Morning all,
Firstly fab forum. Once I was able to get through the painful password reset process and able to log, I've been staggered by the range and detail of information available!. So thanks.


I've just bought my first XK8, after years and years of drooling after them. I bought a 1996 XK8 with 96k on the clock. Pretty good condition and drove well with a full MOT. The seats needed some attention (one was ripped on the bolster and the other had deep wrinkles which were ready to rip, and I decided to give it an MOT to be sure.
After spending £600 on the seats (which now look amazing), I had it MOT'd.


On buying the car, it had a blank passed MOT. The car failed on a whole number of counts and there were 2 page of advisory's which was strange.


The key point being that the underbody was rusted to hell. There had been an attempt to fill the holes (which were about 8" square and completely open) with metal and bathroom sealant. then there was a small panel welded over it. One wonders whether the people that did the new MOT did this work also.


Anyway, another £600 later and I have the car through it's mot with further advisories on filled sills and a couple of minor errors.


all in all, I'm ok with this as I only paid £3500 for it, so in all ive paid just under £5k for a very nice 1996 XK8 with under 100k miles. The colours I was after (dark blue with ivory seats and a dark dash), so I'm sort of ok. but it's definitely BUYER BEWARE.


I'll put my other points in a question as I guess you may have all lost the will to live, but I love my XK8!

 

Hi,
Buying a second hand car can be and usually is a nightmare. I have read several horror story's like yours, the problem is that looking at the outside of a car does not reveal the horrors lurking below. Ideally it would be best to have the car up in the air on a lift and go around underneath with a screwdriver looking for rust, but how many people will let you do that?

I am reluctant to pay big bucks for any used car working on the theory that if I don't spend much, I cannot loose much. If you can get yours sorted out within reasonable cost then you should have a car that will give you some years service. Any major item failing on my XJ, such as the engine or gearbox or in fact anything that cannot be fixed for under £1,000 means the car will be on it's way to the scrapyard.

 

Welcome to the land of Jaguar!

Rust is always the worst problem in acquiring a previously owned vehicle, especially one 19 years old.

The second worst problem is the secondary tensioners. The plastic ones that your car came with will fail and take the engine with it. Search the forum for 'tensioners' or look in the How To/DIY sticky above. If yours have not been changed to the metal version they are a disaster looking for a time and place to happen. Early cars may have had the tensioners replaced with 2nd generation spring assisted plastic tensioners which fail just as reliably. Short of documentation of replacement in the past 10-12 years a visual inspection is mandatory.