I recently bought a 2003 2.5 AWD Auto SE X-type with 103k mileage and am very pleased with the purchase however there are 2 Small problems which I will discuss in seperate posts.
Firstly the check engine light does not illuminate when the ignition is turned on.
I have had it to my local Indie Jaguar shop in Sussex nothing shows in the diagnostics and it also did not illuminate when a sensor was disconnected, they want to take out the instrument pack to check but before I go ahead with that can anybody make other suggestions ie is there a relay or some such which may not be making contact, all suggestions welcome.

 

Jocurran, if you get into the car and turn the ignition on (do not start the motor), does the check engine light (CEL) come on? If yes, then the system should be functioning properly. If no, most likely you have a burned out bulb for the CEL. The CEL will not come on just because you connect a code reader. Kinda like just because there is a code that can be read does not mean that the CEL should be on either. The computer will hold on to the code "forever" (until it is cleared), but will turn off the CEL after it sees 5 back to back run cycles (ie, 1 cycle is the car started, motor turns a minimum of 10,000 revolutions, the car has time to check all the sensors for errors and not seeing any, and stopping the car).

The other thing that you can do is to get into the car and depress the TRIP button on the end of the turn signal stalk. With the button depressed, start the car. Keep holding the button down. Watch the information screen (where the ODO is). When you see it say "ENGINEERING TEST" or something to that effect, release the TRIP button. You have now put the instrument cluster into the diagnostic mode. If you tap the TRIP button one more time, it will light up all the lights on the instrument cluster. Look to see if the CEL light comes on then. If it doesn't, then this would confirm you have a bad bulb.

It is possible that the owner before you had an issue and was tired of looking at the CEL light and took out the bulb or disabled it somehow. That is the more likely situation than another issue.

If you are still having issues, let us know and we can take things from there.

 

Thanks for that, I put the instrument cluster into Test mode and and on pressing tTrip again the CEL came on along with the other lights so Ai know now that bulb is OK, it still doesn't come on when the ignition first comes on so it must have been disabled somehow somewhere

 

In some countries it would be a fail (e.g. our MoT).

You can read whether there are any current codes and what they are using an OBD tool such as elm327.