I just realised that, in a couple of weeks time, I will have owned my S-Type for TEN YEARS. I thought perhaps it is time to reflect on my decision to buy a 2nd hand Jaguar.

Right up front - am I happy I bought the car? Absolutely!

But here is a bit more detail:
Why did I buy the car?
One of the main reasons for me buying the car was that it was a V8. When I started looking around I had any number of folk ask me why I didn't buy a 'Real V8' (i.e. American) but I stuck to my guns and bought the Jag because it was a bit different from the norm. Of course, I got bombarded with 'Why would you consider buying a British car? It will spend the whole time broken'. So let's look back across the ten years and see exactly what did break, and where the part was sourced:

Heater Solenoids - Bosch - German
Fuel Pump - Bosch - German
O2 Sensor - Bosch - German
Gearbox - ZF - German (That one really hurt the wallet)
Active Shock Absorber - Bilstein - German
Coil Packs - Denso - Japanese

Do I detect a pattern here?

Why I still like the car:
1. Comfort - Australian roads allow the comfort delivered by the car's suspension to shine;
2. Performance and Handling - On the odd occasion I get to let my hair down, it is a lot of fun;
3. Style - Despite what some of the critics say, I really like the styling of the car;
4. Economy - As long as my right foot behaves itself (see 2), this is a really economical car.

Do I have any pet peeves?
Of course I do. These are the ones that really bug me:
1. Weeping Coolant. There seems to be something about the pink coolant that makes it really slippery, hence prone to finding places to leak from. Its nothing dramatic - I generally use about 250ml of coolant per year - but I always seem to be chasing a drip or two somewhere. By way of contrast, my old Nissan Patrol, which has 33 years and 500000km on the clock, runs off standard ethylene glycol and never uses a drop.
2. The Sunroof. Unfortunately I don't have a free garage or carport so my car lives outdoors and I have found the drain tubes for the sunroof tend to block with leaves etc. If I don't remember to run a length of line trimmer chord down the drains every couple of months, they block. Then the sunroof tray overflows, water runs down the inside of the A Pillars and the carpet gets very wet. It is incredible how much water that carpet holds!
3. Suspension clunks. I understand that a car which has covered more than 300,000km will develop clunks in the suspension. That isn't my peeve. What really bugs me is that it can be really, really hard to tell where the clunk is coming from. I have been trying to track down one particular rattle for about 12 months. I am pretty sure it is on the right hand side, but that is about where my certainty stops. One day it will definitely be coming from the front and the next day I am absolutely sure it's coming from the back. I guess it's a function of a car which has good acoustic damping.

That's about it really from my complaints department. The rest are just the sorts of things I would expect of a vehicle that is pushing twenty years old.

Hopefully I will still be driving the car to write a 20-year ownership report in another ten years time!

 

You're not alone. Since misery loves company....My xj8 developed a knock that I only consistently heard when I went over the crest where the angle breaks between my flat garage floor and driveway slope. Ok, car has 120K miles on it and suspension is a little tired anyway, so I started replacing it little by little, starting with the most obviously worn pieces. I started at the front and even after replacing everything it was still there. Took it took it to a British car specialist shop thinking it was the subframe bushings. They said the subframe bushings were fine, but they couldn't find the clunk. So I went to the back of the car and replaced everything in the rear suspension. Still there. Then I did motor mounts. Still there. After a couple of years of racking my brain, checking every little thing I could think of, I found it. What appears to be a simple bracket next to the brake master cylinder between the firewall and the inner fender/wheel well is actually a structural support brace. The bolts had come loose. I had removed it many years earlier to get access to fix sometime, probably the O2 sensor and must've not gotten the bolts tight enough when I reinstalled it. Maybe start checking all the "not-so-obvious" things that could make your rattle.

 

Yeah pduplder, I've always had a thing for UK cars (less so their motorcycles). My daily driver was a '59 Mk1, 3.4, with disc brakes at university. Great car for a young student -- my two pals: one had a Benz, the other a BMW cycle with sidecar that he drove all winter. This, in Vermont! We were considered weirdoes. And, oh yeah, there was JP from Paris who would bluff his way into F1, and Lemans pits as a reporter so he could scour the track for pieces of smashed super-cars that he would use to decorate his dorm room. He was king of weird. Those days... those cars are more than hinted at by my 2008 S-type 4.2

 

Bought my '08 S-Type SE 4.2 in 2010. It had 29,000 miles on it. It was the second S-Type for me plus my wife has had 2 XJ's and a XF, so we were not new to the Jag world. In the last 13 years I have put about 30,000 miles on it, replaced tires and brakes, had a leak at the pass-through on the transmission, burst plastic pipes, and had plugged roof drainage lines. That has been the extent of it and to my mind that is minimal in terms of repairs. Love the car and probably will still be in my driveway when they carry me out of here. No regrets ever!

 

I think JLR must have specialised in underbaking the sunroof drainage lines around that time. I have a friend who has a Land Rover Discovery of the same vintage and he has had exactly the same problems.

Mind you, I did an analysis once (see my post 'Theoretical Maximum Drain Rates for S-Type Sunroof') and when the drains are clear there should be no problem. I suspect they forgot to allow for the rubbish that collects in the sunroof tray, and also ends up going down the drain hoses.

 

It was a problem with the design. I had a Lincoln LS which did the same thing and required the same repair. Simple but again until it was mentioned on the LS forum I had no idea!
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I am surprised the thermostat housing has held together, and you don't have over heating issues.

The Jaguar is a collection of parts from Hundreds of country's of origin. Mostly European, but some South American, North America and South Africa, among others.

1/. Water pump seal leaking or the DCCV.?

2/.All drain holes do not like vegetation (matter) blocking up the drain holes. Clean and free up weekly while washing.

3/. 300k, km Use a 2 x 4" wooden batten and push/ leaver and pull all joints and bushes. Both suspension and sway bars, both milage and age come into it, as rubber ages. While on jacks in the air. Check rubber sealing boots and replace as required.


Or Buy a Nissen or Toyota Miles better and reliable.

 

' Clean and free up weekly while washing.' - weekly washing? I dream about having time to do that. I spend my life feeling guilty because Its lucky if it gets a bath every couple of months.

I had forgotten about the thermostat housing, otherwise known as the water rail. Yeah, I changed that over when I first bought the car, so it's probably due again shortly.

 

Yeah, but life is too short to drive a boring car...

 

Sunroof drain tubes are not just a Jaguar problem. I'm one of those odd people who actually uses his sunroof almost daily and I've not had a problem in nearly 40 years and a dozen or so equipped cars. Everybody else has tho. Every car forum seems to have ample threads about sunroofs leaking, rusting, etc. I keep telling people that the second worst thing you can do to your car (after driving it in the winter on salted roads) is to park it under a tree. But everybody thinks they need to park in the shade. I've been restoring classic cars as a hobby for decades and I get to see and repair all the damage done by trees. Besides sunroof drain tubes, debris clogs up the little drain holes in the bottoms of your doors, accumulates under cowlings and various trim pieces where it stays wet for days after it rains. Birds sit on the branches and poop on the car, etching the paint and making things worse. And occasionally the wind blows hard enough to drop branches on the roof. Clean the drain tubes out once, make sure the gasket is intact and from then on, just park 50 feet away from the nearest tree canopy and you'll be OK. No need to call your Mini-Me's Roto Rooter service every week.