XJR is in for it's service.... what will they find???

[Piersman2]

Dropped the XJR (2003) off for it's service this morning.

It's not gonna be cheap, 100K service (the big one!!), gearbox fluid and filter change, MOT and a check on where the oil leak is coming from.

I've also asked for a them to phone me with a price for a gearbox software reflash.

Looking at £1K or thereabouts all in , although to be fair I've been running the car for 18months/15K miles with spending anything other than 2 tyres and front pads so can't complain.

Anyone else had an oil leak from these yet? I'm wondering what they are likley to find!!!

[BigNige]

My X308 mists oil from one of the rocker box covers and that's

a) not uncommon and
b) a piece of wee wee to fix (new gasket)

[Piersman2]

Just had them off the phone.

Based on the list of things they have found it would appear I should be budgetting about £5K LOL

I do love it when you put your car in for a service and they go over it with a fine tooth comb looking for things to fault.

So I've just sat there for 5 mins going "No, I'll skip that.." as they reel off another thing they say needs fixing.

Off the top of my head, items included:

New rear pads and disks, apparently they are worn.
Buckled wheels
All new tyres all round despite having the fronts replaced just a couple of thousand ago.
Brake fluid change
Timing belt tensioner upgrade 'cos apparently they can't just replace the belt that's in there as it needs all new bits to make the new belt work. Which seems a bit suss to me when they are talking £500 to do the new bits.
Various suspension bushes.


I reckon, that if I turned round and said "Do it all", I could be looking at a £5K bill, which, seeing as the car is only worth about £10K would be somewhat excessive LOL

[groomi]

Piersman2 said:

Just had them off the phone.

Based on the list of things they have found it would appear I should be budgetting about £5K LOL

I do love it when you put your car in for a service and they go over it with a fine tooth comb looking for things to fault.

So I've just sat there for 5 mins going "No, I'll skip that.." as they reel off another thing they say needs fixing.

Off the top of my head, items included:

New rear pads and disks, apparently they are worn.
Buckled wheels
All new tyres all round despite having the fronts replaced just a couple of thousand ago.
Brake fluid change
Timing belt tensioner upgrade 'cos apparently they can't just replace the belt that's in there as it needs all new bits to make the new belt work. Which seems a bit suss to me when they are talking £500 to do the new bits.
Various suspension bushes.


I reckon, that if I turned round and said "Do it all", I could be looking at a £5K bill, which, seeing as the car is only worth about £10K would be somewhat excessive LOL

Is your car an X308 or the newer aluminium X350?

[a8hex]

Piersman2 said:

Timing belt tensioner upgrade 'cos apparently they can't just replace the belt that's in there as it needs all new bits to make the new belt work. Which seems a bit suss to me when they are talking £500 to do the new bits.

XJRs don't have timing belts they have chains
A 2003 car should surely have the generation 3 metal tensioners. Earlier plastic ones are known to fail taking the whole engine with them. There is now apparently a 4th generation one, but I've not read the articles in the press about them.

[groomi]

• Being a post 2001 car, your engine will already have the phase 3 timing tensioners and will not need any upgrade. They are trying it on here!
• Suspension bushes will always come up in a service because a part worn one is never as good as a new one. Where you draw the line for replacement is however soon you want to spend the pennies.
• Discs and pads - if they need doing, they need doing. Do them yourself to save the pennies?
• Buckled wheels - questionable one. Why do they say this, are your wheels kerbed and mangled?
• Tyres - are they worn oddly. Ie. if the wheels are buckled, has it had a knock and running dodgy tracking which is wearing your tyres out?

I'm guessing you'd know if you'd bent wheels and tracking etc, so this sounds a little dodgy. The timing 'belts' bit is definately trying it on though...

Without naming and shaming, whereabouts is the garage?

[Piersman2]

Just to clarify to all it's an X350 alumunium bodied 4.2 R.

Please bear in mind that I'm talking to a reception girl when they are describing what's needing doing. When I started asking her about the 'belt' she had to go off twice and eventually put someone else on the phone to explain.

It may actually be the drive belts for the supercharger etc... they are talking about rather than timing belts, however, the same problem applies. They will not / can not just change the belt as per service intervals as they want to up / have to upgrade the tensioners... this is not part of the service quoted.

So worth bearing in mind that these engines seem to have a hidden £500 bill when they reach 100K.

What I am surprised at is the apparent inability of the service desk to track down and change out the existing spec. belt, it's only 5 years old !!! I've had no issues at all with the engine performance or noise wise, and maybe the tensioners have been upgraded, but now I'm left feeling I have a belt which could go anytime becuase they can't / won't just swap it out for a new one.

Edited by Piersman2 on Tuesday 26th May 14:17

[Piersman2]

groomi said:

*Being a post 2001 car, your engine will already have the phase 3 timing tensioners and will not need any upgrade. They are trying it on here!

• Suspension bushes will always come up in a service because a part worn one is never as good as a new one. Where you draw the line for replacement is however soon you want to spend the pennies.
• Discs and pads - if they need doing, they need doing. Do them yourself to save the pennies?
• Buckled wheels - questionable one. Why do they say this, are your wheels kerbed and mangled?
• Tyres - are they worn oddly. Ie. if the wheels are buckled, has it had a knock and running dodgy tracking which is wearing your tyres out?

I'm guessing you'd know if you'd bent wheels and tracking etc, so this sounds a little dodgy. The timing 'belts' bit is definately trying it on though...

Without naming and shaming, whereabouts is the garage?

The pads and discs I will do myself, no probs.
Buckled wheels.... well they were spotless when I got it, and I have 'just' caught them on kerbs round here which are really sharp, but I've been driving the car each time, at approx. zero miles an hour so i would be amazed if that could have buckled the whole wheel!!! If so it must be minutely out.
The rear tyres I knew needed replacing, I'll get that sorted this week.
The fronts are only a few thousand old, they may be wearing on the inner edges, but then that may be my fault for letting a little polish man at my local kwikfits fvck around with the tracking when I had the new fronts fitted!! I may ask the garage today to check and set the tracking properly to jag spec. rather than polish farm worker spec.
As to the bushes etc... I'll wait to replace them when it starts failing MOTs with them or I actually start to feel something is not right!


Apparently it did have a small leak out of the sump of the gearbox, which should be cured with the fluid and filter change. And it has a small oil leak from the 'diffuser cover' or something? Anyone know what that is or could be bearing in mind the chinese whispers from bad handwriting of the workshop, through to the receptionist through to me?

So if my gaerbox was leaking and losing fluid, it's safe to say that they are not truly sealed for life.... get your levels checked regularly guys. I had to pay out £2K when the gearbox on my old '98 XJR went, don't want to do that again!!!

[a8hex]

Sealed for life means the manufacturer is prepared to take a bet on it lasting to the end of any factory backed warrantee. There was an article a few months ago in the JEC rag about changing the fluid in "sealed for life" gear boxes.

[groomi]

Yep, had mine done a few years ago and topped up since. Sealed for life, just like the non-service item tensioners...

[anonymous-user]

Sounds like typical stealership tricks to me. Find a good independent and I bet you'd get change from £1000 for everything that actually needs doing, and no bullst list of "put some DFA on the flux capacitor" items.

Dave

[piquet]

if you need the front and rear suspension bushes doing, which if you haven;t had them done by 100k is really quite impressive then you could be looking at over a 1k for the parts, the suspension components are all ali apart from the bushes, when you replace the bushes you can't just replace them, you have to replace the whole component, jaguar don;t think it's safe to push the bushes in and out and think it will damage the ali components, there are at the moment no third part people making them either the whole suspension component or the bush

[NormanD]

As you live in Berkshire I would take your car to Tom at TLJaguar 0118-973-7779

He is a VERY GOOD independant Jaguar specialist, would not cost you 5K

[Piersman2]

Well, I told the Dealer just to do the 100K service, change the gearbox fluids out and re-flash the gearbox software. This at least seems to have stopped the fluid leak I had under the car although at a price of £1029 I would bloody hope so.

So yesterday I took it in for it's MOT, passed with a couple of advisories about the tyres, the rears are 2mm, which I knew and actually was expecting them to fail it on these, and the fronts are worn on the inner edges, from 5mm in the middle, to 1mm on the inner edges!

Damn the Polish "tracker" man at Kwikfit who fvcked it up when I had the fronts fitted a few months ago.

Anyone know an outfit who can 'properly' set up the front steering and tracking? I don't even particularly trust the dealerships to do it right as the dealership said it would be a waste of time without new tyres fitted first, which is bks as the tracking is done based on the wheel rims, not the tyres!

[Jagfox]

NormanD said:

As you live in Berkshire I would take your car to Tom at TLJaguar 0118-973-7779

He is a VERY GOOD independant Jaguar specialist, would not cost you 5K

Having used him recently, i would confirm that Tom is very good- definitely recommend him.

[jkennyd]

a8hex said:

Piersman2 said:

Timing belt tensioner upgrade 'cos apparently they can't just replace the belt that's in there as it needs all new bits to make the new belt work. Which seems a bit suss to me when they are talking £500 to do the new bits.

XJRs don't have timing belts they have chains
A 2003 car should surely have the generation 3 metal tensioners. Earlier plastic ones are known to fail taking the whole engine with them. There is now apparently a 4th generation one, but I've not read the articles in the press about them.

The XJR308 has Belts

[a8hex]

jkennyd said:

The XJR308 has Belts

Perhaps we are talking across purpose, but this is the time chain in the V8

[P700DEE]

V8s use a timining chain, however the garage may be refering to the supercharger and acessory belt. On my generation 4.0 (XKR) I have a different design of belt to that fitted to later 4.2 cars. You may now struggle to get replacement idler and tensioners and there is an upgrade path of new belt, idler and tensioner. Old belts are still available but a dealer could claim that the new belt design needs the new tensioner and idler ? Did early X350 4.2s use the older belt design ?

[Piersman2]

P700DEE said:

V8s use a timining chain, however the garage may be refering to the supercharger and acessory belt. On my generation 4.0 (XKR) I have a different design of belt to that fitted to later 4.2 cars. You may now struggle to get replacement idler and tensioners and there is an upgrade path of new belt, idler and tensioner. Old belts are still available but a dealer could claim that the new belt design needs the new tensioner and idler ? Did early X350 4.2s use the older belt design ?

Yes, you've summed it up here and is what they were trying to persuade me part with £500 for.

I refused their kind offer.

But now of course I worry that my belt could go at any second LOL

[a8hex]

I'd hazard a guess that a broken belt won't cause cause as many problems. It will probably spoil your day, but breaking the chain will wreck the whole engine. This was a known problem with early Jaguar V8s.