Jump to content

Rave's X300 4.0 Sport - 5/10/19 MOT achieved!


Rave

Recommended Posts

A pez shot you say?

 

post-20573-0-30109500-1532818437_thumb.jpg

 

I daresay this will become a familiar scene. I've put 10 gallons in and it reckons a range of 262 miles. That'll get me back to London at least.

 

Better get on with it, got chatting to Tom and his lovely wife, nearly midnight now! Next stop Beaconsfield for a 2am McDs, I reckon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Home safe. Jag didn't miss a beat, and I can now drive it fine with one hand, though as it turns out my broken right arm can turn the steering wheel alright, it just can't press the cruise on button without feeling icky!  :neutral:

 

Trip computer reckons 28.7 MPG from Kidderminster to SE London down the M40, M25, M4 and South Circular, that's a lot better than I'd feared though I'd hoped to crack 30mpg as, after I'd figured out how to switch it on about 50 miles into the trip, I'd set the cruise to an indicated 65, which is a true 60 according to GPS Test on my phone. Couldn't resist flooring it a couple of times, and although it goes well, it's not quite the stabbed rat effect I was expecting. Perhaps a good service and maybe an Andy Bracket will tip me over 30mpg and give it a bit more poke. That will have to wait though as I'll be off to Yorkshire in it tomorrow...

 

Though nobody asked, the Mystic Meg action is here:

http://autoshite.com/topic/31715-ask-a-shiter/?p=1556327

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glad you made it back ok. I was worried that you may have run out of fuel.

 

Surprised how good on fuel it is, that's pretty much the same as my diesel Shogun was. I wonder what it's like pulling a trailer....?

 

Lovely car, I enjoyed being the brief custodian of it

 

This was my first view of the previous owners place. The turquoise one is under the sheetpost-19511-0-01125400-1532853875_thumb.jpg

 

He likes Jags

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A pez shot you say?

attachicon.gifIMG_20180728_234826.jpg

I daresay this will become a familiar scene. I've put 10 gallons in and it reckons a range of 262 miles. That'll get me back to London at least.

Better get on with it, got chatting to Tom and his lovely wife, nearly midnight now! Next stop Beaconsfield for a 2am McDs, I reckon.

Ooooooph, Two Jags on Autoshite, we will have Prescott checking in her before long. Will we ever see a Roffle of both Blue and Red at the same time, it ever we did, I would have to have the same ticket in both, just for the hell of it

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Winnar.

 

Years ago there was a taxi driver that worked for a taxi firm that the pub I worked at used to use.  He had no left arm and drove a normal trad auto.   I asked him why hes was putting it in Park with his right hand.  He said because I've only got one arm.  

And at that exact moment, I noticed that he only had one arm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Winnar.

 

Years ago there was a taxi driver that worked for a taxi firm that the pub I worked at used to use.  He had no left arm and drove a normal trad auto.   I asked him why hes was putting it in Park with his right hand.  He said because I've only got one arm.  

And at that exact moment, I noticed that he only had one arm.

It's easy, you just drive with your hand on your knob.

 

Had one in my Transit as it had no power steering.

 

Learned to hold my knob at all times, especially reversing up a small kerb whilst some steering lock on, the kerb could correct the wheel angle and if the steering wheel did spin and you knob clacked your hand, it could give you a real belter, nearly bust my thumb once.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cheers all! :) Made it to Yorkshire no probs, 27.8mpg as I was cruising at more like 65mph and had two passengers. Still reasonable enough I guess. Mondeo would have done 33-34 I reckon.

 

post-20573-0-02809300-1532938638_thumb.jpg

 

Had a look under the bonnet finally. Looks pretty clean, no Andy Bracket present. If they're NLA I wonder if you could achieve a similar effect just by slotting the holes on the standard bracket?

 

I paid the seller 850 for this, and Tom (D Spares) welded up the hole in the bottom for me at proper mates rates. Would like to put on public record my gratitude to him for collecting it, and collecting me from the station, and chucking in the half gallon of fuel to get me to the pez station afterwards, thanks again mate! :)

 

I think it might well go through the MOT once I've replaced whichever of the ABS sensors is putting the light on. Seller reckoned there's a clonk from the rear suspension and the exhaust is leaking a bit, but I've not really noticed either so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did go looking for locos but could only see carriages from the car park :( .

 

An Andy Bracket mounts the crank position sensor slightly further round (?) to give an extra 5 degrees of ignition advance. Can't get the same effect by swinging the dizzy. The Andy it's named after was previously a Jag engineer who knew the standard mapping was very conservative- and there's a knock sensor on the engine in any case. They work on all AJ16s including the XJR. AJ6s need a slightly different one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Time for a small update, and hopefully to pick the brains of the people on here who know these cars. Basically it did me proud while my right arm wasn't working very well, got back from Yorkshire absolutely no bother. Unfortunately while taking a diversion round the crappily surfaced roads of rural Kent I hit a pothole and the exhaust volume suddenly doubled. I had no real option but to just drive it home again like that, and have done a couple of short trips in it when friends have asked for a ride in it, but it spoils the relaxed ambience somewhat. To be fair to the seller he had said that he thought the exhaust needed a fettling. Anyway today I finally parked it up on the raised kerb outside my house and crawled under for a shufty. I found that the LH intermediate pipe, the one that goes up and over the rear axle, has broken completely behind the silencer, just behind the weld where exhausts always seem to go. So fair enough, I need a new one. An ebay seller has them for £72.50 delivered, which doesn't seem hugely unreasonable, albeit rather more than the complete system I fitted to my 106 a couple of months back. Jags cost more to run than tiny diesel pugs eh, who knew? :)

 

So if that's the going rate my plan was to buy it and have a go at fitting it myself; and if I fail, get the garage I use for my MOTs to stick it on. Anyone know how easy it is to get the pipe over the axle? I'm not going to be able to get the car particularly high in the air.

 

And talking of MOTs, it's due at the end of the month, and there's one other problem to solve, which is that the ABS light is on constantly- it's on when you turn the key and never goes out. The cruise control works fine, if that's relevant. The seller reckons he had it scanned and the culprit is the OSR sensor; I stuck my own cheapo ELM327 clone on and only got a couple of fault codes for the oxygen sensors, which apparently aren't enough to stick the EML on, so I'm planning to ignore them (they might just possibly be related to the blowing exhaust anyway). So my initial plan was to pull that wheel off and see about cleaning it up. If that doesn't work how would I go about changing it? Is it likely that the problem is in fact on the ABS pump or dry joints in the ABS ECU like all the scary results a google for "X300 ABS diagnotic" throws up?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think el-cheapo readers do ABS codes on most cars so no surprise you can't see it. If sensors are cheap I'd try changing it. I had to do three on my XJ40 as the wiring had cracked where they flex with the suspension. I think I was paying about £25 2nd hand off ebay.

 

As for the exhaust, mine snapped there on the offside & I got it welded up at a local place for about £20. Lasted till after I wrote the car off into a lamp post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless you enjoy exhausts and know it will come apart and have somewhere decent to work I would save hassle and get the garage to do the exhaust.

 

Nothing funnier than covered in dust on your back, with an exhaust that just won't come apart and it starts to rain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless you enjoy exhausts and know it will come apart and have somewhere decent to work I would save hassle and get the garage to do the exhaust.

Nothing funnier than covered in dust on your back, with an exhaust that just won't come apart and it starts to rain.

You forgot to mention rust in your eyes.

 

You will be lying there thinking 'I wish I had paid someone to do this'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In a masochistic way I quite enjoy lying under cars buggering about with exhausts. Replacing the 106 one was quite a satisfying job. To a certain extent I have little to lose trying it myself, it might end up really noisy if I succeed in removing the middle silencer box but not replacing it, but the garage is only a mile or so away so I could drive there without annoying too many people.

 

Anyway I take it nobody knows a place doing exhaust intermediate pipes for less than 70 quid then? :) I'll order one up tomorrow if not. There's an ebay seller, Jaguar Spares North East who is also doing a service kit with a genuine oil filter, a not-specified air filter (paper filters are much of a muchness unlike oil filters, so fair enough), and 6 Champion plugs for 38 quid. Sound reasonable? I've always been an NGK plug man in general, but Champion seem to be OEM. Oddly I've seen conflicting advice on what NGK plaugs to use anyway, most people seem to think BCPR6E but one chap reckons BKR6 is the correct (ISO) shape. Might have to do yet more tedious googling. If they are BPR6 that may even be the same as my Mondeo- I replaced all the plugs in that with Iridiums, but the Ford platinum ones I pulled out looked immaculate. So I might even be able to use those. The idle is a bit rough, so worth trying new plugs I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I decided to investigate the ABS sensor today. Jacked the car up with my trolley jack under the rear subframe mount, which seemed to work OK. First problem was getting the wheel nuts off- the handbook isn't very clear, and mentioned something about covers for them, and a special tool to remove them, but having dug the jack kit out from under the spare tyre there was no such thing. The supplied wheel brace didn't seem to go over the nuts either. In the end I decided to just risk it with a 23mm impact socket out of my Halfords kit and they came off fine, revealing that the nuts are made of (now rusty) steel with a non-rusting metal cap on them. The caps didn't seem to get damaged even though I had to heave on the breaker bar to loosen a couple of them. The locking wheel nut adaptor required a 21mm socket, however- which the wheel brace appeared to be rather too big for. Quite how I'm supposed to change the tyre if I get a flat while I'm out and about I'm not sure- I'll have to think about that. I've no particular objection to buying a spare pair of 21 and 23mm sockets and leaving them in the car, but carting about a breaker bar at all times will annoy me, even though the car is bloody heavy to start with and it will make a trivial difference to performance/ fuel consumption. I suppose if I remove the existing wheel brace that will compensate somewhat. The trials of being a bit Aspergers, eh.

 

Anyway having parked the car a bit close to the kerb I had to lift it up a bit more to get the (bloody heavy) wheel out, then I was able to have a nosy underneath, having shoved an axle stand under the inner wishbone mounting point to catch it if it fell off the jack for some reason. I soon found the ABS sensor lead, and was rather encouraged when I found that it appeared to have been bodged already:

 

post-20573-0-58537200-1536509228_thumb.jpg

 

Once I'd removed the first layer of tape and had a feel I had a pretty good idea what I was going to find when I got in there, and thus it proved:

 

post-20573-0-47579100-1536509304_thumb.jpg

 

The end of the wire came out of the bullet connector very easily, and at that point my level of hope for a successful re-bodge was considerable. I thought I'd better get the multimeter on it just to be sure, though, and sadly there was no continuity at all between the inner wire and the outer shield whatever ohm rating I set it to- apparently it should be about 1.7k according to a youtube video I found. I certainly don't think it should be infinity, at any rate :( . I suspect there is another break in the wire further along.

 

Sadly, the sensors for these early X300s are about 200 quid for a new part, and an initial ebay and google search didn't show any used ones for sale- in any case a used one could be hanging on by one strand as they just seem to flap around in contact with the lower arm, and more worryingly, the halfshaft, though perhaps they're meant to sit between the coils of the spring. Or perhaps they're supposed to be clipped in somehow but the mounts have rusted off, like the rear bumper mounts...I found that the bumper is attached with a spider's web of zip ties held in place with a big blob of epoxy, which is a bodge I have no intention of attempting to rectify unless I have to.

 

So anyway, I put the wheel back on, which was a pig of a job with my not-quite-recovered-from-its-break right arm, and have come in to have a think and post this. I guess if my only option for a proper fix is to shell out 200 quid for a new sensor, then I have little to lose by seeing if I can cut the wire an inch or so back from the sensor, attaching a new length of wire using single crimps rather than bullets, maybe soldering it as well, then heatshrinking it and going mad with the electrical tape, and running the new wire all the way to the connector? Incidentally, anyone know where the connector is- is it under the rear seat, or are there wonders to be revealed if I can figure out how to remove the bulkhead panel in the boot? I haven't investigated in there so far, partly because the (defunct) CD changer is in the way. Suppose I should remove that if I'm fussing about weight, twat that I am.

 

Edit: found this article about X300 maintenance, which I'm posting here as an aide-memoire, as much as anything:

 

http://www.exclusively-jaguar.co.uk/facts/production-modles/x300/x300-service-guide/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Just a quick note Richard as I'm running out of awake time. I tried to source a rear o/s abs sensor and came up with the same as you price wise until I remembered a really helpful guy on one of the Jaguar Forums. His name is 'Naki.k' and he runs 'Black Cherry Jaguar' If you message him: info@blackcherryjaguar.com hopefully he will still have some used ones,they were £50 delivered. .He was on holiday when I messaged him so never got round to ordering one.Also,the sensor wiring connector is under the back seat,under the sound deadening matting. Now don't hold me to this but if memory serves me well then the sensor on that model was also used on the XJS,just helps to widen your options when searching. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I had my XJ40 I could get 2nd hand ABS sensors for X300s (they fit after changing the plug) for about £28 delivered. I've got a feeling it was from a place in Wales but I can't recall the name.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...