£200 worth of Jaaaaaaaag

[R9UKE]

Picked this up at auction the other night.

 

 

Nice story behind it. Old man owner, no longer able to drive, son brought it to auction. I paid £200 which means after commission etc the poor guy will get a cheque for about £130.

 

Whacks of service history, the most common item replaced being the bulb failure modules. Last MOT and tax expired in September 2010, currently has 75980 miles, which means it's clocked up a massive 267 miles since it's last MOT in Sep 09.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4.0 Engine is beautiful, it was serviced just before it's last MOT. Fanny belt is a bit squeaky but nothing else to report there.

 

 

 

Items not working:

Central locking

Boot release

Passenger window went down but won't go up (this afternoons task)

 

The Dash is reported a fault in Fuse Circuit 1. I presume this is related to one of the above issues. Fuses are fine, more investigations will follow if I can be bothered.

 

There's a bit of rust here and there.

 

 

 

and the headlining sits around the occupants shoulders.

 

Overall very pleased. A few friends have expressed interest, if they don't want it I'll ebay/gumtree it once I'm bored.

 

[dollywobbler]

Can't be bad for £200 notes. Now that really is the essence of bangernomics!

[ashmicro]

Nice one! That looks pretty good, considering it's been in the hands of those cretins at Prentice at some point. Re: the window - to get it closed temporarily, hold the switch to close the window, and SLOWLY open the door all the way, back and forth, several times. Depending on the fault, this may be enough to temporarily make the circuit. I know it's the passenger window, but wiggling the driver's door sometimes works! This stunt has been known to work on 90s vintage PSA stuff too.

[baldrickthecunning]

I like it. Hope the rust doesn't stop it going through an MOT.

[Cavcraft]

Jesus, that's a bargain alright. It'd break/weigh in for loads more than that (though obviously hoping it won't come to that) so you cannot lose out.

[Pete-M]

That is full of winningness as the Septics would say.

 

It'd break for considerably more than £200.

[lovejoy]

Nice one ! you can't go wrong at that price, and surely the licence plate has gotta be worth about 1/2 of what it cost,

 

it would in the UK, not sure about over there though ? What a lotta motor for very little outlay. Enjoy !

[Cheggers]

Lovely, just lovely.

[Shep Shepherd]

Nice! I'd treat the thing to a rolling resto

[Pete-M]

Nice one ! you can't go wrong at that price, and surely the licence plate has gotta be worth about 1/2 of what it cost,

 

it would in the UK, not sure about over there though ? What a lotta motor for very little outlay. Enjoy !

 

In N.I. they get Council Vanity Plates for free.

 

Over here I tend to chip £500-750 from the price of any car with N.I plates as they're probably the best indication there is that the car they're attached to hasn't been looked after properly. £1000 off if said car has chrome arches. As most stuff fitted with both is only about worth £800 maximum it means I never have to buy 'em or indeed end up with 'em.

 

It's different in N.I obviously, but over here I run away from pretty much anything with a N.I. plate, as do most of the motor trade. I've known people send their cars back to N.I. to sell them as the trade won't touch 'em here. One chap was offered an average of £1800 for hs four year old Clio here, got £3500 for it in Belfast where he's from.

[ashmicro]

Nice one ! you can't go wrong at that price, and surely the licence plate has gotta be worth about 1/2 of what it cost,

 

it would in GB, not sure about over there though ? What a lotta motor for very little outlay. Enjoy !

 

 

EFA

[R9UKE]

Re: the window - to get it closed temporarily, hold the switch to close the window, and SLOWLY open the door all the way, back and forth, several times. Depending on the fault, this may be enough to temporarily make the circuit. I know it's the passenger window, but wiggling the driver's door sometimes works! This stunt has been known to work on 90s vintage PSA stuff too.

 

Agh I saw this after taking the door card etc off! Will be an interesting one to try in future. Will the window was put back up by reversing the connections on the switch. I've left it disconnected now. Owning modern Renaults I'm well used to having at least one dead leccy window.

 

Central locking has randomly burst into life! Discovered one more annoying fault. The dash clocks illuminate with the courtesy lights and should go out when the doors are locked.... they don't. A quick google search and it seems to be a massively common problem - the dash illumination module box. Fuse is taken out for now to prevent battery drain but it means no illumination at night and an the annoying lights on buzzer going EVERY TIME the door is opened. Again, I can live with this.

 

Loving it so far, seeing it sitting beside the Avantime is bizarre. They couldn't be more different.

[eddyramrod]

Bloody hell Luke, that was the buy of the week! Well done sir! If you get bored with it around May/June let me know...

[Guest]

Don't want some KN Geminis for it, do you?

[ChinaTom]

If you get stuck on anything, try www.xj40.com - there are some really knowledgable chaps on there.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

If you get stuck on anything, try http://www.xj40.com - there are some really knowledgable chaps on there.

 

Jim Randle for head moderator! The XJ40 electrical system was/is a joke really. Asking Lucas to make something pointlessly complex was asking for trouble.

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

You can't complain at £200! What a bargain!

 

If you get stuck on anything, try http://www.xj40.com - there are some really knowledgable chaps on there.

This is good advice. I would also recommend you join Jag-lovers. It is nowhere near as friendly as XJ40.com (a particularly friendly site) but despite this has some deep knowledge and expert diagnosticians.

 

Jim Randle for head moderator! The XJ40 electrical system was/is a joke really. Asking Lucas to make something pointlessly complex was asking for trouble.

This is wrong.

Early cars from model years 1986-1989 with the digital dash can be problematical, but the electrical system was changed for the 1990 model year making them much more reliable. Cars built from 1990-1992 have this system and have decent reliability.

 

The 1993-1994 model year cars have a different electrical system again which is excellent. These last XJ40s are significantly more reliable electrically than most other cars.

 

…Discovered one more annoying fault. The dash clocks illuminate with the courtesy lights and should go out when the doors are locked.... they don't. A quick google search and it seems to be a massively common problem - the dash illumination module box. Fuse is taken out for now to prevent battery drain but it means no illumination at night and an the annoying lights on buzzer going EVERY TIME the door is opened. Again, I can live with this.

It may be that later Jags do this and that it creates problems, but the dash clocks don’t illuminate with the courtesy lights on an XJ40 – or at least they shouldn’t. It sounds like you have a fault here.

 

Incidentally, when looking at fuses:

"Circuit 1" is the RH footwell fuse box,

"Circuit 2" is the LH footwell fuse box,

"Circuit 3" is the fuse box in the centre armrest.

[garethj]

The XJ40 electrical system was/is a joke really. Asking Lucas to make something pointlessly complex was asking for trouble.

Not everything was Lucas, I used to work for AB Automotive who made lots of the electronics for the XJ40. The number of dashboard mouldings under my desk when I joined was staggering...

 

The concept was an interesting idea; fed up with switches burning out and the heavy wires needed running around the car Jaguar decided that low current switching like computers use would solve all their problems at a stroke. And of course they were right.

 

Unfortunately it introduced other problems, if there's not much current running through the connectors or switches they don't stay clean. This leads to all manner of electrical gremlins a bit like if there's a dodgy earth, remember when Cortina tail lights were dim, and when the driver pressed the brake with the indicator on the indicator would go dim and the brake light would flash? Now imagine a similar problem but with much more complicated systems.

 

They carried over the technology to the Range Rover P38A which, funnily enough, suffered with similar issues only this time the system was multiplexed for even more difficult fault-finding.

[R9UKE]

Thanks for all the tips and advice, I shall pass them on to the next owner - a very good friend of mine who is an extreme car hoarder. I'm taking a 1995 Espace with 192k miles in Part Ex which will provide winter laughs and injuries. Glad he fell for it, I'll see it all the time and have the possibility of owning one again in the future. Highly recommended. Watching this made me want to call off the deal.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl5R_izXzbw