coefficient .32 Jaguar S Type X200 - One year on...

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

I was reading up on the R, take the limiter off and sort some special sized pulleys for the supercharger and you have yourself a 200mph car... That-is-insane!

[stephen01]

I’m 99% sure I have the alarm fob for this in my desk at work, I thought the car had left the auto shire collective so just left it there, drop me your address and I’ll pop it in the post

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

This is good news. PM incoming. If you need any sovs hit me with a bill for paypal.

[stephen01]

 

Ready to be posted. 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Would you look at that! Thanks ever so much fella.

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Service time!

 

I've been looking forward to getting this engine serviced. It's all new to me but they all do the same basic stuff so it can't be that bad. First off, I didn't realise that half the engine needed to be removed to access the other bank of plugs on this V6. That was a bit of a surprise to be sure but it was a good excuse to get to know the engine better.

 

 

 

The amount of plastic, ally and Ford parts keeps growing! Eventually I got somewhere.

 

 

And pulled the plugs!

 

 

Apparently the brown stuff is this:

 

https://www.beruparts.eu/support/trouble-tracer/spark-plugs.html

 

The plugs are reasonably worn and I've no idea when they were last changed. It looks as though 3 coils have been changed on the right bank. There is some bodgeroo with one of the intake bolts to the rear- it would be the rear! I was to find out what a fucker that was going to be later on.

 

Whilst the top was off, the oil was draining I gave a glance underside to find out where the oil filter was... no luck! I found it later towards the rear of the engine, easily accessible too!

 

I also took the opportunity  to address the thermostat housing which had been leaking all over the place for some time. Here it is getting a quick once over to clean it up and make it serviceable for the future...

 

 

The idea is to take off and fix or check out and lube things as I go along which will need doing in the future such as consumable items and then not have too much bother with stuck bolts and shit when the time comes.

The coolant that came out contained rust, now the block is ally as are the heads so somewhere something is rotting up good. I suspect without any research that the water pump impeller could be a good candidate for this. The outside of the pump itself looks to be in a poor state so it will be worth changing. The tensioner pully is also loose in its bearings so will have to go soon. I'll gather those parts together as and when.

 

 

Now, this...

 

 

That's right, this...

 

 

For whatever reason this bolt was missing and had been replaced with some threaded bar and some loose nuts. I could not for the life of me tighten the thing up. I guesstimate that the bar was not bolting into the thread far enough. Cut a long story short and nearly an hour later with top engineering skilz I had it tight! Why is it always the hardest to get at ones?

 

 

All fixed... nearly bar some plastic covers and things. Fuel, pollen and air filters were bunged in also as well as a replacement O ring on the dipstick handle as the old one was swollen.

 

It runs well enough, I even balanced a torx socket on it's end on the engine to prove how smooth it runs. Quite impressive really. Needs some plastic clips, there are a lot broken or missing so something to look out for and the battery needs to be put in properly as it's a bit loose in the back there. More familiar with the engine bay now and know what to expect when spannering in there!

 

Not a straight forward service 7/10

 

Next up will be the track rod ends replacement and alignment... I hope!

[Broadsword]

Very good progress. The water pump looks reasonably straightforward to replace?

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

That in the picture is not the water pump, I can see how one might think that. No, the water pump is bolted to the block face. It looks corroded 2fuc so I'm really only bothered with snapping bolts. However, I'm very careful. It'll sit in there for a while yet, I've just replaced the coolant! Needs rads too, they are so bad...

[The Moog]

Good job - as you say sometimes it is being methodological that makes the difference .

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Good news big cat lickers! 

The black mumba has raided my wallet today along with its mate the 635. The Jaag done quite well out of it though with some new parts as follows:

 

• Water pump
• Idler pulley
• Alternator belt
• Rear track arms
• Rear ARB links
• Rear ARB urethane bushes
• Front ARB urethane bushes

 

I think that's it. Apparently the rear ARB is a sod to do as it's up on top of the subframe and there's no room to do nufink. May have to drop the frame a bit so it'll need marking up before hand as there is 9mm of play once loose! It looks as though I won't be changing out all the bushes at the moment. I've read about hydrobush content in places and reports of urethane bushes making the ride worse if these get changed. Moar research is required here. For now, a little survey is required to see if, like most, the fluid has ruptured through any degraded rubber sealing. Don't know when I'm going to do all this work yet. Plus I got the last urethane bushes for the 635 that go on the rear trailing arms, that will make it 100% pollied up once done. Not looking forward to that little sweetheart of a job I can tell you. And I'm doing this for pleasure?

 

With the service and brake pads I have now just exceeded the price of what I paid for the car itself. So now the car is worth.... What I paid for it!

 

Makes perfect sense. That is also why I'm not an accountant.

[Broadsword]

I’m really impressed by the amount of hard graft you are putting into this car. It will be a cut above most S-types when you are done!

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Cheers, well I might as well get some of it ironed out whilst I don't have to use it. I've washed it more times than I've driven it! Should be factory fresh when that time comes! Lolz an dat...

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Postman Peter has been... Well, what do we have here then? 

Ooh, what could this possibly mean?

VVVV It means this! VVVV

The mystery is one step closer to being solved!

[stephen01]

Glad it turned up! As you can see I packed it up before the forum update! Just took me a few days to get to the post office..

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Thanks for that. It cuts out a lot of headache. If anyone else finds bits of the car in their drawers...oo er... Please forward to me! I'd like to know what went above the number plate, there's two screw holes and a gasket but no 'thing'? Hopefully it wasn't a rear facing leaper!

I have now placed the car under a cover to prevent more bird shittings from targeting the paint. It looks very posh under its new cover.

Parts for the engine and suspension are arriving thick and fast. Water pump was not as expected. Advertised as a valeo OEM part with a 5 year warranty... I received a fast lane aftermarket pump with a 2 year warranty! Now, I've used fast lane for bearings, hubs and such and don't doubt their integrity but that's not the point so I'm in discussions with the eBay supplier. If he can't warranty the fast lane for 5 years then he'll have to send me an additional one and a half pumps to cover the advertised period.

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Whipped the cover off today and drove it 150 miles. Also brimmed the tank... £77! Strangely only managed to scrape 31mpg, but who's counting? Although, it got in the high 30's with soggy tires before.. must have had the wind behind me! Alignment is still shot besides. 

Oh, that missing boot thing I've found out is a release switch. Inexpensive, widely used thing. Coolant loss is virtually gone now after messing about with the thermostat housing. Quality ride compared to that brick on rollerskates merc I've become used to.

A handful of admirers at my destination showing an encouraging tepid fondness exists for the s type... which was nice.

 

Back under its cover now until further notice.

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Did I mention the stereo? One sunny day I was chopping around on the M25, toons blaring at volume 11 when I got a whiff of electricals... I blamed the tanker truck in front until I realised it was just carrying dirty water... I stuck my finger in the tape loading slot and it was like a volcano in there. ~turns stereo off~

And it didn't stop being boiling hot for sometime after. I can't have those types of thing in the car so it's coming out and is destined for the bin. It's replacement is planned to be an alpine satnavvy bluetooth thing.

I'm a bit bothered about the fitting in the hole part but it is effectively a standard old ford unit it's replacing so we should be winning...we should be!

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Only just having secured* a personal plate for the 635, today I realised that all jaguars need private plates to complete the council estate toff look. So instead of sleeping, I got another plate quite suited to this particular motor car. All will be revealed after the transfer process has completed.

 

 

[Mrs6C]

B16 CAT?

[wuvvum]

S7 YPE?

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

11 hours ago, wuvvum said:

S7 YPE?

Cor.. so close... That's what I was after but surprisingly unavailable. Got the next best thing... Sort of...

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

 

JAG GETS NEW PLATES SHOCKER*!

 

 

Shocker is, that after a month sitting under a cover, the battery is flat M8.

 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

}What motors it for M8?

{2000 stype...

}Good luck fitting that...

This is a smoll conversation I had with a incar specialist across eBay messaging once regarding the purchase of the above Alpine unit, second hand at £a lot£. The conversation came AFTER purchase... Naturally.

Now, I've heard and seen some ropey installs into the stype of these units and thought that it can't be that difficult can it? Why, it's just a Ford radio in there after all. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a butt clenching couple of hours, you see, jaguar in their first class wisdom decided that encasing the unit in scaffolding and screws would be a good idea... Let's see shall we?

1st issue was that I've took the battery off to put it on charge and fill my shed up with hydrogen gas. You can't get the car out of park with no battery. You need to do this to pull the whole center of the dash out in one lump. However, sat in the 635 degree interior I figured that removing the gear knob would allow just under enough room to force out the bugger, I needed another 5mm but it came out eventually.

Next was to remove and break down the contols and then measure positions for the mountings to be swapped to the replacement unit.

Drilling into an expensive piece of kit is not my favourite thing to do. I didn't want the new unit to sit flush as the surround was bigger than the existing plus I wanted to angle it towards the driving position a bit to reduce any glare so with careful manipulation of some dimensions the theory was put into practice.

This also meant that I'd have to modify* the drawer surround next to it a little bit. The plan was to keep the original overall dimensions to guarantee* a good fit without hacking into the dash on the car. The coin tray had to go, luckily the facia comes off and just fits under the unit to cover a nasty gap left behind from the coin tray. Reassembly involved me cutting into the cage to fit the top bracing. Tightening all the screws up in thier original locations shown by previous marks on the mating surface, showed me that dimensionally it was spot on.

I have created this:

Without too much damage too. It's a shame that the link leads are incorrect for the Jag or I'd be out there seeing if the bloody thing even works!

So, to summarise... If you want a nice stereo in yer stype, be ready for crazy funtime!

 

 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Battery update: it's still on charge. Up to 12.9 volts but doesn't seem to go any higher. Tests are ongoing.

In other news:

Head unit leads... 1 was missing from the sale, the expensive one with all the RCA plugs on, that's even if it came with that in the first place but why shouldn't it?

Conversion loom and patch lead for linking the head unit to the jags loom and utilising the steering wheel controls.

Box of pin connectors for if any of the above doesn't work.

£85!

 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Welp, that went well*. 

I have successfully bought the jags multimedia into the present time but it wasn't without a fight. All the leads I bought fit and (eventually) worked including the steering wheel controls! That was short of a miracle.

Firstly, I had to connect the battery which has been behaving itself after a good charge for the week, holding just over 13volts. In doing this set the alarm off. The key fob (with new battery) won't do anything. After starting the car the alarm stayed off. 

The console was an absolute pig to fit back due to the added amount of plugs behind it causing me to dismantle further parts of the dash to pull things out of the way but we got there! Many swear words were said.

Have some pictures!

so what do we have?

Bluetooth connection with phone and at long last... my internet radio.

Future ready for install of a sub, video and cameras.

Satnav

Radio and CD

I managed to pop the mic right near the top face of the dash and it works fine on calls. The only thing that doesn't work is the mute on the steering wheel, I don't know why but, the control on the head unit is less than a foot away from my hand so it's no big deal. The Bluetooth connection goes quiet too when i use the camera on the phone... That's just weird.

Setting it up was easy too. Being alpine and serious kit it asked if I had leather seats when I was setting the sound up. Very important.

A bit of a tidy up of some trim left to do to get it perfect and mount the satnav aerial. 

Blood lost- 0

Skin chafed- 5

Swear words used- 43

Catastrophic failures- 0

Sense of achievement- 95.2%

Oh, and I set a code into the unit so if someone takes it, it's flipping useless!

 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Oh, and it does this!

[Mrs6C]

That looks great!

[Sealtainn]

That looks awesome, top work. 

An S-Type is on my list

[Angrydicky]

That screen/radio installation looks a swine of a job! Great work.