Hi
My name is Randy and I have a jaguar xjs with the 12 cylinder motor. Beautiful car. I am the 2nd owner. It has 80K miles. The original owner had this car made especially for him. (very rich) It has every option- including moon roof and phone. Basically I let it sit in heated garage, do not drive in rain or snow...its under car cover and then I pull it out when the sun is shining so i can show it off with a spin around town- then wash and wax and back in garage she goes.
Now one thing I did notice is that some things do not match the 1988 model- there is supposed to be some diagnostics check on the dash??? but this car does not have that...The original owner took delivery of this car on Jan 2nd or 3rd..( I have all paperwork from everytime this car went in for service since birth) Is there anyway it could be more 1987 than 1988?
Anyway, now a problem has got my attention. THe car starts right up..sounds great. Then as soon as it gets warm its starts running rough..and i mean pretty rough...if you step on gas..it will sound fine..but idles rough. When I have looked under it the catalytic converter will be glowing red...any ideas?
Thanks
Randy

 

Do NOT run the engine or drive the car.

I strongly suspect you have a Marelli ignition failure.

The Marelli ignition came out in mid-89 model year. You mention 1988 model year but the designations sometimes get fuzzy as the car could have been built in 1988. In any case, if your vin is later than apprx 156xxx and/or you have two coil wires going to the center of the distributor cap, you have Marelli ignition.

Even if you don't have Marelli igntion, don't drive the car.

More later, or someone else will come along and explain what to look for.

Cheers
DD

 

welcome aboard J12, good to have you here as part of the forum
Congrats on an awesome sounding car but sorry to hear about the issues.

Please take Doug's advice as he's a very knowledgable guy and wouldn't put it like that if he didn't suspect some serious damage could be done!
Hopefully either Doug gets back to you or someone else chimes in with the full answer as to why and what you need to do.


Loads going on, plenty of very friendly and helpful members as well as some excellent tech advice......all good!

In the meantime I've manually upgraded you to full forum access so you can better view the site

 

I'm back.

Before going into a detailed "Marelli Ignition" dissertation it might be best to verify that your car DOES indeed have that system.

Besides the two coil wires already mentioned also look for two square-ish control modules on the panel at the top of the radiator. The switch to Marelli was at vin 156116 or 156689 or something in the "156xxx" range....I can't remember exactly at the moment.

With or without Marelli your cat converter is loading up with unburned fuel.

Cheers
DD

 

Welcome to the forum,
Sounds like a great car, I'd suggest you head over to the XJS tech section and get some advice from the experts. Doug, I'm including you in that category. :-)