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HI All,
I embarked on a bold mission to sort out my stuck e-break. I ordered a rebuild kit and followed a very precise guide from Thermo. Thank you very much, Thermo,
Once I got the rear calliper rebuilt, all was ok. The car was starting fine.
The brake pedal was soft, I gathered there must have been some air that got in, and i proceeded to bleed and grease the calliper pins in the front wheels.
After I completed both front wheels, NOW the CAR WILL NOT START, Dashboard says a gearbox fault >>>>>
Please help, it was going all so well, NOW utterly frustrating, and tomorrow is Monday... my daily commute is sitting on the driveway.
Did you intentionally or accidentally pull any connectors by any chance?
What about the connector to the throttle body (just lurking out under the rubber air intake before the rubber part joins the air-take).
Sorry, if I am boring some people here, as I am suggesting this now 3 threads in a row, but I know that if this connector is not connected properly, it leads to all kinds of error messages and faults, and this connector is likely to fail, as the heat of the engine compartment destroys it slowly but surely.
And I would advise to get an OBDII scanner, and see what it says - they are not THAT expensive anymore, but maybe do not take the very cheapest.
Also, checking the ATF-level might be an idea (automatic transmission fluid) - but having just written this, I remembered that this is a X-Type with (most likely) the Jatco JF506E transmission - theoretically the idea is to put the car on 4 stands safely and open the level-check-bold UNDER the car (not at the side behind the wheels-arch-fender-guard as removing THAT that bold will kill your reverse gear) - under the car close to where the cable from the gear selector in the car connects to the tranny. The idea is that you remove the check-bolt while the engine is running and the ATF should just drip a bit. However, I have no confidence of that working in line with design intend... - Plus, if you are too hasty in the attempt to get the bolt back in again, because it is dripping too much, you might in the haste kill the inner thread for that bolt inside of the tranny and that would be real bad....
Thank you for coming to the rescue.
I did not go anywhere near the engine, harness or throttle PS connector, all that was done in the engine bay was top up brake fluid.
The car was running absolutely fine, until i did the front brake bleed and re-lube the pins.
I have to confess though that when installing the passenger side wheel back on i tightened the wheel nuts with some force before lowering the car to the floor. Could this have messed up anything in the gear box, or may be got something to go out of sync,
When the battery is connected, it seems there is some grounding or a short circuit, because of the power drain. even the window motors were very weak.
I also made sure that all the wheel speed sensor cables were not damaged....
I got one of those FIXED OBD scanners, it's given me a P1603 code, and a gear box fault on the car dash cluster display.
This is a hard one.
Hard to say, if you damaged something by " i tightened the wheel nuts with some force before lowering the car to the floor."
It is possible.
Normal procedure is to loosen the nut BEFORE you jack up the car, and then just hand-tighten the nuts, then lowering the car to the ground, then tightening the nut to about 103Nm.
This would actually make the most sense to me:
While it is very bad practise to tighten the wheel-nuts before the car is on the ground, maybe you have not damaged anything.
What the jaguarforums link from 2013 tells me, is that you battery might be low!
And a low battery would throw (=cause) any random error message - incl. gearbox failure.
So maybe due to your work on the car it has not been moved for a while (while we just had a few cold nights (well, whatever counts as cold in NSW (7°C))), and maybe you even had the ignition key turned to ON from time to time, which drains the battery even more.
Thus: Measure the voltage of your battery in ign. OFF and IGN. ON position.
Charge your battery - best with a 10A or 15A CTEK charger.
Mr. AUS, I am thinking Peter is on the right track. Put the battery on a charger and get it back to 100%. Then see what you have. After that, you are going ot need to get the codes read to give us atleast a starting point to go with.
HI Peter and Thermo,
Thank you for your valuable input.
Battery is on a charger now, hopefully will be good to go in the morning.
The thing that puzzles me is, once I did the rear brakes and e-brake rebuild, the car started fine ( coz I had to move it from the garage to the driveway to pack up and the next morning started and drove back into the garage. Did the front brakes and then this....
Some post discusses an engine immobiliser being set off. Can this be reset....
Thank you for your advice. Put the battery on a night's charge and connected up, and then, .........The car cranked and started..... Probably needs a new battery. will get it tested at the auto store.
Thank you Once again for the prompt assistance.
I will be back with some more issues as i am trying to tackle a few more issues......
mr. aus, if you only ran the car for a few minutes while moving it from say the garage to the driveway to do the brakes, you may not have run the car long enough to make up for what was pulled from the car to start it. Then you add in the fact that you were most likely in and out of the car and/or had the hood open, these would all be additional battery drains over time. So, I can somewhat see where after day 3, the car may not want to start due to a low battery. The car is smart, but it is not perfect.
Yes, these were exactly my considerations what Chris (Thermo) wrote above.
Get a CTEK battery charger (10A or 15A), if you feel it is too early for a new battery, but at least pack a starter cable into your boot, so that others can help you.
AND connect the starter cable correctly: Plus to Plus and Minus to Minus (I read about someone, who was convinced that plus goes to minus - and that of course would short-circuit both batteries and cause a "big bang" and you might burn or blind yourself.)
PS: I already though of the battery-drain each time you opened the doors, while working on your Jag, when each time the interior illumination came on - but it just occurred to me now that this battery-drain would be much more severe as I originally thought, because I did not consider that you probably have all the original interior bulbs in your X-Type... - I though only of the lower battery-drain on my cars, as I swapped all interior bulbs on all my cars for LED-illumination...
Last edited by Peter_of_Australia; Sep 2, 2025 at 09:17 PM.
Reason: Added PS note
The guidance and advise by the both of you has been invaluable.
I will keep the battery drain in mind when i work on the care moving forward. I also should take the car for a longer drive, that is once I redo my valve cover gaskets, troubleshoot a small coolant leak from one of the hoses and change the centre driveshaft bearing... (I did say I will be back with more) .
Centre drive shaft bearing should be easy - I prefer to call it prop-shaft or propeller shaft to avoid confusion with the other drive shafts - unless you are talking about the front half-axles.
About the prop-shaft removal: apply hand-brake, remove those bolts (frt. & rr.) to which you can get, then release handbrake and go into N, turn the prop-shaft a bit (oh, and you might have to have a rear wheel off the ground, so that it can turn), and then remove the rest of the bolts. (Plus the bolts for the centre bearing). I used full 6L coolant bottles positioned under the car to position the prop-shaft onto them after getting it loose to avoid dripping the shaft onto the ground. From there you can still place it onto the ground carefully.
Valve cover (= rocker cover = cam cover) gaskets:
(Below I corrected, what I wrote before editing it - I kind of skipped a step - I was writing about cam-cover-bolts, but I meant the air-intake-bolts...) :
Mind the bolts for the air intake (the air intake needs to come off before you can get to the cam covers: The two right ones on the front might be stuck... It's a Jaguar fail-design. So start by being very careful about them and maybe apply penetration oil to have the best chance to get them off without causing damage. I ended up having to put new insert nuts into the plastic-"seat" under the metal-air-intake and I used liquid metal to do so. Use a torque wrench to tighten those bolts with their very low torque - definitely not more than 10Nm.
Torque on the cam cover bolts also 10Nm and observe the torque order.
To remove the air intake a lot of connectors and vacuum lines and fixing bolts need to come of. Make a list of every connector, tube and bolt you removed with little sketches, because it;s easy to forget some. Some are hard to get to close to the firewall,
And a tricky one: Very easy to disconnect, when you know how, basically impossible, if you do not know how:
At least 1 (if not 2) vacuum lines: One is in the rear on top of the intake: Where it goes into the intake it looks like a little black O-ring - well, it's not - it's magic: You press that little "O-ring" down with a little screwdriver and while doing so you carefully pull the tube up...
On the few uneven edges of there the cam-covers-gasket it pressed to apply a bit of RTV.
Last edited by Peter_of_Australia; Sep 3, 2025 at 07:03 PM.
Reason: corrections
With the prop shaft removal, i have read elsewhere that when putting it back it requires to be aligned properly to avoid vibrations, Any tips on this,
With the valve cover, I did the entire intake, with top and bottom gaskets and new sparkplugs, but also made some rookie erros and applied too much RTV on the uneven edges, once i put the cover back on there was a leak,
Will follow your directions and hopefully get it right this time around.
Thank you
Are you sure that too much RTV then caused a leak? I mean, "too much RTV" in the sense that putting it all around is a bad idea, as you will have trouble in the future to get to back off again. But if you torque the bolts back in the correct order and follow the advise of the RTV to hand-tighten the bolts, then let it dry for a short time - but not too long - then tighten them in the correct order with 10Nm, the excess RTV on the rough edges should squeeze out by itself... I assume you checked your cam-covers? I don't know, which cam covers your X-Type has (I think, I do not know your engine size), but some X-Type (e.g. the 3.0L) probably has the same cam covers as the S-Type, and that is made of an magnesium-allow, which acts as sacrificial element in the electro-corrosion process between magnesium and steel/aluminium to the effect that those covers dissolve over time and they get holes close to where the bolts are.
Was the leak really from your cam-cover? Frankly I am looking for the source of a leak on my X-Type since years... One other common place, there you can see a leak is the oil-sump-gasket. I have a DIY-guide to remove that, if you need it.
> With the prop shaft removal, i have read elsewhere that when putting it back it requires to be aligned properly to avoid vibrations,
No, I do not know about this. I did the job and had no issues. I can't see how you could position the fixing bolts any differently as they were.
What DOES definitely require re-alignment is a clutch plate on a manual car. I assume yours is automatic? On a manual car, if you "dig a little deeper" after the prop-shaft and remove the transmission (which is a massive job), you can remove the clutch plate, but you need a cheap little locator-pin to put the new clutch plate back on centred. I did that on my van.
HI Peter,
When i did the vale covers the first time i didn't put any rtv all around, it was just at the edges, however, I thought i will be a bit more generous. then after a few weeks, i notices that there was oil leaking form these areas despite torquing the bolts...I picked up the new seals today. Hope 2nd time around i can get a proper job done. Also, this i believer has caused an oil burning smell inside the car when the heater or aircon is turned on. (my poor lungs are absorbing the particles). I did tighten the bolts as per the manual but is you have a diagram please share.
Happy to accept the offer of the DIY for the oil sump. I will certainly need it.
Thank you for reassuring me on the Prop shaft bearing. I will attempt this when i have some time.
It contains 2 important clues: Drilling a hole thru the TC (transfer case) to get to the last remaining bolt, which you cannot access other wise. It is paramount to drill the hole in the absolute precise spot, otherwise it will look like I have seen it elsewhere: It would like a mouse has bitten a bit off from the side and I would be sceptical about the stability with the mousebite.
The other clue: The pan has an unnecessary bit of extra material, apparently for the sole purpose of making it impossible to remove it. My guide shows how I removed it with an angle grinder.
This is the torque order:
Try to figure out, WHERE EXACTLY the oil comes from. There is also a possibility that it comes from where the water-pump is - it may look like it's coming from the cam covers, but it's really the seals from the attached water-pump. Best take a picture of the point, where it leaks.
Last edited by Peter_of_Australia; Sep 5, 2025 at 08:07 AM.
Thank you for the attachments and the advise. Will get to theses in a couple of days once i get some free time.
With the prop shaft centre bearing, was it very difficult to remove the old one. Did you have to remove the tow halves of the prop shaft and remove then remove the old bearding, Appreciate if you have any pics of this.
Ups! I just realized that when I wrote that it is easy to get to the prop shaft bearing that I was thinking of the removal of the prop shaft only...
That's all I did so far (for other reasons than replacing the centre bearing).
I actually have not replaced my bearing yet.
But I found this, where there are a few pictures at post No. 6: https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...bearing-83043/
Car is not starting
