Newbie's first post including a rant
 

Hi everybody... This is my first post on this forum as my son has just bought an S Type 2.7 TDV6 2005 vintage with 116,000 miles on the clock.
Now it's quite a tidy car with eight stamps in the book and for the money it's a lot of metal (well under £2000 ) including a service and new brake discs and pads. Well here's the story of when we went to look at it and why I am going to have a bit of a rant.
It was about 150 miles from us and advertised on fleaBay and after speaking to the seller we went to see it. The seller was a lovely chap, showed us all the paperwork and bills and we took it for a test drive. The brakes were horrendous, they would eventually stop but the brake pedal wouldn't return for a few seconds and then they would grab and almost lock up and then slowly release and this was ten miles after the brakes were renewed. On speaking to the seller he said that was the way they are and shrugged his shoulders. To me a wonderful bargaining point hence we bought a £3500 at least car, for a song.
Now the RANT, the cause of the bad brakes was bad fitting, and not only badlly fitted brakes but badly fitted wheels as they were done up so tight that one wheel nut sheared and I had a devil of a job to get it off. the brakes on the front were put back with seized sliders which meant only the inboard pad was contacting the disc. The butchers/cowboys who charged £360 for the job seem to be the norm these days but look at what they did to the previous owner, lost him at least a bag of sand plus the £360. This is not isolated to this mechanic as I recently bought a Renault Grand Espace 3.0 dci v6 mk iv with the engine cream crackered because the oil had not been changed for thousands of miles, it was like treacle, although he had the car serviced on the nose. A good tip if you are going to buy a used car is look down the oil filler with a torch and if you can see the cams like the Jag they should be like new with no black sooty oil.
Sorry for the length of this post but I would appreciate any comments.
Jefro

Welcome to the forum Jefro,

Good to have you with us at Jaguar forums.

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Enjoy the forums.

Graham

________

<p>welcome to the forum - enjoy!!!</p>

Welcome aboard

Hello, Jefro,
I'm sorry to read of your bad experience. Certainly whenever buying a used car, it's good to remember that someone got rid it for a reason - maybe more than one. Doubtless the buyer will find that reason soon enough, and maybe all the others too.

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

Hi LnrB.
Thank you and all you guys for the welcome.
It's not me whose had the bad experience but the people I have bought cars off because they are not getting the full value for their cars. I have been working as a DIYer mechanic for 63 years and there is nothing that phases me on cars and as yet nothing has beaten me including modern diagnostics. What I am saying is that too many cowboys are taking car owners for a ride by doing bad work when they know the owner has no mechanical knowledge.
Now you may say that I have taken advantage of this situation, which I have, but equally I have taken a barely usable car of the owners hands for a reasonable wedge rather than him take it to a scrapper for peanuts.
Whenever I sell a car I make sure it is perfect and I demand top dollar in return.

Regards all, Jefro

Welcome to the forum

Welcome to Jaguar Forums Jefro,

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.
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Thank you Jim and all you guy's for the welcome to your forum.

I am assuming I will be using your services a lot in the future having bought a 10 year old Jag but at the moment she is performing perfectly (my fingers are hurting being crossed ) but seriously, I have every confidence in this british made icon.

Regards to you all... Jeff

Welcome.

The wierd and shonky world of service people never astounds me.

There a so many straight and narrow, but these clowns mess it for everyone, and then we could go on about the safety aspect forever, and the fact the "Name on the Car" gets blamed as a bad car, but I need a good drink.

Enjoy.

Hi Grant... Thanks for the welcome.

You are dead on with a few clowns giving the vehicle service industry a bad name. I have not used a garage to work on my cars, apart from air conditioning refills, since I took my dads Standard Vanguard in for replacement of it's king pins and bushes when I was a lad. I picked up the car the following day and the car was on a ramp and the mechanic said "look at the wheels now, there's absolutely no play in those bushes" and he rocked the wheels which looked great. He then asked how I was paying and I said cash, in those days nearly everybody used cash, he then said if I didn't want an invoice he would knock the tax off. Well in hindsight he must have read me like a book because I said yes. Well to cut a long story short, when I drove down the road the car was the same as when I took it in so I took it back and the mechanic said "who are you mate, I've never seen you in my life before" and then the penny dropped!

Regards... Jeff.