Good morning everyone

I am thinking of buying this model, my goal would be a preparation for trackday

I have seen a car with 200,000km that seems in good condition, there is something to look at or that usually fails in these engines / gearboxes.

On the other hand, the unit is manual with the famous zf6hp26 from what I understand, are there any reprogramming for this box? Is it fast enough?

Thank you

 

In my opinion the STR is not an ideal track-day car. It is just not built for it. Just for a start it has not got a limited slip differential.Any alterations to the gearbox programming other than the most recent jaguar update that makes the changes smoother is not at all easy and if the car was ever serviced by jaguar or is 05 model year or newer it will have this update anyway.

It is possible to fit flappy paddle gear change, it is not easy to do and it will not change down any faster or up any faster than using the J gate in S mode!

Others may have a different opinion on this.

Mellow

 

Swallows Jaguar race an STR but it is VERY modified, with thousands & thousands spent on it. Among other things it has a manual conversion, but to do that you will also need a stand-alone ECU. As said, you don't have an LSD either.

They may be able to help with questions & advice.

https://swallows-jag.co.uk/

 

I wouldn't be worried about the engine and transmission as much as I would be worried about the condition of the suspension. Unless the previous owner of the car installed all new suspension bushings in all the control arms, (Or replaced the complete control arms, front and back) as well as all of the shock bushings and mounts, sway bar links, then plan on spending about $2K to $3K in parts to get the suspension back to its OEM condition.
You will also find that for high speed braking on a track, you will have to upgrade the brakes. (At least pad composition) The Brembos on the earlier STRs are OK, but really aren't designed for repeated high speed breaking at speeds exceeding 100mph. (You might boil the brake fluid and overheat the calipers, so plan on changing the OEM brake fluid to a silicone racing brake fluit.- Would need to add brake vent cooling.) The calipers fitted to the newer STRs aren't much better.

When I tracked my STR years ago, the car had plenty of power/acceleration but I found that handling around corners at higher speeds (100+mph) was kind of mushy, and made me wonder if my CATS was really working properly. I didn't feel like I had good steering wheel feedback. The car had very little body roll, but it seemed to feel squishy turning into corners, until the tires hit their optimum slip angles. It was fun to drive the car once on the track, but compared to other cars I have driven on a track, my STR was so-so. (I did experience brake fade after a couple laps.)

I figured I would have had to put $3-4K in suspension upgrages to get the car to handle the way I think it should at speeds over 100mph. I was happy having my STR be a great freeway and back country road cruiser, so never did any further upgrades.

 

I have not driven my STR on a track, however I did take an 5.0L F-type R round the short Brans Hatch track at speed a couple of years ago.
This also felt a bit strange in the corners, I even got some bouncing at one point, this was caused, so I was told, by the electronics applying the brakes then releasing again to stop it slipping out. There was also a bit of power off oversteer that was a bit disconcerting, that was also corrected by the car but I was warned about this before the drive. I did not think that I had the ability to turn the driver aids off, I would probably have ended up in the barriers!

Again, like the STR I guess the FTR is optimised for the road and it is very good at that, it not set up for the track and would take quite a lot of time and money to change this.

Mellow