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What a great car! I am just trying to figure out all the features. "S" Type with 11,500 miles by a meticulous person with great service records from the selling dealership in RI.
She went all out on options, $95 k sticker.
Sincere thanks to all for your insight and advice!
Welcome to F-type ownership, you are now a proud owner of a Jaaaaag minus Lucas and oil leaks. As F-type shares a lot of mechanics with earlier Jaguar XKR, even early F-types benefit from 'mid cycle' mechanical updates and are considered reliable. As no car is perfect, there are few common themes and re-occurring flaws that you will have to deal with.
Issue 1: Cooling system and plastic coolant piping - unfortunately a number of plastic coolant pipes in the engine bay were made from material that becomes brittle with age and splits at the seam. This was made worse by adding an insulated engine cover that traps heat in the engine bay. Some of these coolant pipes are in the engine valley, requiring removal of supercharger to replace. Parts were updated around 2017 to seam-less design to prevent splitting, but your F-type does not have them installed from the factory. These can fail two ways - sudden failure where you dump all coolant and overheat the engine or slow leak. Sudden coolant loss is more dangerous as in-dash engine temperature indicator displays a running average and not instant engine temperature measures, delaying when the driver notified about overheating. So by the time you see the dash warning about overheating the engine have been cooking, potentially without any coolant at all, for a few minutes. Treat anything related to cooling system as an emergency, do not wait to pull over, shut the engine off, and open the hood. If you get coolant warning, have the car towed unless you can confirm it still has coolant. While this might be an overkill, I also ask my garage to pressure test cooling system every year prior to storing it for the winter. Additionally I permanently removed engine cover and it had measurable effect on reducing engine bay temperature.
Issue 2: Engine oil and sludge. AJ133 V8 and AJ126 V6 engines in F-type use direct injection (DI). DI means these engines are prone to developing sludge on intake valves if oil is neglected. These engines also use oil pressure to control variable timing. All of this means that things go bad very quickly when the oil gets dirty. Fortunately, frequent oil changes using spec oil shown to largely mitigate sludge. It is very crucial that you stay on top of oil changes and use spec synthetic oil with specified additives. Also keep in mind AJ133 V8 doesn't have low oil pressure sensor (yes, you read it right), this means you can run the car dry and it will not warn you. All of this means that you have to be religious about changing oil and monitoring engine oil level.
Issue 3: Injectors. AJ133 V8 and AJ126 V6 engines in F-type use direct injection (DI). This system has two stage fuel pumps and high-pressure injectors. This setup means that running out of gas has a chance to damage pumps, so take care not to do that. Injector failures are unfortunately known to happen where the whole rail has to be replaced, but can be mitigated with regular use of PEA-containing injector cleaning. I recommend running PEA fuel additives like BG 44K annually or budget for injector replacement in a couple years.
Issue 4: Battery and charging. When you plug anything into OBD port, power management control module is known to get glitched and not completely power the car down. This in turn runs the main battery flat as the car never fully shuts down. To fix this, you need to disconnect the main battery to reset the power control module. Dead battery in a locked car is a huge inconvenience, as you need power to open the trunk to access the battery, so it can lock you out of the car and it is nuisance to get it resolved. My suggestions: a) know emergency unlock procedure (with mechanical key hidden in the fob) and boost points in your engine bay b) avoid using OBD readers or assume it will glitch and reset PCM after each use. You can visually tell that the car did not fully power down if emergency triangle stays illuminated 10 minutes after you locked the car - this means PCM is glitched. More so, having marginal battery on these cars is known to trigger all kind of fault codes, so if you suddenly see multiple dash warnings about unrelated things... don't panic, it just might be a marginal battery.
While this is not a fault or mechanical issue, make sure to stay on top of transmission, differential, brake fluids and engine coolant changes. Low miles on your car does not mean that original fluids are fine - as they degrade both with use and time. Changing engine oil is critically important, but there are other fluids and filters that also have to be regularly changed. Especially important is transmission fluid and filter - these cars come equipped with a superb automatic transmission that I expect to last forever, that is unless you never change transmission fluid. Based on the year of your car, you are due on transmission fluid and filter change.
Congrats, lots of good data on this site, with intelligent suggestions. I drive mine in nice weather only (its my toy) but when I drive I can only smile I'm sure you'll feel the same way!
Sir! When behind the wheel or glancing at your F Type in the confines of the garage....That spiritual smile permeates to your heart which in turn gives us even more to share with all....The Love of God, Country and Family!
One cowboy to another of course.
Welcome to F-type ownership, you are now a proud owner of a Jaaaaag minus Lucas and oil leaks. As F-type shares a lot of mechanics with earlier Jaguar XKR, even early F-types benefit from 'mid cycle' mechanical updates and are considered reliable. As no car is perfect, there are few common themes and re-occurring flaws that you will have to deal with.
Issue 1: Cooling system and plastic coolant piping - unfortunately a number of plastic coolant pipes in the engine bay were made from material that becomes brittle with age and splits at the seam. This was made worse by adding an insulated engine cover that traps heat in the engine bay. Some of these coolant pipes are in the engine valley, requiring removal of supercharger to replace. Parts were updated around 2017 to seam-less design to prevent splitting, but your F-type does not have them installed from the factory. These can fail two ways - sudden failure where you dump all coolant and overheat the engine or slow leak. Sudden coolant loss is more dangerous as in-dash engine temperature indicator displays a running average and not instant engine temperature measures, delaying when the driver notified about overheating. So by the time you see the dash warning about overheating the engine have been cooking, potentially without any coolant at all, for a few minutes. Treat anything related to cooling system as an emergency, do not wait to pull over, shut the engine off, and open the hood. If you get coolant warning, have the car towed unless you can confirm it still has coolant. While this might be an overkill, I also ask my garage to pressure test cooling system every year prior to storing it for the winter. Additionally I permanently removed engine cover and it had measurable effect on reducing engine bay temperature.
Issue 2: Engine oil and sludge. AJ133 V8 and AJ126 V6 engines in F-type use direct injection (DI). DI means these engines are prone to developing sludge on intake valves if oil is neglected. These engines also use oil pressure to control variable timing. All of this means that things go bad very quickly when the oil gets dirty. Fortunately, frequent oil changes using spec oil shown to largely mitigate sludge. It is very crucial that you stay on top of oil changes and use spec synthetic oil with specified additives. Also keep in mind AJ133 V8 doesn't have low oil pressure sensor (yes, you read it right), this means you can run the car dry and it will not warn you. All of this means that you have to be religious about changing oil and monitoring engine oil level.
Issue 3: Injectors. AJ133 V8 and AJ126 V6 engines in F-type use direct injection (DI). This system has two stage fuel pumps and high-pressure injectors. This setup means that running out of gas has a chance to damage pumps, so take care not to do that. Injector failures are unfortunately known to happen where the whole rail has to be replaced, but can be mitigated with regular use of PEA-containing injector cleaning. I recommend running PEA fuel additives like BG 44K annually or budget for injector replacement in a couple years.
Issue 4: Battery and charging. When you plug anything into OBD port, power management control module is known to get glitched and not completely power the car down. This in turn runs the main battery flat as the car never fully shuts down. To fix this, you need to disconnect the main battery to reset the power control module. Dead battery in a locked car is a huge inconvenience, as you need power to open the trunk to access the battery, so it can lock you out of the car and it is nuisance to get it resolved. My suggestions: a) know emergency unlock procedure (with mechanical key hidden in the fob) and boost points in your engine bay b) avoid using OBD readers or assume it will glitch and reset PCM after each use. You can visually tell that the car did not fully power down if emergency triangle stays illuminated 10 minutes after you locked the car - this means PCM is glitched. More so, having marginal battery on these cars is known to trigger all kind of fault codes, so if you suddenly see multiple dash warnings about unrelated things... don't panic, it just might be a marginal battery.
While this is not a fault or mechanical issue, make sure to stay on top of transmission, differential, brake fluids and engine coolant changes. Low miles on your car does not mean that original fluids are fine - as they degrade both with use and time. Changing engine oil is critically important, but there are other fluids and filters that also have to be regularly changed. Especially important is transmission fluid and filter - these cars come equipped with a superb automatic transmission that I expect to last forever, that is unless you never change transmission fluid. Based on the year of your car, you are due on transmission fluid and filter change.
Sir! When behind the wheel or glancing at your F Type in the confines of the garage....That spiritual smile permeates to your heart which in turn gives us even more to share with all....The Love of God, Country and Family!
One cowboy to another of course.
Sparky
Hahaha, you kill me Sparky. I echo your sentiments about the car and salute you for flying the F-Type flag in God's country. Rock on, partner.
Sir! When behind the wheel or glancing at your F Type in the confines of the garage....That spiritual smile permeates to your heart which in turn gives us even more to share with all....The Love of God, Country and Family!
One cowboy to another of course.
Sparky
I hear you Sparky. I don't care how advanced a motorcycle or a car is, I want to take pride in it when I glance back.
This car makes me weak in the knees.
Picked up my 2015!
"S" Type with 11,500 miles by a meticulous person with great service records from the selling dealership in RI.
