Hello everyone, hope I'm not breaking any rules asking here, I've done a few searches and didn't really find any conclusive answer to my questions. Apologies if I waffle on a bit...

I'm going to be buying a used f type soon, it's been my dream car since I saw (and heard) one several years ago in the Scottish Highlands. Unfortunately in Hong Kong prices are very high and the pool of used f types very limited. This means I currently am limited to 2015 models or older.

I'm planning to buy a V6 or V6S model, ideally convertible but will not turn down a coupe at the right price and with the right options.

In my price bracket there are currently a 2013 v6s 'vert with full jaguar service history, single owner, and good options package, 3xxxxkm, or a 2015 (I think non-s, but with an s badge) coupe without service history, 3 owners, but the current owner is a friend of a friend who is trustworthy and a proper car lover.

The 2015 has had the sticky plastic parts replaced, and the cracked coolant hose fixed. I haven't yet seen the 2013 convertible. Things that are drawing me more to the convertible are that this particular coupe does not have the active exhaust button or blind spot indicators, and it did not sound as loud or as nice as it should according to my memory and the various videos I've watched (could that be due to an issue with the valves?)

Between the 2, would the 2015 make more sense simply because it's a younger car, or does the full service history of the 2013 mean I should have nothing to worry about?

Is there anything I should be looking out for when buying an f type in this age range? Would it be absolutely stupid to buy a 2013 car over a 2015? I've been reading so much about the various issues and fixes, and different model years, that I've kind of confused myself, so thank you in advance for being patient!

 

Conventional wisdom says to avoid the first year of a new model. However I’ve not heard of many problems particular to the 2013, perhaps other could comment. At this point I wouldn’t expect much reliability difference a 2013 and 2015.

The big difference of course is the convertible vs the coupe…other differences are noise by comparison. Couple guy myself, but I’d say get the ‘vert if that’s what you really want.

 

As an orig '14 vert owner I can say they are really pretty safe. It seems like all of the '14's had the O2 sensors replaced on warranty. Another problem in '14-'15 is fuel injector failure. As this seems to happen between 15k and 25k mile most were replaced on warranty with a new improved injector. Unfortunetly for me I put about 3500 mile a year on the car and had an injector failure this year on me!

 

I guess both cars in question have engines produced before mid 2014 but here's just one thing to be aware of.

Quite a few early V6 AJ126 engines, produced up until about mid 2014 according to unofficial inside info in JLR, had bad conrod bearings due to a manufacturing fault. It usually led to catastrophic engine failure sometimes with the car going up in flames. Ask me how I know. I was lucky to catch it early in an XF and got a new engine under warranty after a long and super frustrating process.

There were many such cases in Germany back in the day, maybe because the cars are driven harder there than elsewhere in the world. It seems like most of the concerned engines popped pretty early in their life... a JLR master tech told me it usually happens within the first 10k km or so but in my case it happened at about 53k km. So it seems like it could happen any time but arguably should become less and less likely as age and mileage racks up. Nobody can say how common this this issue actually was but JLR didn't seem to consider it serious enough for a recall. Anyhow it's definitely a thing to keep in mind and one of the reasons to why I never even considered an early car.

 

Interesting, that keeps the '13 in the running!

Thanks, that's helpful to know, As the '15 has been through 3 owners, and without a proper service record (the norm in Hong Kong unfortunately), would there be a way to find out if this has been done? I've read that running injector cleaner regularly helps avoid this, so I may try that anyway, but are there any warning signs before injector failure that could help in carrying out preventive measures?

That's pretty scary actually, and for some reason it's the first I've heard of it. More recent cars are very much out of my price range however... Did you have any warning signs before it happened?

 

As the owner of an early 2013 (we call it MY14 in the States), I’d be minorly concerned about the minor things that should have been fixed under warranty that were build issues…
K192 - folding top enhancement (move harnesses to avoid wear)
K185 - stowage box latch fix (mine would fall open when I locked the car)
K243 - climate control central vent (addresses central vent not rising/lowering properly)
K309B - oxygen sensor calibration (addresses O2 sensor failures, K309 muted some cars’ exhaust; no difference with K309B for me)

I think something was done to the seatbelts too, though I didn’t see that on my invoices.

 

There doesn't seem to have been a lot of talk about it online so it can't be super common. The most talk I've seen about it has been on German Jag forums back in the day and I've also seen some reports on this forum IIRC and some other XF forum about people with early AJ126 engines getting new engines under warranty after early engine failures. I had no warning signs... just sudden screeching and knocking noises from the engine during a very spirited drive. I would probably have killed the engine if I didn't take it super easy after that. In other cases the engine has just suddenly rattled, cut out and dumped all the oil. In the XF it just seemed to stop at that but a number of F-Types went up in flames... because of the tighter packaging I guess. One of the biggest German car rental companies suddenly withdrew its entire fleet of rental F-Types, seemingly due to that.

Anyway if an early car is the only option I wouldn't worry too much about that and just try to check that the car has been maintained and driven properly. My guess is that most of the concerned engines have failed by now.

 

Hi, '13 convertible owner here. I've had some minor issues (but major annoyances) with the car but nothing that breaks the bank. Also, I try to perform preventative maintenance in order to keep the car happy; so my car also had the gearbox oil as well as differential oil changed.

Mechanically, everything is fine and I hope it'll stay that way. The car has been regularly serviced at the official Jag dealership and I will keep it that way.

However, I've had some electrical issues which were difficult to diagnose and easy to fix while causing major problems with the car. In my case, the chassis control module had mallfunctioned and was causing strange issues (turning off, entering limp mode, degrading power, deactivating various systems, etc.). After being fixed, the electrical gremlins were gone as well.