Greetings. First off, I am genuinely impressed by this forum. I thought the people over at TDI Club were a bunch of nerds, but the time and effort spent by folks here to organize and share relevant information to keep these relics on the road is unprecedented. I, myself, as a first-time Jaguar owner, greatly appreciate it. So a hat tip to the contributors.

And here we go... Why an XJ40???

I wasn't looking for one. Knew nothing about them. Somehow FB MP scrolling at 10PM got the best of me.

My wife instantly approved. She was thrilled that I wasn't driving 4hrs for a **** box - this gem was about 10 min from my place of work.

So. This thing is pretty clean, only $2,000 and it hasn't sold yet? Why is the listing 5 months old? IYKYK.

To be frank, I didn't know. Well I did know before I bought it, but not before I committed in my mind that I WILL buy this car.

And so here we are, a 1990 Jaguar Vanden Plas in Satin Beige Metallic.

Picked this thing up last night, and a snow storm came through later in the evening and into the morning so this is the best I have at it's new resting place.

A couple from last night:


The drive home...

An XJ40 with 854,722 miles? El oh el. No. More on this below.

The person I bought it from owned it for less than 5 years, he was the 2nd owner. He said he daily'd it blah blah whatever. For whatever reason he couldn't remember anything about it over the last 5 years, so moving on.

The first owner, John, had it from NEW in 1990 to 240,000+ miles (allegedly) in 2021. John was committed. This man was (is?) a legend. I know for a fact that this was his baby.

Retention of the original purchase docs, the saved marketing material, 2" thick archive of dealer services, 30 years of effort to try and get the A/C to blow cold, and finally, complaints of odometer uncertainty since 7,000 miles in 1991 was enough for me convince myself this isn't any 'ole XJ. This was John's XJ.

$4,000 head replacement @ 80,000 miles (allegedly), no problem.
3rd A/C compressor? Let's do it.
Repair the 25 year old jag after getting rear ended? Of course!

John loved this car.

So I couldn't say no. $1,500 for this car, 31 years of service history, and an extra set of wheels was an easy buy for me.

I don't know what my plas, ahem, plans are, but ice cream runs will be in order. There are things that I will pick at as time goes on... there is no shortage of things to keep me busy. The electrical issues are abundant. First goal will be to get the cluster to work properly. The odometer now shows 856,008 miles (yes, I accrued 1,300+ miles in my 38 miles drive home), and the tach does nothing.

Anyways that's my intro. Here are some photos from my test drive. More proper ones to come soon.

 

Welcome aboard.

 

856,008 miles?? To infinity and beyond.......... Sounds like the tach and odo leads got switched. 😁 It looks to be in nice shape and the price is certainly right. Good luck with it and welcome to the forum.

 

That's very possible lol.

First owner was battling this issue since 1991. I reviewed the service records and "owner says odometer is inaccurate" came up many times. Between module swaps, cluster swaps, etc... looks like a problem that's been chased for a while.

 

Hi vwishendaetr,

Welcome to the Jaguar Forums! It's great to have you with us.

XJ40s are fabulous cars and I personally experienced irrational love affairs with mine. In the XJ40 forum you'll find other passionate owners of similar cars.

Problems with the Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) instrument clusters are well-known. Here's just one post that may be helpful:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...7/#post1234042

Cheers,

Don

 

Greetings and welcome to JF

Nice Jaguar and I hope you and your wife enjoy many a great drive once you dig it out from under all that interesting white stuff.

Cheers,

 

Welcome to Jaguar Forums vwishendaetr,

Good to have you with us.
Enjoy the forum..

If you haven't done so already you should add your car details to your signature to help others to help you.
If you need help with getting around and using the forum follow this link for some help Forum Help

 

Welcome to the Forums.

 

I'll check it out. Thanks for the share.

 

Hello,
Congratulations on your "new" Classic Jaguar!
And what a beeeauty she is!!
From the era when you didn't need to see the Badge to know what the car was.

Welcome to the forums from ElinorB.
(';")

 

welcome to the forum - enjoy!!!!!

 

Is there a way to unsubscribe from email notifications for thread replies?

I know this has to be a setting. I feel like I went through every menu in settings/options and I can't seem to find anything. I still want to be able to subscribe to threads so that they're easy to find through the browser on the forum - hopefully email notifications are not a default "feature" of being subscribed to a thread.

I only like email notifications for private messages, thread replies can stay here. I don't like my phone going off every 5 minutes for a reply here. No offense.

 

Go to the top right of the screen next to the bell and click your avatar. Then go down the list on the left and click "edit options." When that screen pops up go down the options list till you see "Messaging and notifications" and in the second box "Default thread" you'll see "Instant email notifications" and click on "no emails." That should do it.

 

You see that what I thought it was, and I have had it set to that. But for some reason I still get the emails. Well, I actually didn't get one saying that you replied to the thread so maybe the setting finally went into affect?

We'll see.

 

I got a Idear!, Wait till it gets to a million and only then fix it. We need to know if that "1" will show. I worked on a 2003 XJ8 that had that problem (it showed about that same mileage when the owner gave up) I calculated that it thought it was going about 175 MPH. Ive never heard of it in these though. Welcome and please keep us posted on your progress.

 

The thought has crossed my mind. I'm getting about 34miles/mile so me putting on 4411mi wouldn't be that difficult.