With that in mind, I used it as an excuse to do lots of the ‘nice to have’ cosmetic work I’ve been meaning to do, but haven’t been able to justify.
I’ve had an auto electrician fix a few niggles with fog lights, fix my heated seats and add a new cat 1 sigma alarm/immobiliser. I’m not sure I’ve added any value to the car with that, but it makes me feel better having it as the original Jaguar alarm isn’t much use.
I had a wheel refurb, I took a slight detour from the standard XJR-S colour, as much as originality is valuable, the flat silver colour was pretty dull in my book. So I went for the modern jaguar metallic silver colour. The pictures don’t do the deep gloss shine justice. The Polish chap that did my wheels spent four hours prepping them before painting, I was really impressed. He did two of my cars and worked solid from 8.30am to 6pm.
In primer
I’d had a spot of bad luck and had a windscreen chip crack that week too. Which was handy as the windscreen had gone milky around the outside So I contacted my insurance company who let me know it was a £75 excess to use autoglass. When I questioned that, they said I could use anyone for a £100 excess. I decided that was pretty reasonable and instead I hired a local expert who had been changing windscreens since before I was born and knew exactly where to go to remove the windscreen surrounds. It was worth £25 more for the added peace of mind. Other good news is there were no horror stories behind the windscreen, one tiny tiny bit of corrosion that I rubbed right back and kurusted and covered in windscreen sealant so its pretty well sorted.
I did a little spray work on the wiper arms, headlight surround and front grill. They were supposed to be in Satin Black, but had severely faded and had polished from years of wax over spill. I rubbed them all back and re-sprayed. I also replaced my missing JaguarSport badge from the front grill with an after-market replacement badge insert.
Then I moved to the interior (refitted the rear squabs that I remove to fit my baby seat!) and replaced two pieces of veneer, the trip computer surround and the ski slope.
Once all that was done, I gave it a full coat of HD wax ready for the photo shoot.
The shoot brought a spectacular array of XJSs including the championship winning Tom Wilkinshaw car, the spiritual big brother of mine! With the noise limits at Bruntingthorpe, they weren’t allowed to start it without special permission, so sadly I didn’t get to hear it roar!
Sadly, before the journalist and I got to drive the car around the test track, I broke down and it wouldn’t start. No spark what-so-ever! I was pushed to the road and awaited the RAC who sent a technician who confirmed our diagnosis of no spark. However, sadly, whilst diagnosing, he replaced the coil leads the wrong way around.
After I was taken home, I spent 3 dark nights playing around trying to fix it with a new ignition amp before realising the wiring was wrong. That tiny wiring mistake killed the coil and I’ve had to replace that too.
BUT! With a new amp and new coil, it feels like a new car at low RPM, it feels like I’ve found some missing horses! So clearly, ever since I’ve had the car, the ignition amp has been on it’s last legs!
From Jaguar, not cheap though!!
Thanks for reading!
Ryszard.
