Jaguar Jobs
Its been 10 months and I have not been able to do anything to the XJ6 other than pile stuff up on it! I have made some drawings and discussed with the local planning office what is an acceptable option regarding expanding the garage. More to follow once I get planning approved.
I have however been carrying out a number of repairs and maintenance tasks to the family cars since my last update. Also fitted a kitchen and all sorts of other non car related tasks!
- XKR larger jobs
- Changed disks and pads all round and upgraded to red stuff pads. Seems very similar to the previous standard pad but does produce less dust
- Had a weird issue where the fog lights stopped working – Story here
- Had the well known “green shower” issue- story here
- Replaced the coolant header tank to fix the “low coolant” error message
- Replaced the anti roll bar rubber bushes as they failed and caused the roll bar to clonk against the chassis at the slightest bump
- I still have a fairly regular “restricted Performance” error message. I have twice looked though all the intake piping for leaks but struggling to resolve this error.
- X-Type jobs
- Changed disks and pads all round. A week later the brake fluid level light came on and further investigation revealed I had a leak from the drivers side rear caliper. I replaced the caliper with a refurbished one from a local auto factors however it had an issue with the automatic handbrake adjustment. After a few miles and applying the hand brake a couple of times, the pads remained pushed up against the disk. This caused binding and overheating. I rewound the caliper back in again and went on a long trip to Le Mans without using the handbrake. Whilst there it started to bind up again. I removed the caliper and wound the piston back in and it was OK for a few miles then did the same again. I then wound the piston back in again but this time left the handbrake cable disconnected. We drove back from France quite happily. After about a week of driving without issue I reconnected the handbrake. 5 miles later, binding again. The Auto factors were great and swapped out the faulty one without issue. We drove the car for a further couple of weeks without issue before returning the original old caliper to get the deposit back.
- We were getting ODB” error messages pointing to one of the 02 sensors. Because I was so busy with the house, we dropped it off at the local garage. They changed an 02 sensor and it worked for a couple of days but the error returned. The garage said they used a “replacement” part and swapped it out for a genuine Jaguar part. It lasted another two days before the error came back again. The garage then looked at it and said there must be an error with the loom so take it to a jaguar dealer. I decided it was time for me to get involved and noticed that the error message was different to the one we initially had. It too, pointed an 02 sensor, bank 1 upstream. I took of the connector and measured across the heater pins. It was reading ~1.6k ohms where as the bank 2 sensor was reading just an ohm or two. I ordered a replacement from S & G Barratt part number C2S51801# which is an alternative (SNG Barratt recommended) part. It costs £75 +VAT compared to £134 +VAT for the Jaguar original. It was a bit of a pain to remove the old one but managed to get there and problem has been resolved for over a month now.
- Having attended the Le Mans Classic with me for the second time, my daughter decided that she wanted a classic car as her first car. We ended up with a 1976 MG Midget 1500. It is a little rough around the edges but nothing a little finessing from me cant resolve. Yet another car to add to the endless list of jobs. Especially with a front suspension requiring a grease every 1500 miles!
- Replace disks and pads on sons Renault Clio. Nothing else really to say about that
Can’t wait to build a new garage with a two post lift 🙂