Stopgap Jaguar X350 XJ

[ChocolateFrog]

Bought sight unseen, again. My new car is due to arrive at the end of March but with new car deliveries as they are it'll probably slip to the right. I'm hoping the Jag will fill the gap.

A X350 TDVI with 120000 miles and a ton of history, 6 main dealer services and 12 Jaguar specialist services.



Arrived to collect to find it was " just going through the car wash". Waited 15 minutes and the dealer arrived. "You won't believe it but the air suspension fault light came on this morning", he's right I didn't.

Took it for a test drive anyway, it seemed to drive fine so we agreed on £200 off, time will tell if that was a wise decision.

Annoyingly my Bluetooth dongle won't connect to the car so I can't read the codes. I've gambled in the mean time that it's a compressor fault and have bought a rebuild kit for a surprisingly reasonable £25.

It's got Pirelli winter tyres on that I'm hoping are the cause of the slight rumble coming from the rear and when I was backing it up to the garage I was thinking the parking sensors should be beeping by now, yep they don't work either.

On the plus side it did 50mpg back home on the M62, unless it's lying to me, quite possible.

[ChocolateFrog]

Not many photos as I just wanted to get it done but got the air compressor out and gave it a service.

Turned out it was the original so it's not done too badly.

Error light hasn't come back so I think that fixed it. Hardest part was dealing with the arch liner fixings.

£175 up on the deal which is nice because I'm now fairly sure the tyres are knackered.

[RC1807]

Uneven tyre wear often causes the rumble. A mate experienced this with his leased BMW when the lease company told the tyre place to put PW winters on as the lease was coming to the end in a couple of months, despite charging more than EUR120/month for tyres!

Anyway, you can often feel the uneven wear by running a bare hand across and around the tread.

[ChocolateFrog]

They're winters too, which I'm sure isn't helping things.

My gut feeling is its been standing for quite a while, it hasn't covered many miles in the last couple of years. The wear actually looks fairly even and there's loads of meat left on them.

[RC1807]

winters = soft tread
left standing, not good

easily fixed, though

[mattman]

following with interest - the X350 has recently become an ebay search for me, the look so much more expensive than they are and i quite like the idea of wafting around in a huge barge for a while

[ChocolateFrog]

RC1807 said:

winters = soft tread
left standing, not good

easily fixed, though

Yep, just kicking myself for not getting up to speed on the test drive and finding out then, a lesson to everyone.

They're also date stamped 2015, lesson relearned.

[W201_190e]

Looks good, I briefly had one and enjoyed it.

The struts can be a pain, £900 a corner before fitting and there is little in the way of aftermarket alternatives.

[strangehighways]

An X350 is definitely on the horizon when my X308 XJR eventually becomes not worth fixing every year (just got a fresh ticket after ABS unit fixed and new power steering pump).