So I find myself in the market for a new daily driver, my previous car having met an untimely and unfortunate demise.

I'm considering an XF, I've seen couple of 2012's (V8) and 2015's (V6, 3.0) that are in my price range, very promising, with 40K - 50K miles.

I know how to look for the basics on a used car, but is there anything specific I need to look for with the XF?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

Water ingress from the boot on the right hand side where the battery is and water ingress to the central junction box which is behind the panel to the right of the accelerator (on a right hand drive car).

Basically check everything electrical + check aircon works.

 

SOME 2013 and all pre 2013 V8 engines are prone to timing chain issues that were resolved sometime in the 2013 model year.
That said I have seen a non-supercharged V8 form 2009 with 150-200+ k miles it, so its a crapshoot

For piece of mind I would go for the 2014+ (or maybe a 2013+ 3.0 since it would seem the timing guide issue may have been fixed then

But check everything electrical, sunroof for water egress and if you can get data on oil change interval better than the recommended 15K even better

 

Inspect the maintenance records and see when the last water pump replacement was done to determine how long you've got till the next one. They tend to last only 20-30K miles, not 100K like a normal car. Its not a hard job, but you can read dozens of threads about these water pumps. I'd take a mirror and a flashlight. Inspect the front of the motor and just under the water pump for any orange crust. Also remove the engine cover and shine your light down in the crevasses to look for any standing coolant in the valley between the cylinder heads as the crossover pipes can crack and leak. Actually you should proactively change out all the PA66 nylon cooling system pipes by around 8-10 years old, maybe sooner depending on mileage (I'm about to do mine) and that's a bear of a job on the 5.0. I've read a bunch of threads on the timing chains, but it seems those don't often come into play until 80-90K miles at the earliest That's still way too soon, but I've read some professional jag tech opinion that more frequent than specified oil changes could stave it off thousands of miles beyond that. But you already own an older Jaguar so you know what you're getting yourself into. Its funny how if you didn't know your car was going to break, then you're really upset when it does, but somehow, knowing these things are going to need doing eventually, it doesn't make you all that mad when the time comes.

 

So many of us found out the hard way that the plastic coolant line connectors fail after a few years (expand, contract, plastic, etc.) Replacement requires removal of the supercharger (think $1,100 just for labor). Jaguar engineers came up with a replacement connector with a new part number but it comes out of your pocket, not theirs.

Good luck.