Hey Guys,


So the wife wants something smaller and more economical. Given I have flipped her from her love of MB to Jags I offered up the S Type which she like but even owning many many Jags Im not completely in tune with the S.


I will be buying used, in the 2004-2006 range. I will be going with the 6 not the 8. I am a car guy so the whole Carfax, maintenance records thing is a given but what are some other things I should check ?


Upper radiator inlet cracks I know but what else.


Also, what kind of mileage should we expect ?

Thanks guys any input would be appreciated.

 

Well the upper radiator inlet does not crack so that's wrong right out of the box!

Please search for V-6 problems. The good thing is they are all pretty cheap to fix and you can usually do it all at once as the intake manifold needs to come off.

Please get the JTIS and the JEPC to help. These are the factory repair manuals and are free on this form. Do some searches with JTIS and JEPC in them.

Since you are a car guy you won't have much trouble doing the repairs as they are well documented on this forum by now.

Hope the car you get is a good one. Maybe ask around the forum? You might get a car that has been well taken care of?
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John,

I may be willing to sell my well-cared-for 2005 S-Type 3.0. Send me a PM with your contact info and I'll get in touch with you....

 

I know you are new but Jon89 is one of the heavy weights on this forum and you can be sure that car is in excellent shape bar none!
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I think most everything you are asking is covered in either the buyer's guide or Jon89's excellent maintenance post, both in the Stickies if I recall correctly. If you are in it for the long-haul, you can expect to replace a coolant overflow tank, upper radiator hose asy, IMT O-rings, dual coolant control valve, and possibly a radiator and various ball-joints/suspension bushes. Agree with Club about you having bad gouge on the radiator inlet. I think they crack if you replace the constant tension clamp with a worm gear clamp when executing the mandatory hose replacements and crank it down with loads of torque...it is a plastic neck, after all. But the radiator failure point is normally at the right hand side, tank-to-core seal, back side.

Given your signature line, I suspect you'll have no trouble at all maintaining a 3.0L S and will probably find it the least expensive of the lot to keep up with. I mean, you are currently keeping abreast of air-suspension and potentially facing the notorious "under supercharger coolant hose....."

Fuel mileage will greatly depend on your usage, expect 19-20 if short trip, stop-n-go city use or 30-33 for highway cruising.

 

Try to get your hands on the maintenance records with itemized parts for any S-Type you're considering. Unlike many other manufacturers, replacement parts are of the same or higher quality (revision and update address some Achilles Heels) since there's no aftermarket. So, if the previous owner fixed or replaced parts in the most common problem areas, there won't be any knock-offs installed that are ticking time bombs.

Good luck in your search.

 

Thanks guys for the input. It was the overflow tank and not the radiator I meant had a problem. Sadly now given she drives in stop and go traffic she wasn't happy hearing 19-20 as she really wants something closer to 25mpg. This was the reason I was venturing into a 6 and not a 4.0.

 

There are no 4.0 S-Types in the year range you specified.

A V8 would be a 4.2 and does almost the same mpg as the 3.0.