Hello Friends,

My name is Abraham, am new to the group and am from India residing in Doha-Qatar.

I recently purchased a preowned jaguar xf sv8 2009 model which has cloaked 131000 kms ..true british beauty and i am in love with her.

The previous owner had abused her so bad and am trying to bring her back to life ..14 minor accidents and lots of oil leaks mainly from the steering pump and oil pan.

i fixed a lot of problems and more are pending as well..The availability of parts are less as well as expensive here and i do not have the cash to spend all in one shot on her so am fixing one by one.

Currently there's a vacuum leak which am unable to trace out ..has anyone faced the same issue. if yes any suggestions please

attached pics of my car for your referral after i had got her

 

With the history of the car I think you need to get it scanned with the Jaguar SDD system. You need to find somewhere to start and these are complicated cars so guessing really does not work.
With those miles be sure and do a transmission fluid service when you can. It's over due.
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Having the same model and year, I can tell you you will find many vacuum leaks if everything is original. I would suggest a smoke machine, they are easy to make or cheap to purchase. Two main culprits of leaks are supercharger brake booster throttle body o ring, and vacuum hoses.One is ribbed it will look ok, but will crumble if you move it, as it will be brittle. I would also just clean your Maf sensor if it idling unevenly. Good luck...

 

That's a really good point!
These are now old cars and all the rubber/plastic has degraded and is returning to their base elements a bit at a time! It's the ultimate way to recycle too!
Really watch that under SC hose! Cheap hose but a lot of work to change. So if you do change it consider replacing all the coolant hoses and on those 4.2L SC V-8's that's a LOT of hoses!

When I did my 2005 STR I think the total count was somewhere in the 25-30 separate hoses.
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These cars are not for everyone, hope you speak arabic and had a trusted shop lined up with someone there you know personally before you bought this thing, still need to supervise them doing any work. The below is for if you were stubborn enough to keep it, strongly suggest just swapping to a Toyota or Nissan which are the only cars that make any sense owning in these regions. A vacuum leak is just the tip of the iceberg, we are entering a world of pain here just trying to get the car to idle properly.


This engine is good but with age and heat the plastic and rubber has too many failure points to list here and is an ongoing battle to keep unmetered air from leaking in.

You would need your own OBD2 reader and app or good scanner to monitor short/long fuel trims. If you don't even know what fuel trims are, well you are about to have learn. The goal is to be at least single digits +/-, at least then the cats don't get destroyed $$$$$, that's as good as it gets.

You would need your OWN smoke machine, it is just part of owning a car like this. It will pay for itself in just one use because even if you supervise a shop using it they will make every attempt to mislead you to maximize the repair bill. These simpletons only see the brand and assume you are sucker who can be easily compelled into paying for infinite guesswork part replacements totaling multiple total values of what the entire car is worth.

This means you would have to become your own automotive technician doing diagnosis, research and parts ordering. Local parts shops will mark up double minimum over the already overpriced parts that mostly have to be ordered from UK anyway. You would want to install most parts yourself finding most shops cannot be trusted, only it's too hot for most of the year to do any work outdoors.

You would still need the scam shops for anything that requires a lift. Due to the complexity of this vehicle, the amount of failure points on the car and the ambiguity of repair, it basically gives them a license to print money. They then take no responsibility for any repair they suggested actually being effective and will just say it needs more parts to fix.

Actually the above is applicable to anywhere outside of UK/EU.

Good luck with whatever decision, just understand that keeping it = gambling when almost anything that breaks is a $1000+ bill on average. Maybe you can get away with having your fun to get it out of your system about 6 months to a year and not much will go wrong, but odds are against you since deferred maintenance to the extreme is the accepted norm in this sandpit. The frustration alone is not worth it, not even mentioning the wasted money.

 

Having bought a quite complex car knowing that it had been neglected, hopefully you won't be too easily discouraged by all the catch-up maintenance you will need to do. I think the idea of fixing things 'one by one' is not going to work very well; I personally went through the very difficult job of replacing oil cooler hoses and water pump, only to have to remove the engine a few months later to replace coolant hoses. If I had known that this would be necessary, I would have removed the engine early on and addressed every hose in the engine bay at once- you could gradually purchase the parts according to budget, until you're ready to attack everything. If you have access to a workshop and a few tools, this is not such a difficult task, but fairly time-consuming (a hoist would be a real bonus but not essential). The hoses at the rear of the engine are a nightmare to access with the engine in the car; everything becomes easy once it is out.

 

thank you sir, really appreciate. I guess the transmission oil cooler was changed by the previous owner but haven't flushed the old coolant well because when i tried to check out the coolant level a few days back i found oil and coolant mixed up but not milky.
now i have parked my car under the basement and don't want to take it out for a drive until and unless i find a professional garage guy who can flush the old coolant out without breaking the seals inside the engine.

i have a Mercedes Benz 2007 e280 petrol which runs like a dream 198000 kms cloaked and never given me any trouble till date.