Jaguar XK Autobox jerk - advice please

[dba7108]

Looking at buying an XK (1999 4.0 litre) off a friend. The car is in very good condition apart from the autobox. It drives smooth and no problems apart from when the car is stationery and you pull off, it jerks slightly, but once your moving it's fine. Any advice please - the car is cheap he said I can have it for 2500 pounds, similar ones on autotrader are a good deal more. It has 132k miles on the clock.

Thanks

[Jaguar steve]

Any hesitation or jolt when taking up drive. Is a cause for concern with the ZF gearbox. Jaguar claimed these were sealed for life and no oil changes were required. Several gearboxes have failed due to lubrication breakdown and a jolt when taking up drive or hesitation engaging gars is a classic symptom of gearbox failure.

You might get away with a fluid and filter change but at that mileage if the oil had never been changed then I'd suspect the worst and take the view the car needs a new gearbox

[Piersman2]

I had a 2003 XJR which I bought with 90K on the clock. I know it's not the same box but it exhibited the same symptom, a slight hesitation as you started off and the box changed up from 1st to 2nd. I tried a re-programme and a fluid change but it made no difference. I lived with it for about 25K miles without any perceptible worsening. From what I could research on line it was probably due to a sticky valve in the control body that could have been swapped out. I never bothered although it was a little bit irritating if I was doing a lot of town driving.

Before that, I also had issues with the box on my 1998 XJR, that is the same box. And it munched it's 'sealed for life' box at 110K miles.

So I've made sure recently to change out the fluid on my current XJR as it's gone through 60K miles.

[dba7108]

What would the cost be for a refurbed box fitted? Ball park figure. Trying to factor it into the buying price.

thanks

[hman]

I have the ZF in my bmw - after pulling a trailer mine does this, a quick throttle reset (position 2 no start, foot to the floor for 30 secs, then release and start the car) solves it. The adpative whatsit gets used to the trailer shunt and counters it until I reset it!

[ashjones]

Try disconnecting the battery for a couple of hours to reset the gearbox. My 2005 XJR used to have this problem and the battery trick would solve it for about 2-3 months until it came back.