I have a 2008 XF Premium luxury with 4.2 petrol engine .The car has only done 38000 KMS.
Today I was driving at 40 kmh along a smooth city street and bang an explosion and the bonnet lifted up at the back some 6 inches and I found that the pedestrian safety air bags under the rear of the bonnet ( Hood ) had deployed for no reason .
This should only happen if the car hits something hard and it is designed to make the impact on pedestrians much less potent if they are struck so the manual says .
I drove it straight to the dealer who said you must have hit something which I told them I certainly had not . They agreed the front of the car was unmarked but said the airbags will only go off in a frontal collision .
I am the only driver of this vehicle and can truthfully say it has never ever hit anything in the front to do this and am wondering has anybody out there heard of this happening I suspect it must be a faulty electronic sensor or the computer but would love to hear from anyone who may have heard of or seen this problem and can give some advise .
The dealer wants A$3150 to replace the airbags and bonnet hinges which cant be reused .
Help ! !

 

You are not the first XF (or XK) owner who this has happened to, spontaneous and random deployment of the Pedestrian Safety System.

It's been reported many times, where there was no impact at the front of the vehicle.

North American vehicles do not have the Pedestrian Airbags so you won't hear anything from North America about it. But plenty from the UK.

Here's one https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...-fault-121410/

It's been mentioned on the other, UK-based Jaguar forum as well.

Jump on google for "jaguar xf pedestrian deployment" and you'll get a heap of hits...

Good luck with it.

 

Great to know they are not on the NA cars!
I did not know that.
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Thanks for your input -- much appreciated . DavidT

 

Sorry to revive an old thread, but here's a good example of what happens when the Pedestrian Protection System deploys for no apparent reason.

05/10, Jaguar, Xf, Sedan - Pickles Auctions Australia

2010 build XF 5.0L, the PPS deployed, you can see there is absolutely no damage to the rest of the vehicle (i.e. there was no impact / crash)

The vehicle has been written off by the insurance company, why it's ended up at the salvage auction.

Here are the pictures uploaded to the forum, since the auction listing will eventually disappear.





Obviously this particular car copped more damage than the usual hinges & airbags for $3200, maybe the bonnet is bent too or there is something else going on with the insurer (new for old replacement? but the car is too old...).

Figured i'd post this since some people had asked "why would you disable the PPS" ? well here's your answer...

 

Looks to me like it had a significant impact on the front-left of the car. The chrome strip in front of the little grille on the bumper is missing (as it seems is the grille itself), and it looks (from the blurry pictures on the website) that the bumper is pretty badly broken in that area, and the front wheel well is damaged with various pieces of plastic hanging down.

It looks to me like this is a legitimate deployment of the system as a result of a front-end collision

 

 

This is one more reason why I have a dash-cam. I know it's of no help to you now, but in these situations, he-said, she-said, is basically a non issue when you have video evidence of what happened. Sorry that you suffered this. I am now worried that this could happen to me ('09 XFSC) I'll have to check if this can happen on US cars.....

 

As far as I understand in North America we don't have these... at least on my XF Portfolio, in Canada, I do not have them.

 

Correct. That system is fortunately not on US spec cars

 

David
Did you get it fixed? Mine (2009 V6 petrol) went off tonight as I was driving down my driveway! I hit nothing!
The costs to fix look horrendous.
Doug

 

did you bonnet broken? on facelift there are no damage after deployment, except both bonnet airbags. also, it's quite easy to deactivate this system via JLR SDD program.

 

Thanks for the quick response. Mine is 2009 so pre-face-lift. Top of bonnet and lights unaffected but there is some distortion of the part where the hinges attach to the bonnet. Cannot see where hinges are damaged ie they look undamaged.

 

it's not a problem. hinges can be fixed.

 

It's becoming clearer. When they say the hinges need to be replaced, what they really mean is the small yield bolt/shear pin which breaks when the air bags go off are not supplied separately by Jaguar. HInges themselves are undamaged - it's just the pin that holds the link arrangement that allows the bonnet to open 5 inches and no more that pops.
On other forums people talk about using cable ties to hold it together pending a new hinge appearing.
Problem is I can't release the front of the bonnet and there's a lot of force in the gas struts if I unbolt the rear of the bonnet from the hinge. In the pic below you can see the small cylinder with a nut on a thread - that's the lower end of the shear bolt, the top of which was forced off when the air bags popped. The other end went through the hole in the upper part of the hinge.
Any thoughts on how to get the front of the bonnet open? There is no resistance on the cable lever in the cabin at all.

....

 

Update: I disconnected the gas struts where they attach to the body and was able to lower the rear of the bonnet so that it could be pushed back enough to enable the bonnet release to work.
The shear bolts would be 5 cent bits. An outrage you can't buy them separately. See pic.


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Can you just replace the bolts with regular hardware and then disable the entire airbag system?
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Just have any decent shop weld the hinge together for good and done. This -buy the whole subassembly for this little part- profiteering these euro brands are trying to push is appalling.

 

Buy hinges from a breaker (or even from a us model?). Seems to have the shear pin same as EU cars?

her's a set $50

Used hinge set

 

Same problem had been faced by me
too much cheap service Jaguar have