Jaguar XJ-S V12 from the opposite end of Britain and a MG

[jamieduff1981]

My wife, two daughters and I drove our 127,000 mile 2005 3.0 X-Type, bought when my 11 year old daughter was a baby as a stop-gap family car which we never got round to selling, 600 miles south to view and subsequently buy my first V12 on Saturday.







It hasn't had much use at all recently - having covered only 500 miles in the last 4 years and only 5000 miles since around 2003. It's in pretty good condition, but not perfect and was priced accordingly. I bought it. We stayed in a Premier Inn overnight and set off home with 2 cars yesterday morning.



Knowing these cars enjoy an unenviable reputation for reliability, coupled with the fact that it has seen very limited use recently and knowing there's often a good reason for that, I was perhaps a bit pessimistic about getting home under my own power. Indeed 8 years ago when I bought a TVR Cerbera 4.5 (another dream car of mine) I lost my clutch slave cylinder on the way home and arrived many hours overdue on the back of an AA lorry.



I stopped for fuel at a service station and felt great disappointment at having broken down when I saw the AA parked outside, then realised I hadn't called them and they weren't here for me like some automotive Grim Reaper.



Still, it felt like the vultures were circling. I'm pretty sure I was down a cylinder or perhaps 2 on the left bank. My wife told me it gave more visible eject from the left exhaust under power, and idling I could feel the gentlest little kick from the engine as it ran. The fuel gauge would only go up to 3/4 at first, but improved along the journey each top up, making its way up to 9/10s by Perth when I topped up for the final time.



However, I made it home under my own power, and the car seemed to get better the further I drove.

Edited by jamieduff1981 on Monday 14th March 08:42

Edited by jamieduff1981 on Monday 14th March 08:45

[jamieduff1981]

Northbrook said:

Looks nice!

How many petrol stops?!

Thanks! I think we did five in total but apart from the first the rest were top ups in. The seller said he'd put £20 in already but the orange light flickered on under acceleration or braking. The first fillup cost £97 to brim which was about 75 litres.

The gauge only went up to 3/4 and I had no real idea what it was drinking so we stopped again on the M40 after an hour and a bit to have breakfast and after 80 miles I got another 20 litres in to the 2-clicks. We drove another 123 miles and stopped somewhere in the Manchesterish sort of lattitudes and this time it took 30 litres to top off. At Carlisle we stopped again for lunch and I topped it off again. I think it took about 45 litres that time. We had to stop once more at Perth because our youngest needed the toilet and I got something like 35 litres in. Obviously it would have gone much further on a tank but with such limited use previously I thought the vacuum advance in the distributor is probably seized and mpg might be down to 15-16 in the cruise and since most of these cars are concentrated in the south and east of England where population density and hence road congestion is really bad compared to my usage I had wildly varying figures for what to expect. Also - I'm 40 now so can't drive a whole tankfull without needing a toilet break!


I'm not exactly sure why but my fuel consumption is usually very good when I go for a cruise. I think I'm fairly good at reading the road ahead and avoiding wasting energy. Nevertheless, I couldn't get near the book figure for a 56mph cruise. Not a chance!

Edited by jamieduff1981 on Monday 24th May 11:19

Edited by jamieduff1981 on Monday 14th March 08:47

[jamieduff1981]

Thanks both of you!

I have been half-way planning this for months and watch the above mentioned channels as well as a useful one called "Living With A Classic" where the host gives lots of really useful practical tutorials on things like how to set up the throttles correctly or how to replace the injector hoses and seals. I already had a deposit on the car above when Harry's video showing the sealing face of his cylinder heads showed up and I was sat on the sofa thinking "What have you done Jamie?". Still, I'll burn that bridge when I come to it...

I'm away to go order a set of Teflon replacement throttle linkage spindle bushes which work properly and don't need gaskets to be disturbed to replace as well as a set of fuel injector hoses and seals. They're good at catching fire, these, when the old rubber hoses turn brittle and rupture. Common on TVRs too. In fact I dodged a bullet with my Cerbera when I happened to spot the tiniest little nick in a fuel hose above the engine just starting to weep fuel - I didn't drive it that day! Come to think of it, anyone driving an older car with rubber fuel hoses really ought to think about renewing them if they don't want a fire.

[jamieduff1981]

Thanks everyone! I'll give an update on the car later today but in the mean time, if anyone has a lot of time to burn, for example if you're a passenger on a 600 mile drive today, here are two short videos my daughter recorded on our trip home on Sunday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS9cC3wIgP4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZRdCBfIG38

[jamieduff1981]

Righto,

Confession time. My drive home was as stated about 600 miles long. I managed the first 599.5 of them but did ground out on a bump near home and I assumed it was the exhaust.

My dad came to see the car yesterday and we took it out for a drive, then I did it again (I'm a bit thick, apparently). Last night we took it out as a family and it started to get a bit loud and droney when running at constant speed, so I had a look underneath. The intermediate pipe for the right bank has a sleeve joint with a couple of clamps on it, and it's now hanging down, bent and blowing. Oops - but I can't find this sleeve joint on anyone else's exhaust photographs nor photos of replacement parts so I surmise it's been a minimum-cost repair which I've undone. That needs sorted because it's loud in a bad way.



Next, in keeping with the often-observed pattern of cars mostly getting money spent on them by new owners, I went on a spending spree. First up was a set of fuel injector hoses, seals, filters and end caps.





The Youtube channel "Living With a Classic" gives a good tutorial on how to fit these - specifically the injector parts themselves.

Next, I ordered a set of 12 spark plugs. The Jaguar part number ebc4021 nets the right ones.

I'd determined that the throttle linkages were all to pot also due to the common issue of spindle bushes falling apart. I've bought aftermarket items made from Teflon and which are of a tophat design retained by a clip. These can be fitted in seconds without having to dismantle the throttle linkages and disturbing gasket joints etc. They are quite expensive at 36Euro posted from the guy in Lithuania who makes them, but unlike the OE parts they should actually work properly and last a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv09DdZynZM

Lastly, whilst I've found that dim instrument cluster lights are a common complaint, I had none. Nothing whatsoever. Last night I removed the cluster, found the bulbs intact, verified that the fuses were all intact then turned my attention to the rheostat which dims the lights. These are truely bad items which excel only at varying resistance from somewhere between high and "may as well be open-circuit". Nevertheless I got my multimeter ready, unplugged the red/blue connection to the rheostat which is supposed to be the 12v supply to it, turned on the sidelights in preparation for testing the wire and the dashboard lit up. I haven't quite figured out what's going on there yet...

Edited by jamieduff1981 on Monday 14th March 08:50

[jamieduff1981]

Yeah I was looking at the LED sets but the outlay was an offput and I figured that if I had no lights at all it was a circuitry issue and expensive LEDs wouldn't help that anyway - I'd just have more expensive things which still didn't light up!

[jamieduff1981]

LanceRS said:

On my list of all time favourite cars and they drive surprisingly well given their age.

Run some of this stuff through it, works wonders on clearing through cars that have not been used.

Thanks! I agree about the drive. I set my expectations very low and thought this car was mostly just about ticking off a V12 from my list, but it has surprised me with just how bad it isn't to drive. I've got a bottle of Redex in the tank right now just to see if they help with the misfire (and the misfire is, I think, getting a little better).

Here's a short update covering the exhaust issues and noting that my instrument binnacle now lights up for confusing reasons!

https://youtu.be/x2QKt3bVz2Y

For those not inclined to click amateurish Youtube links, I seem to have a loud, boomy back box on the left side which I'd thought was being caused by the obvious blow on that dodgy joint on the right side.

I removed the instrument cluster to check out the non-functioning lights. The bulbs seemed good and the green plastic filters were still a nice green rather than brown shade. Having checked the fuses, I turned my attention to the rheostat which I've recently learned is a common problem source, I unplugged the red/blue 12v cable from it to test for power with my multimeter. As soon as I turned on the sidelights in this condition, the instruments lit up. No, I don't understand that either...

[jamieduff1981]

The wipers have, touch wood, been ok since that drive home. I've lubricated the door window runners with silicone as the glass stuck once or twice and they've been better since.

This morning I took the car to Turriff Tyres, a Powerflow exhaust centre to ask them what they could offer as a comparison with online pricing for stuff I'd have to then fit myself. The price for a stainless system seemed attractive but I hadn't planned to spend that yet so instead I'm going for their initial suggestion of "making the current exhaust better" by doing a proper job of those sleeved joints. It's being dropped off on Saturday morning for that and I can carry on with Plan A (Amended) of just giving it a proper service and re-set up and drive it for about a year and see how the car goes.

I have been studying the paperwork that came with the car including a letter by a previous owner (who's obituary we found online - he passed away 2 years ago aged 80). The car did almost all of its milage with few owners early on, and was acquired by a chap when its lady registered keeper and her husband emigrated to Canada 20 years ago. This chap then spent some money on the car, kept it in a heated garage but mostly kept it on SORN until 2016. The elderly gentleman who wrote this history was a personal acquaintance of heated-garage-man and, upon hearing that the owner had lost interest in the Jaguar and bought a big Harley Davidson which was to take pride of place in said heated garage, relegating the Jaguar to sit outside in the rain, bought the car mostly to prevent that happening but without any intention of using it being 77 years old himself at that point. He paid for some minimal recommissioning work, got an MOT on the car and offered it up for auction in 2017. It covered 500 miles since then.

Having now been under the car, the condition of it underneath is far better than I'd dared to hope given how this car was priced compared to others for sale. That's not to say there will not be expense along the way, but I am quite happy that my car is a pretty fair example and that I paid lower-end money for it that is otherwise what one would pay for an okay-ish 3.6 AJ6 example or a rougher 4.0 AJ16.

[jamieduff1981]

alabbasi said:

No interior pictures? That might be the prettiest part of these cars

That's a good point - I've just taken some. Please excuse the lighting but it didn't seem worth a cold-start to move the car out of the garage just for interior photos. It's light grey inside.

Generally the interior is good. There are no obvious cracks, breakages or other damage on the dashboard, doorcards, switchgear of the wood inserts. There's some wear showing on the driver's seat bolster, but I am happy this is a Furniture Clinic job rather than in need of re-upholstering. The back seats are like new and the front passenger seat not far behind. Even the driver's seat foam is excellent. The carpets are intact but a bit dirty and in need of a good shampooing, and there's a cigarette burn beside the passenger sill. The headlining is new but strangely the trim pieces either side were not renewed and these are the scabbiest bits of the interior and definitely need replaced - all four bits are dirty/discoloured and the passenger side one has a cigarette burn at the top of the door aperture whilst the driver side one is just ripped. The sunvisors are likewise discoloured but otherwise in good condition - I'm concerned they'll be the weak link in the interior - the jury is out on those... The boot is in good condition with the jack etc still present.

The seats are so different from modern cars. They're soft and squishy. They are supportive enough but in a more comfortable way. Modern seats are extremely hard - my 2014 XFR-S was a massive step down in seat comfort compared to my 2005 S-type Sport which itself was inferior to my 1998 Rover 620iS but this car is in a different league. Modern cars are like sitting in children's high-back booster seats - very hard foam made slightly less objectionable by offering 18 electric motors in them to move the solid slabs around.

Edited by jamieduff1981 on Monday 14th March 08:56

[jamieduff1981]

Stick Legs said:

Having owned a few of these I just had an involuntary imagined olfactory response!

I swear looking at those pictures I can smell petrol, leather and damp!

Due to a weep from a cam cover mine mostly smells of petrol and hot oil. It's very reminiscent of my Cerbera

[jamieduff1981]

LanceRS said:

It’s a British Leyland smell, I seem to remember that Triumphs smell the same

Now you come to mention it, it's been a while since I sat in my MG but that smells similar also. Perhaps a more vinyl than leather smell, but still...

alabbasi said:

It looks good. I'm always impressed at how well interiors hold up in the UK. Most are ruined here.

I think things vary a lot depending on the specific people involved. There are interiors here in bad condition also. How careful someone is matters a lot. Some people just wreck everything they touch - I suppose I'm lucky that my family is very careful and doesn't destroy everything so if we get an interior in good condition it tends to stay that way. How physically fit versus overweight etc can change a lot about how a person sits into a seat and gets back out of a car also in that some can better control where they land and how hard whilst others are like a 200lb sack of potatoes crashing into the seat sideways across the bolsters every time they get in.

[jamieduff1981]

Despite having a new MOT, the rear fog lights didn't work. Also, not an MOT issue but only driver's side reverse light works, the Lucas front fog lights don't seem to work and the red puddle lamp on the driver's door doesn't work.

The rear fog lights now do work with new bulbs, some contact cleaner and spraying a reflector who's chrome had turned black with silver.

The front fogs have yet to be looked at.

The passenger side reverse light has a dead festoon bulb, but I live in the middle of nowhere and don't want to crash into anything I own in winter when it's dark for long periods up here in the north east (of Scotland, not 250 miles south in the north east of England!) so I've ordered a set of these LEDs which are brighter and direct the light out behind the car. There are no reflectors for the festoon bulbs as standard so they're more "watch out old boy I'm reversing at you" lamps than things which actually illuminate the space you're backing in to.
https://bettercarlighting.co.uk/index.php?act=view...

The driver side puddle lamp bulb seems good, but I don't have 12v at its connections so that needs investigated further.

I forgot to see if the headlight wipers worked when I bought the car. I've just checked and only the driver's side works so the passenger side headlight wiper can be added to the list of things to check out.

All of the above is firmly in the realm of "niggles" though, and nothing which prevents me getting into the car and driving it somewhere.

My 12 new spark plugs arrived so once back from having the dodgy exhaust taken care of, I can strip off the fuel rail from the engine to change all the fuel hoses and seals and replace all 12 plugs with new whilst we're in there.

We're hoping to take the car on a week's holiday in August so my wife has asked if I can get the air conditioning pressure tested sooner rather than later. I expect all the seals are knackered and it'll leak like a sieve, but if I confirm that soon enough we might be able to get it working in time.

[jamieduff1981]

Sf_Manta said:

My dad's manager had one of these, and my dad would loath driving it when he had to borrow it for customer visits.

Any kind of rain, even light drizzle would result in a full on rainstorm hitting the windscreen due to the length of the front end. Is this the case? curious to know

There was some moderate rain and enough to cause a lot of road spray on the way up the road. I noticed nothing at all untoward however an interesting feature which doesn't impact safety is that due to the thick lip caused by the windscreen seal, water runs up the windscreen and collects in a pool an inch from the top of the glass as it's reluctant to cross the seal and run over the roof. It looks a bit like you're driving in zero gravity or something...

I honestly can't say anything bad about the car in wet weather thus far though.

[jamieduff1981]

A new thing that appeared yesterday at the petrol station was a dead ignition key. After a few attempts the dashboard lit up and the car started right up. This morning it did it again from cold and there was something buzzing under the bonnet. When I asked my wife to identify what was buzzing, the car started instead so I still don't know and it's been dropped off to have the exhaust fixed.

The car seems to have some aftermarket immobiliser fitted and my instincts are directing me to that as it's as though the car's battery has been disconnected when I turn the key but I can't prove it yet. Assuming it behaves for the garage to fix the exhaust, I will look in to that as a matter of priority when I get it back!

[jamieduff1981]

The car has been picked up tonight after getting that exhaust sorted properly. The car is back to its original very quiet self again. I'm not going to start on the fuel injection refresh and spark plugs tonight - that can wait for a weekend - so instead I changed the tail light, brake light and reverse light bulbs for LEDs. They're much brighter now and in the former two cases give me slightly more comfort that your average inattentive pillock might see me and in the latter case more comfort that they will illuminate my pitch-black driveway area in the dark winter months here. The LEDs were easy direct fit replacements and are guaranteed for 5 years.

The original tail lights look passable in my shed with the lights off, but as mentioned previously my wife told me they were as much use as an ashtray on the back of a motorbike in wet weather with road spray.



Replacement was idiot proof:




Both sides completed, here's how the tail lights look now:



With the help of a block of wood, here are the brake lights:




The reverse lights replace the festoon bulbs with LED panels directing all their light out rearwards, but have a springy dummy festoon connector thing which uses the original contacts. In the grand scheme of things, still pretty idiot proof. Here the left hand reverse light has been changed for comparison with the original festoon bulb in the right.



Naturally though the set contains both sides - I'm not a savage.




Lastly, the post man brought this yesterday, which I hope doesn't come in handy too often (but I am trying to manage my own expectations)...

[jamieduff1981]

When I drove the car up from Southampton the water temperature gauge sat at between a quarter and one third up from cold. These cars and their electric gauges are all slightly different but that position seems fairly acceptable compared with other peoples' cars I've asked.

The last couple of times I've driven it the needle has risen to the N position in the middle and when I took it back from the garage yesterday it went up to the top of the "N".

I've got an infrared thermometer but the battery just died on it. The engine wasn't quite up to temperature but I was seeing 10 degrees difference between the position of the thermostat housings where the temperature senders are on the two banks and the coolant looks a bit scummy.

It's supposed to be changed every 2 years according to the book but some say with modern coolants with better corrosion inhibitors you can stretch that to 4-5 years. The stuff in my car is probably 20 years old so I've just ordered 2 new thermostats and housing gaskets and 10 litres of anti-freeze. I need to get 10 litres of distilled water and a new 9v battery for the thermometer, but anyway I think the car will benefit from flushing out the radiator, heater core and engine block and new thermostats that open at the same rate.

[jamieduff1981]

Paul S4 said:

Definitely I would do the coolant flush properly ...when I had my Lotus Elan I took a while to really back flush the radiator/block and used Radflush (?) until it ran clear. I would be tempted to put a new radiator in as well ; the modern ones are more efficient and that V12 will generate a lot of heat I would guess !!

Just a suggestion though.....would you ever consider changing the steering wheel for a wooden Nardi/Mota-Lita ?

Looking forward to your journey with your new car !

Hi Paul, That's a good point about the radiator although in honesty I hope I can get away without the expense this summer of doing that - I've checked prices and they're rather more than the cars I've had previously... I'll have a good look and see.

I do like the wooden & polished metal steering wheels but I do think they look a little at odds with the rest of the XJS interior in some respects. I prefer the look of the later 4 spoke wheel as the original 2-spoke isn't the car's greatest piece of aesthetic design, however this summer I'm going to concentrate on making sure it's running happily. Hence with the exception of those LEDs, everything I've spent so far (and it's mounting up fast, frighteningly) goes under the bonnet.

[jamieduff1981]

Hereward said:

I came across this article recently which goes against what I thought I knew:

https://www.hyperlube.com/blog/blog/why-you-should...

What are people's opinion on this?

I can kinda see what they're trying to drive at but they've fallen into the trap of pseudo-science. You can't ionise water by boiling it and condensing it again. You'd give yourself radiation poisoning by having hot drinks if that were the case.

Distilling water and de-ionising water are two different things. The water we find in nature has some (pretty low levels of) ions in it. Distillation boils the water to steam and anything with a similar boiling point will go with the steam and still be present in the condensed water. That includes the ions but not mineral salts which have much higher boiling points.

De-ionising is a much more complex process to strip ions out and you end up with something non-reactive.

Distilled water has no more ions than tap water - but the dissolved minerals have gone. Distilled water doesn't accelerate corrosion compared to tap water, but it does reduce deposits. Yes, de-ionised water *might* reduce corrosion still further but frankly that's what the corrosion inhibitor chemical in the anti-freeze concentrate is there to do. All corrosion is is the stripping of electrons from metals. Inhibiting that is literally what the corrosion inhibitor does.

[jamieduff1981]

That's why I'm doing this. I'm aware that the US market cars have a reputation for dropping valve seats. I'm not sure I've ever heard of one in the UK in all the time I've been trying to convince myself to buy one but I don't want to be the first. The stuff is on order. I'll flush out the radiator and see what comes out

[jamieduff1981]

I have a receipt for a battery that was replaced not too long ago. I do agree that life is too short for clapped out batteries but fortunately the one in at the moment seems reasonably strong.

I'm working my way through the electrical gremlins. I fixed the cigarette lighter today. Fortunately it was nothing worse than a corroded negative spade connector and general fuzz around part of the body. It's been cleaned up with a file and contact cleaner and is working correctly now.

Electrically I think the biggest present threat is the aftermarket immobiliser that's been fitted. Sometimes the car plays dead for a few turns of the key and all my instincts are pointing to that thing.