet.
A new rear subframe - going to get this treated for rust before fitting it so it will hopefully last longer than the original, though the car did live near the coast for a while.
A week later I had a classic car show at my home. It got a bit hectic (and cramped) the day before as we moved things around, and I reversed the X308 past a big wild rose bush. I caught the drivers wing mirror in the roses and pulled it forwards, cracking the glass and breaking the mirror panning motor. The mirror started leaking, I think it was the liquid crystal fluid from the 'electrochromic' feature. I bought a new mirror and sought out a motor from a breakers yard. I found an identical looking mechanism, which even had the same part number moulded in the plate the mirror mounts onto, it came from a Ford Probe. I needed to change the connection terminals, not a difficult job for someone used to soldering parts on my 1962 mainframe computer, but when taken apart it revealed the tiny gearbox on the end of the motor was slightly different. So I had to spend over a hundred pounds at the main dealer to replace the whole motor assembly just to fix three broken teeth on a 3mm diameter plastic gear pinion. Two days later, on eBay I saw a complete drivers side door mirror from a Super V8 listed at 99p! Mind you it eventually sold for 28 pounds, but still a lot less than 100 pounds.
Now a question. The car has an anomoly, one of the drivers switches to open/close the rear windows does not work, whilst the other one operates both windows. Any ideas? I could live with it, but it would be nice to get rid of this fault if it is not too expensive. As a computer systems person who used to work on helipcopter systems in the late 1970s, I suspect that its operated on a serial bus system and that both rear windows, somehow, have the same bus ID. Anyone know how the ID is set on these units, could it be jumper leads or solder pads or even simple DIP switches? How do you get access to it?
I see the number of Super V8s is now equal first in number with other models. A bit surprising. I guess the true enthusiast wants the best, and now the best can be bought a few years old for the cost of a new eurobox. I very nearly bought a Super V8 as a company car about then years ago for 64000 pounds, so I look at it this way, by waiting a few years I've saved myself about 57000 pounds.
Happy driving and may you not fall foul of any speed cameras.
Roger Holmes.
