I met up with my wife in Fort Worth this week—she had a meeting in town and so we decided to make the most of things to look at some property. Afterwords went to dinner in her F-Type. We drove just a couple of blocks and stopped on a red at Main and 2nd—the engine stopped as usual, but then ALL power was completely lost. No lights no nothing. For the next hour, utter embarrassment ensued. While waiting for the tow truck, a waiter from the bar next to us (Ricky’s BBQ) even came out and offered free drinks while we waited. It was one of those times when you just want to crawl into a hole. Anyway, long story short, the car was taken back to Dallas dealership and fixed in about 10 minutes. It was a loose terminal connector on the battery. The car has only done about 1000 miles.

I’m not posting this to complain about Jaguar reliability. My wife and I have complete faith in JLR cars having driven close to 500,000 combined miles in their cars over the last 9 years we have travelled. I just thought (after the fact) that the whole thing was quite amusing.

A couple of thoughts about the whole episode:
1. My wife was relieved that I was with her at the time—not because she would have felt unsafe alone, rather I could not blame her for doing something stupid to cause the breakdown had I not been there. I would never do that!
2. Are the batteries installed by the dealer or at the factory?
3. it’s amazing the simplest of things can disable a car like that.
4. If it wasn’t for that stupid auto start/stop feature that Californian’s think is a good idea, we would not have suffered the indignity of breaking down in downtown Fort Worth in front of a million onlookers! Instead the car would have at least carried on until we parked the car.
5. Props to the waiter from Ricky’s that offered us drinks. (We asked for bottled water by the way).
6. Here is a photo of our beloved being loaded on to the trailer:

 

I have felt your pain.
Nice car.

 

Ouch! As far as I know the battery is installed at the factory but I think the dealer also does something with the battery as part of the PDI so maybe the dealer messed up a bit there.

It sounds like a bit of a coincidence that it died just when you had stopped and I can't quite see how the start/stop would cause the terminal to lose contact further if it was already loose in the first place. I guess it could just as well have happened if you drove over a bump or pothole. Good thing it didn't happen while driving.

Although I'm not Californian I seem to be one of the few who actually like the concept of stop/start. Any stop longer than 7-10 seconds makes it worth it.

 

I had that happen to me in my E46, it was actually a lot worse because it turned off while I was driving, on my way back from an interview. Thank god it wasn't beforehand. I was able to coast to a shoulder area without power steering, and only enough brake pressure for one application. No idea why the alternator didn't keep it going.

Turned out to be an intermittent connection to the battery, caused by those felt 'anti corrosion' pads that can be installed on the battery terminal. Was kicking myself for not checking that while I was able to on the side of the road. Sorry that happened to you, it really is somewhat embarrassing and definitely stressful.

 

I too had a loose connection on the battery that caused trouble but thankfully it didn't strand me. As embarrassing as it is to have it die at an intersection, it was at least safe. If I'm ever in Ft. Worth looking for some BBQ I'll consider Ricky's. I know nothing of their food offerings, but their hospitality to a couple in need should be lauded.

 

Disable the stop start.

 

First car?

 

This was definitely NOT a coincidence. The car was stranded because the increased resistance of the bad connection caused a voltage drop when the stop/start attempted to start the vehicle. Starters draw a lot of current. Start/start is an absurdly awful concept.

 

Not a good night, but good to read that you are both OK. I had loosened battery cables on two occasions.. one a car, one a boat that caused them to die. I'm not going to defend the dealer, that should have been checked as PDI. But checking battery connections is something I do regularly since then. The other thing I found with my 2017 F was a misaligned right side fender/headlight assembly. It protruded out if viewed from above. I found that there are two plugs in the upper area of the wheel well liner and once I removed those, I could see that the two bolts that were SUPPOSED to be there, weren't and there was no indication that they had EVER been there. LSS, I got the bolts, aligned the fender/light assembly and tightened it all up. Looks way better.

 

Stop/start is not rooted in California. The EPA came up with that one all on their own.

 

Wanna trade for a very reliable 2017...?

The very first thing I did was disabled the start/stop feature.
No issues every since...

 

The manufacturers were the ones who came up with start/stop to help meet the ever increasing CARB and CAFE standards, just like using lighter weight oil to reduce friction and eek out fractionally better fuel economy. So while California didn't mandate it, fourteen other states and DC follow CARB requirements so the manufacturers had to pick up fractional fuel economy gains wherever they could. CARB sort of forced their hand into adopting these measures.

 

Risky's is sort of a Fort Worth institution. From their website.

In 1911, Polish immigrant Joe Riscky came to Fort Worth and went to work at Armour Packing Company in the Stock Yards for $9 a week. In 1912, he married fellow immigrant Mary Bunkervitch, and in 1927, they opened Riscky’s Grocery & Market a few miles from the Stockyards.

Now its sort of a local chain, there's multiple locations, including downtown. I remember when they used to have a family/brown bag deal like 5 chopped sandwiches for $5.99. Now I think that's for one sandwich (or soon a gallon of 93).

But did you buy the Fort Worth property you went to look at? Because now you know its a lot better over here than in Dallas.

 

Don't forget the cities that have enacted rules against idling while stopped, e.g. Paris. If the engine is running and you're not moving, you're getting zero mpg with infinite emissions per mile.

It makes sense for manufacturers, particularly of low production vehicles, to make only one version, that meets the most stringent requirements. I'm not sure if that's CARB or Euro 6d at the moment. When Euro III was the latest, they were pretty comparable.

Nevertheless, a bad battery connection that leads to "failure to proceed" is not related to stop/start any more than it's related to keyless entry. See the comment earlier about a bad connection leading to loss of power while moving. That's not a stop/start problem :/

 

Haha! We are actually very close to putting an offer that way. The prop is very close to where we broke down and the locale makes sense for my wife as she spends more time in the FW office than her Dallas office. I work from home and so as long as DFW is close by I don’t care if it’s Dallas or Fort Worth or Timbuktu. We actually love where we live in Dallas, but Downtown FW is actually quite nice.

 

My start-stop disabled itself when the second little battery died.