Took my 2013 XJL 3.0 in to Dealer for yearly service. Have 25k Mi garage kept and drive somewhat conservatively. Told I need both batteries replaced. What should a good battery voltage be. If replaced need software update. Told I need power steering flush. Told fuel injectors and throttle valve need cleaning. Told tire wear indicate alignment necessary. I don’t don’t know if I need any or all of it or if I could save by going to independent service shop. Any insight, advise and recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Did you buy the car new? If Yes, what's causing you to question the dealer now? If you bought it used, is there any paperwork detailing previous repairs? Any JLR dealership can enter your VIN in their computer, and retrieve all warranty, recall and service done by all JLR dealerships.
The best thing that's happened with my XJ is finding a good independent shop. Three of the guys working there formerly worked at the nearby JLR dealership. Perhaps you can luck out finding a similar shop near you. Maybe ask in the general forum for recommendations. It's important that a prospective independent shop has Jaguar experience, or you're better off going to the dealer.
If both your main and aux batteries are original, they probably do need replacing. There are plenty of posts on this forum regarding the aux battery; go check them out. Your main battery can be tested (in the car) for free by any number of big box auto parts stores. If nothing else, it would be a good sanity check against the dealers recommendation.
If your front tires are scuffed or beginning to wear unevenly, an alignment will help save what's left of their tread life. Unfortunately, our cars have different front and rear wheels and tires, so you can only swap L/R both front and back. Chicago winters are hard on both batteries and front suspensions.
Your owners manual details which fluids need changing, and when. PS fluid can also be changed at quick lube joints. Some of these are good; some aren't.

 

When it comes to batteries, a simple voltage check is somewhat of a misleader if you are looking for a "how good is my battery?". Any battery for a vehicle should read 12.6 VDC when fully charged. If you do not see this, then the battery is completely failed or needs more time on the charger. What the real measure of a battery is its "capacity". If you look on any battery, you should find 2 values, something along the lines of "800 CCA" and "80 AH". Both of these values work together in determining if your battery will do what it needs to or not. The CCA is simply a measure of "how much current can the battery output before reaching some voltage". New a 800 CCA battery may actually test out at 900+ CCA. But, every time you start the car, you eat a little bit into that value. Over time, you will reach a point where the battery may be only capable of outputting 650 CCA. This is a sign of your battery needing replaced. Same thing applies with the AH (amp-hour) rating. If you turn on your car and are pulling say 10 amps from the battery, a battery with an 80 AH rating will last for 8 hours before it reaches some pre-determined voltage. This is normally referred to as Capacity. This is what they say as "your battery has 80% capacity (ie, can only support 64 amp-hours, 80AH x 80%). What this site as found is if your battery capacity falls below 75%, you start getting weird indications (random error codes, some of the electronics start doing funny things, etc). I would venture to guess that you are still running on the factory batteries (you have 2, one for starting, one for loads when the car turns off the engine) and the tech simply said "those are 8 year old batteries, they are beyond when they normally last, so, this person needs new batteries". There is some truth to that, but really, a load test is the true measure. If your smaller battery (the one for the loads when the engine turns off) starts loosing its capacity, you should notice that the engine will not remain off as long. Please keep in mind that the time the engine will remain off is also a function of how much stuff you have turned on that requires electricity. So, this is somewhat subjective if you base it only on "the motor only turned off for XX amount of time when it used to go for YY amount of time". This is where I would say to take the car to a local auto parts store and ask them to do a load test on your car. They will connect up their box to the main battery and do the proper test. They should come back and tell you that the battery tested out at XXX CCA and YY% capacity. If you see that the capacity is less than 75 %, then time for a new battery. Otherwise, I would not worry about the batteries until the car starts giving you fits.

Now, for the other maintenance items. The steering flush, yeah, whatever. The fuel injector cleaning, there are 2 schools of thought on this and I will let you ponder which way you wan to go. Most people will tell you to put in a bottle of fuel injector cleaner and call it good (this is my stance). The one tidbit I will add is do not add the same brand as what you normally fill the car up with. The fuel injector cleaner is simply a bunch of detergents that are normally put in the fuel. So, if you fill up normally with say Chevron, if you toss in a bottle of the Techron fuel treatment, you are going to gain nothing as that is already in your fuel and anything that product would do is already being done. Now, you use say the STP product (just a name, not a recommendation), that uses different detergents and therefore will clean slightly differently. A lot of people have had good luck with a product called "BG44K" which is essentially the same stuff the dealership is going to use. I am also an advocate to periodically (say once every 2-3 months), use a different brand gas (still a Tier 1 gas brand) for a tank or 2. This will do the same as putting in a bottle of cleaner. I tend to always fill my car up with Wawa gas, but when I do long trips, I make sure to fill up with either Sunoco or Shell. You will see a slight up tick in your mileage after that tank (I do). Some people have had injector issues and you could reasonably blame it on not keeping things clean. So, how much effort/money do you want to put towards this. Stick with name brand gasoline and switch up the detergents periodically, I think you will find that is all that is needed.

As for the throttlebody, ok, the fuel doesn't reach that area and needs its own cleaning. This is where I would ask you "how mechanically inclined are you?". It is easy to do. You remove the intake off the throttle body, spray some throttle body cleaner on a rag, wipe the inside of the throttle body with the rag to remove any brown build up, use one finger to open the throttle body and wipe the edges of the silver disk, reinstall the intake.It should take you only 30 minutes or less to do this. Not hard. Some people will say to spray the cleaner into the throttle body. Not wrong, but it can flood the engine. Which, should you go that route, you simply depress the gas pedal all the way down to the floor as you attempt to start the engine. The engine will catch after a few seconds of rotating and then you ease off the gas pedal to bring it up to idle. I know what you are thinking "that is going to rev my engine as soon as it starts". No it does not. Flooring the gas as you start the engine actually turns off the fuel injectors. It allows the engine to pull only air through the engine to remove the flooding condition. Then as you ease off the gas pedal, it starts readmitting fuel to the engine.

Now, the alignment. This is subjective. You can look at the front tires and see if you have wear on say the inside of the tires with less on the outside. It will be normal to have more wear on the inside edge than the outer. If you look at the rears, you should have pretty even wear across the whole tire. You notice more on the edge than across the rest of the tire, an alignment would be advisable. I would also say an alignment is advisable if you haven't had one in say 2 years. This is one of those things that as the car sits or you hit a pothole, it can toss off the alignment.

One last thing on the tire wear. If you notice that both edges are worn about the same but the center is worn differently, then this is saying that your tires are not properly inflated. If the center is worn more than the edges, then you are running too high of pressure in that tire. If both edges are worn, but the center has lots of tread, then you are running too low of pressure. Changing pressure by even say 3-4 psi in the good direction is all that is needed to correct this condition.

If you want to know more about batteries, let me know. I used to work around batteries that were capable of powering a small town. Keeping these in tip top shape was key (granted, they were there for the protection of a nuclear reactor in the middle of the ocean). I know a bit about batteries and their characteristics.

 

No, I bought the car used from the dealer in 2018 with 18k mi. on it. I am bit cynical and don't always trust what the service rep says i need. Otherwise I am fairly happy with them. The car is running fine as far as I can tell. No real issues. I'm happy to do what the car needs, i just want to be sold something not necessary.

 

tremendous amount of info. I appreciate the knowledge. thank you for taking the time.

 

this website or forum is a bit tricky to navigate so finding a general forum can be challenging but I will give it a shot. Thanks

 

Well you found the right forum for your XJ!
This is flat out the place with the most information about your car. So spend some time searching and post questions if anything is not clear.

What your asking is kinda hard to answer and those items are regularly recommenced by ALL service writers at ALL dealers. It's their job to up sell more services. Nothing wrong with that it's just business.

But can you DIY any of this? There is a lot of money to be saved if you can. Jaguar's are just cars with 4 wheels like all the rest and I have found them not to difficult to fix with the RIGHT info. That's where this forum comes into play. We have a lot of experienced owners and even better a small handful of factory tech's that weigh in from time to time. This is pure gold for a cheap DIY shade tree mechanic!
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