Jaguar XJ8 | Shed of the Week

An XJ8 in need of some TLC has caught Shed's eye this Friday. Fancy a rescue mission?

We were going to treat you to a 1956 Austin A30 this week, but the pics of it languishing in the owner's back yard were deemed too awful to use. Shame, but here's another British great to make up for it - a Jaguar XJ8.

The six-pot AJ16 engine in the preceding 1994-1997 X300 Jag was a tough and willing unit, but the V8s in these 1997-on X308s were somewhat more refined and cheaper to run. Sadly, though, they weren't perfect. These V8s blotted their copybook by having plastic secondary cam-chain tensioners. Our Shed is a 2000 car with 143,000 miles up so the expectation would be that its gen-one (or possibly gen-two) guide will have been replaced by one of the metal and plastic guides that became a retrofit option after 2003. Ideally the whole timing chain set will have been done, especially if the engine in any X308 you're looking at hasn't been given proper oil maintenance through its life. If you just needed to change the top guide, you'd be looking at £75-£100 for parts and three to four hours labour. You'd also want your engine to have an aluminium thermostat housing.

The cost of sorting this stuff out, if it needs sorting - the ad is light on service detail so we don't know the score on any of it - will have to be added to the cost of what look to be imminent bodywork repairs. The rust at the leading edge of the offside sill (?) is concerning for both the car and potentially the eyesight of the MOT tester who didn't see fit (sic) to mention it in June 2019, when it must surely have been present to some extent. Maybe he considered it to be the non-threatening type of rust, but if so he's making quite an assumption about the strength of the undercarriage on these Jags because when corrosion is visible to this extent, that generally means there's a ton more of it lurking unseen. The floors in general and the suspension mounting areas in particular rot for fun.

Another generic issue with Jags of this era was the linerless Nikasil-coated cylinder bores. These were changed to traditional steel liners after 2000. We're not going to get into the merits or otherwise of one over the other, as each side has its supporters. We'll just say that the way to find out which ones our Shed has is to look at the VIN number. Six digits at the end means Nikasil, five digits steel.

It's good that this car has a full stainless exhaust, but not so good that last year's MOT tester did notice a minor gas leak from it. On lowered suspension the wheels look to be quite a tight fit in the arches. The corollary of that will be a firmer ride, which for some might kill the whole point of owning an XJ. XJs were all about the near-mystical combination of handling and ride quality that the Browns Lane lads somehow managed to conjure up. The Sport was already on firmish springs when it came out of the factory, so you'd be well advised to take the vendor of this one at his word by nipping over there for a quick squirt.

The seller notes a droning noise from the back which he says has been diagnosed as rear wheel bearings. He'll be supplying new ones, but not fitting them. That will be down to you. When that's done, with luck you will find the droning stops. If it doesn't, it might have been the diff bearing all along. Ah.

Another small nail in this car's coffin is its Cat S status. The definition of a Cat S car is one that has sustained structural damage but not to the extent that it can't be safely repaired and put back on the road. In this case it does seem to have been a relatively minor incident, but you might want to put a call in to your friendly insurance agent.

With this list of negatives, you may think that £1,300 is strong money. In fact, you might think that £130 is a bit much, but if you love these old things and want to keep them on the roads you may not care. It is sadly true that these Jags are a bit long in the tooth now. Even for Shed, a dyed in the wool XJ fan but also a terrible skinflint, they are starting to lose their allure.

To while away his between-arguments time in exile, Shed likes to use his Amstrad to look up the origin of phrases. 'Dyed in the wool', for example, refers to wool being dyed in its raw state rather than after it's been turned into a garment. That made the colour more durable. The one about 'long in the tooth' comes from the equine world. The teeth of old horses looked longer. The reality of course was that the nag's gums were getting shorter, but never let the facts get in the way of a good saying. Applying some twisted logic to her own situation, Mrs Shed is hoping that her long gums and short teeth will translate into a long life, though perhaps not the call she would love to get from Vogue to feature on their front cover.

Here's the full ad