Jaguar Forums - Jaguar Enthusiasts Forum - Saloon Boot Not Opening

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I thought I'd share how I fixed my locked boot.

My son offered to treat me to a round of golf this morning (Fathers' Day), so I loaded the clubs into the car last night. This morning, I tried to open the boot to put something else in and the motor was completely dead. Fortunately, this was at home before we set off. A bit of internet research convinced me that golf was off, so it was commuted to a hearty fry-up instead.

I couldn't leave it like that though so, breakfast eaten, I set out to get into the boot, get it open, trace the problem and, hopefully, fix it. There was no noise from the motor, but I could hear the relay in the dashboard clicking as I pressed the fob button, so assumed a problem with the motor or, more likely the wiring.
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Here’s what I did (BTW, my 2003 car had folding rear seats, so not all of this will apply to all vehicles) :

Remove the rear seat cushion
Move the front seats fully forward to make some space.
Pull the seat cushion up at the front on each side to release the clips. Fortunately, mine didn't break
Push the cushion back and lift it off the hooks. You can be quite brutal with this stage as the fixings are metal on both sides. The seat belt anchors pass through the cushion.

Remove the seat backs
These are fixed at the bottom with six large Torx bolts: I used an M8 Rive tool. Three are easy to see, thee are tucked away behind the cushion, but accessible (a bit fiddly to get beck in though).
Once the bottom is loose, the hard part.
You need to work through the gap at the bottom to reach the two release knobs in the boot. I used a long crowbar - don't push the seat up all the way while doing this as it puts pressure on the mechanism and makes it harder to release.

Getting the boot open
Working in the boot, remove the inner handle, which is held in by two Torx bolts. Then remove the plastic cover over the mechanism to reach the manual release lever. This is held in place by two of those self-expanding screw clips, which may or may not survive the process.

Now you should have the boot open and can start investigating. I was lucky in that I found my problem very quickly - a broken wire in the loom as it runs through a rubber boot from the body inro the bootlid (see photo somewhere in this post - I didn't seem to have any control over where these landed when I imported them). Two other wires were damaged, but not completely cut.

To repair these, strip out the bootlid liner where you will see that there is a plug on the loom. Unplug this and release the loom from its clips. You can then draw enough of the loom out to slide the rubber boot out of the way while you repair the cables (see photo).

Reassembly is as they say, the reverse of disassembly. Getting the seat belt anchors back through the cushion is a struggle, as are three of those large Torx/Ribe bolts.

I didn't pay attention to the clock, but reckon that this took less than two hours - certainly, it was all done well before I'd have finished that round of golf.

I hope this is helpful to others.