So my car (06 xtype) has been miss firing 1,3, and 5 for a little while and I tried to take manifold off myself but when doing so the bolt closest to driver side headlight would just spin and not come out. I then decided I'll leave it up to a "professional" I took it to a local shop who claims they can do jags since it's mostly ford now I told them what was wrong 9am on Wednesday and it's now near closing on Friday and they finally got to said bolt! So I'm frustrated and they tell me they might have to drill it out and in turn brake the plastic piece on the lower intake and that would b $1200 for part + multiple hours labor... what do u think guys? I'm ready to ditch them cuz I've lost all confidence. I'm north side of Houston btw. Thanks guys!

 

Mine did that as well except mine was on the other side (Right outer bolt). Wound up pulling the manifold off with the bolt still attached, the threads that it screws into are pressed into the top of the intake manifold gasket plastic so once it starts spinning it's actually sitting lose on the top of the lower intake section and if you lift and pull, it will come off with the upper manifold.

Once I had it off, after looking at it for a little while I realized that if you remove the lower manifold plastic runners and put a long bolt up through it from the under the bottom and then put a nut and lock washer on the top to hold it down it would work just fine. They sit high enough off the cylinder heads that a bolt fits no problem. It might not look beautiful but works perfect and cost about $2.00 for the bolt and it gives you a good reason to replace the o-rings on both the upper and lower side of those plastic intake runners. Total time and labor was about 2 hours start to finish and my lower o-rings were so hard and crushed flat that I'm glad I had to take it all apart as they were the source of the biggest vacuum leaks on the top of the motor.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

 

jmann, I can understand your frustration. Do some looking around here, there is a member who runs his own Jaguar shop and he is down in your neck of the woods. i am sure he will get you hooked up and fixed in no time flat. I want to say the member's name is Brutal. He runs through here periodically and if you do some looking, you can probably find his shop address/name listed somewhere.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I'm not the best mechanically but I've done a little work through the years on past cars just I work in hospitality so me and mechanics hours don't mix well so they have my car all weekend but I might just try that cuz I'm not trying to spend 1000s!

 

If Brutal is in your area, he is very knowledgable about Jaguars, I'll vouch for that. His mechanical advice has helped me numerous times. But yea it sounds like that first mechanic is taking you to the cleaners. Even though it's mostly Ford parts, it's in a Jaguar shell and people see that and think you can afford it. Also Jaguars are a bit higher maintenance. The hard thing to do when I first got my x-type was accepting the fact that a $2 fix from the hardware store was what I really needed, instead of the $100 replacement part. Once I got over the newness of my car and realized how often I've had little things I've need to replace or fix, I don't think twice about putting JB welding something or using non-Jaguar bolts from the auto store if I have to. There's times where the cheap fix is your best bet... For example, my coolant tank nipple broke off. I went online and bought a new tank right away and it took a week to get here. Other people went to the hardware store, bought a metal nipple and fixed it. Probably in one day. Meanwhile I am sitting around waiting for the part, riding my bike all over town and driving my car around with a duct-taped broken coolant tank (not good idea btw).