project Broadsword's Fleet Thread

[Broadsword]

After the recent glut of things going wrong there has been a concerted effort to get everything back in order. I think we are just about there now. The X350 sold easily on auction. There was in fact quite a bit of interest and it was collected with minimal fuss this morning. Given it gave lots of use while the Lupo was broken, we came out just about even on that experience. Shame to see it go, but it was time to move on. The XJR is perfectly happy and benefited from lots of use. The Lupo is also all good now. I scored a full set of steelies with good tyres for £20 this weekend not too far from home. They are now on and all is well. I'm on the lookout for some full sized 13 inch VW hub caps to cover the surface rust on the wheels. I don't think I'll have time to paint them for a while.

Then the Range Rover, which now has a new alternator to go with the new starter motor. One of the posts disintegrated when removing a bolt. Also the casing started to crumble. The new alternator has made a dramatic difference. Lots of little gremlins have been sorted and the car starts and drives better than ever. Excellent result. Time to book it for an MOT.

What with the X350 gone inevitably there was some browsing of eBay. Noting one particular car seems to have hit rock bottom price-wise, and many have not even been meeting seller's reserves, a bid was placed and the reserve duly not met yesterday. Then a an offer was sent to the seller, and amazingly this was accepted. So everything is in place for a collection caper next weekend. I'll have to get all the way from the North to South Wales. If the car is as described it will potentially something quite amazing. Two clues: two doors and it's another LPG car.

Watch this space for further international caper shenanigans!

[bangernomics]

Px a3 of much acceleration for xjr?

[dome]

Good to see things going well.

Modern BMW 6 series for the next adventure?

[bangernomics]

Xkr later 4.2?

[Broadsword]

2 hours ago, bangernomics said:

Xkr later 4.2?

Those flying machines hold their value much better than the other X100s, and as a result I can’t get near them. I’m yet to try the 4.2 V8. Must be marvellous.

Seller hasn’t changed his mind so all systems still go on the hopefully successful collection caper this weekend.

[Broadsword]

The collection starts right now. Will reach Wales later in the evening. Won’t see the car till tomorrow morning though.

[Shirley Knott]

Are we nearly there yet?

[Broadsword]

[Broadsword]

Home safe and sound after 235 uneventful miles. For the money it’s really, really nice. Filled up with £22 LPG and that got me home. On the road the car is nice and planted, a great place to be and just LOOK AT IT! I maintain it’s a gorgeous looking thing. The colour is metallic burgundy with cream leather and black wood trim. List of niggles not really a big deal, just the exhaust is too loud. Not sure how much of the system has been removed. I think it only has the large middle silencer. I want to put the rear silencers back on to make it civilised. I will sell the number plate if anyone wants it.

TL;DR: It’s nice, very nice.

[Jazoli]

Looks fab that Josh, I think these have matured nicely, pm me about the plate I may be interested if the price is right, and I'd claim dibs on the car when you have fixed everything and decide to sell it but there's no LPG for sale within a 20 miles radius of me these days

[Eyersey1234]

Looks a chodtastic purchase there well boughted

[Broadsword]

19 minutes ago, Jazoli said:

Looks fab that Josh, I think these have matured nicely, pm me about the plate I may be interested if the price is right, and I'd claim dibs on the car when you have fixed everything and decide to sell it but there's no LPG for sale within a 20 miles radius of me these days

Thanks, PM sent. As I said in the message this is kind of Broadsword's dream garage as matters stand, all for quite a small outlay in the grand scheme of things. I hope to do some gradual improvements just to make the XK8 nice, not perfect but nice. A driver's seat would be a good start and a damn good clean. It's very muddy right now, that all needs blasting out.

The state of the exhaust looking at just now is that the system has clearly been chopped off after the middle silencer and it's straight through after that. The good news is that the restrictive, flattened, over axle pipe (read up on it, it's a hilarious typical Jag cutting corners story) is replaced with a regular pipe so there is a significant performance gain there. Putting rear silencers on won't really harm the performance, but it should hopefully make it not too noisy.

Flicking through the service history is has a full serivce book full of 21 stamps. LPG system was installed 2009 with certificate. There's a bunch of other receipts, the most important being from last year when it had the full upgrade timing gear kit installed, ABS pump/module fixed, lower ball joints at the front, sump removed to clean any debris, new seals new drive belt and full service. It's also had a new alternator. It runs much better than the blue XK8 I had a year ago (that one was fine, but seemed to run rich). That one (W533 COM) was doing about 20 MPG on the trip computer. On the run back today this one exceeded 31 MPG with no real effort.

[Shirley Knott]

That looks absolutely amazing.

It's bad form to have favourites, but out of your current fleet this one's by far and away the fittest to such an extent that I've actually been looking at XK8's on Ebay this afternoon. In short I definitely would!

[Broadsword]

5 minutes ago, Shirley Knott said:

That looks absolutely amazing.

It's bad form to have favourites, but out of your current fleet this one's by far and away the fittest to such an extent that I've actually been looking at XK8's on Ebay this afternoon. In short I definitely would!

If you ever do go down the perilous road of XK8, I’m happy to lend advise. I’ve looked at/test driven many and this is the second one I’ve owned, so I have a bit of experience. I’m not sure prices will go much lower than they are now.

[HMC]

Very tastefully and discretely located LPG filler!

Yeah it’s crazy there days IMO That a nice late XJS goes for more than a nice early xk8. Consider me confused over that.

[Broadsword]

First improvement, as I had the part on the shelf and it‘s a 30 second job...

[Isaac Hunt]

Nice Car.  A couple of Powerflow / Proflow rear cans may take off the LOUDNESS but still leave enough 'Boom and Burble' to accentuate those cylinder pulses.

I would imagine the drivers seat would respond to one of the leather treatmnent / dye kits.

As for ya knob, are the piccies before and after ?  The after piccy looks a little strange to my eye.

 

[Broadsword]

Yeah, the second picture is after, the flash messed things up. I had the correct matching glossy black wood gear knob so I thought I would throw that on.

The exhaust is sort of fine at 70 mph, at 50 it drones quite bad. Round the doors you are on tiptoes with the throttle not to seem like a right prat. It would be nice to be left with the burble as stock XK8 are a bit too quiet what with two cars five silencers and the restriction over the rear axle.

I can do a bit with the seat but it is split on the base a bit unfortunately.

[Wack]

How much do you want for the plate 

 

I had a XK8 about 6 years ago on a P , loved it it went well but the R with the extra 100bhp was what I wanted, somebody had spent a fortune making it look like an R though 

[Broadsword]

3 minutes ago, Wack said:

How much do you want for the plate 

I put it up on the XK8 Facebook group for £300, buyer pays transfer fees. Shitter’s price subtract £50.

[Broadsword]

I had some time to clear the worst of the crud off today. Underneath it was one of the muddiest cars I've had arrive for a long time. A good few kilos came out and these cars are notorious for trapping mud, particularly in the rear quarters. The good new is that underneath the mud was actual steel. You never quite know with an X100. I think 80% of the mud came out. For the rest I'll reverse up on ramps and scrub it clean. A quick clean of the bodywork reveals it's quite ok for a cheap XK8. You could spend much more and get much worse.

A quick video below of the exhaust again to give you a proper idea. People on the Facebook group for XK8s reckon it's not that loud, it kind of is though.

 

Finally some calculations on fuel economy. I realize now the fuel gauge for the gas doesn't work properly so it will start to cut out when the gas runs out instead of flicking over back to petrol automatically. It started to cut out on gas when I took it for a spin after the long trip back so I reason I used exactly the fuel I put in when leaving Wales. The trip computer said I used 7.5 gallons of fuel and did 31 MPG, which tallies exactly with my calculations. It's a 45 litre LPG tank and I think you can only fill them up 80% so the number sort of line up. I think it did a genuine 31 MPG on LPG. The previous XK8 did about 22 MPG on a run on petrol. Not bad, nod bad at all.

[Broadsword]

Right then, by freak occurrence I now have a Perodua Kelisa thanks to Mr. @snagglepuss! It really was all very convenient what with the car being on my way home from work and @loserone giving me a lift to the car. Thanks again to everyone. The collection occurred yesterday evening. Drive home was a bit fraught, but only due to quite unpleasant conditions. The car acquitted itself rather well and is in essence an excellent stopgap. It's a car. Nothing more, nothing less. Can't really see why it wouldn't live for a couple more years yet in fact. It's not rotten at all. A quick cleanup of the interior and exterior this morning and some fettling meant even in the cold daylight it looks ok. Only mildly cosmetically challenged. A quick look in the engine bay reveals a very tidy little unit and the air filter sitting on the gearbox. That would explain the interesting noise it made. That was soon fixed though. It has one of those cone filters.

This morning was also MOT time for the Range Rover. Test was promptly aborted when the MOT tested said it was going to fail before it even got into the test station. If you stomp on the brakes hard at low speed the ABS light will flash. This I have investigated and is due to a tired brake accumulator sphere. It's easy to replace thankfully. It's running brilliantly at the moment.

The XK8 will get a run this evening. Battery not gone flat after a week and it fired right up, this bodes well. I need to diagnose an error on the heater control panel.

That's about it for this week's update. It's all fun and games at Broadsword motors.

[bezzabsa]

Lovely burble from the Big cat

[The Moog]

Easy fix there then with the air filter

[J-T]

My god, have you ever seen a more miserable looking vehicle than that. Look at that interior in 2004!! Absolutely everything about it scream extreme POV, weren't they about 5/6 grand new?

XK8 is lovely, it amazes me how cheap they are, surely their time is coming a la XJS?

[Broadsword]

23 hours ago, J-T said:

My god, have you ever seen a more miserable looking vehicle than that. Look at that interior in 2004!! Absolutely everything about it scream extreme POV, weren't they about 5/6 grand new?

XK8 is lovely, it amazes me how cheap they are, surely their time is coming a la XJS?

I think the Perodua at the time was basically the cheapest-four wheeled car-like thing you could possibly buy.

There are many nice looking XK8s you can buy right now for not very much at all. Not so many with LPG though, which is why I'm pleased with mine. I guess the tipping point will come in due course. A few more will have to succumb to rust and drive-train failure before that happens.

Not much more additional fettling occurred this weekend. One of the bonnet catch cables is seized on the XK8 which makes shutting that side a pain. I will see if I can fashion a new cable. It doesn't look too difficult to get to as the cable runs under the wiper arms. Here is some video action blasting down the B-roads. It drives really well and smooths out some quite poor quality road surfaces. Grip is plentiful.

 

[dome]

Lovely looking thing! XK8s not bad either?

If you're going to tackle the exhaust yourself I can recommend jetex custom exhaust for silencers and other parts. You can get them from Merlin Motorsport

https://www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk/s/exhausts/jetex-performance-exhaust-systems-parts

[Broadsword]

So the Range Rover failed it’s MOT today, but only on an oil leak from the engine. It’s not really excessive but the whole engine area has become oily over time which of course makes it look worse. He could just have well let it pass, but hey ho. At least it’s only one thing to fix over the weekend. I think this can be counted as a success.

[Broadsword]

Weather crap today, which has postponed fixing the P38 oil leak. It has to go back for retest Monday/Tuesday as I'm away from Wednesday so will crack on with repairs tomorrow. I'm also eager to replace some blow dash bulbs. Went to scrap yard to hunt for bits, saw a P38 behind some gates. Annoyingly the yard is too full to put it out, I'm gagging to get my mits on it though.

In unrelated news I did some 0-60 MPH runs in the XK8 in "sport" mode and the results are good. It can do the 0-60 dash fairly easy in 6 seconds which tells me the less restrictive exhaust is really doing something. Video below. The sound at full throttle is pretty nice. With things going well on the XK8 I'm tempted to get the Mina gallery air intake pipe upgrade. The factory air intake is pretty poor so I can believe the 7-11 BHP increase claimed.

 

[Broadsword]

The Range Rover scraped through the MOT today. I didn't have time to do a thorough job on the oil leak, but got it done. I will have to look at the oil filter housing and oil cooler lines coming out there in more detail when conditions permit. It might need a new assembly. No a problem, just need the bits. Right now I just wanted the MOT.

The fleet has been buttoned up now as I'm away on travels till the new year. The P38 joins the Jags at the farm. All vehicles seem to be running happily. They should be able to sit for a couple of weeks without damage. I just disconnected the batteries.

A brief end of year tat account off the top of my head. So cars bought/sold/present in the Lord's year 2019:

Jaguar XJS 3.6 manual (project, came up not terrible, interesting car with the manual box)

Two Jaguar XJR6s sold, one turquiose the other carnival red

Jaguar S-type 3.0 manual

VW Lupo (from this parish, a keeper)

Faithful servant Citroen Xantia of Excellence sold after 14,000 miles smooth sailing

Forum Red Bike Jaguar XJ6 3.2 Sport (briefly for the second time before I got distracted)

Another Jaguar XJR6 now in signal red (remarkably machine a keeper, the third XJR6 I've had now, must be mad)

Jaguar X-type 3.0 V6 manual (actually quite agreeable when not rusty or broken)

Jaguar XJ6 X300 4.0 Sport auto (looked terrible when acquired, came up not bad in the end)

Jaguar XJ6 X350 3.0 V6 LPG - started well but became quite faulty broke even on the affair and facilitated the next purchase...

Jaguar XK8 4.0 V8 LPG (a fabulous, fabulous car)

Perodua Nippa (my first Roffle win)

I struggle to deiced which is the best buy of the year. Highlights for me are the Lupo because it's just so damn useful and capable. The XJR6 is also wonderful and in great condition for what it is. The XK8 is also up there. What do you all think?