Hello friends,

My vehicle has had an issue with the engine blowing out a piston and it needs a full engine replacement. This happened to us while out in Utah, 2 hours of Salt Lake City but I am from Chicago. The issue I am presented with now, is that while I figure out whether or not to spend the money on the replacement engine and shop around for prices, wait for the engine to get ordered, etc, I need a place to store the car. Additionally, I still owe about $19k on it.

The car is currently at the mechanic's shop where they were reviewing the damage but if I do not proceed with their estimate $13k, I need to move the car from their lot to whatever permanent storage solution I can find.

I am not in the same state as the car at this point, I had to come back home as my vacation was over and needed to get back to work. I called some storage places in Salt Lake, you know, the kind you can drive up to with regards to renting a cube but they've said the car needs to be in running condition in order to allow the storage there.

Do you guys here in the US have any suggestions as to places that might allow, long-term storage for a vehicle, that will allow a tow-truck to get in there and push the car in? If I didn't still owe money on the car, quite frankly I would just probably salvage it and get what I could for it, but not having a car title complicates this as I technically do not own the car yet. I've got so much anxiety right now, I have no clue what to do.

Thanks for your help / suggestions - I kinda have to get back to the mechanic's shop today and completely lost here.

 

Flatbed it home.

 

Any suggestions on services that can do that? Salt Lake to Chicago is quite a haul, 3 days roughly if you sleep lol.

 

Replied on the other forum, I suggesting the same thing regarding a flat bed even if the transport costs were $1500 or so , I think you may still be better off using a local repair place and possibly an engine from a totalled low mileage car.
( My other response as follows
Replying from the UK, I have looked and you are maybe 24 hours driving time from your car, I think if I were in your situation I would be looking into the cost of getting a company to bring the car home on a recovery wagon , this might be costly but you could offset it against possible storage fees.
I feel I would be more comfortable dealing with a local company when it comes to fitting a replacement engine. You may find an engine from a breakers yard from a low mileage write off vehicle, this could save you some money.
If the vehicle was in your drive it would reduce your urgency to find an engine quickly and you will be in a situation where you may have a couple of weeks to find the engine and a suitable fitter .
So sorry to hear of your issues and I hope you get a suitable solution soon. )

 

Thanks guys. I think we (my wife and I) might end up having to just pay off the car immediately so we can send it to salvage and move on with our lives and cut our losses. It's a shame too, the car (other than that issue) is pristine. Looks beautiful. I told my wife I am going to have to buy a newer one next year because. As crazy as it sounds, this did not sour my love of Jaguars at all.

 

Having shipped a car that I bought on Ebay, this is how it works :

There are websites where you list the job - where from, to, rate you are willing to pay per mile, etc, and then owner/operator truckers will bid for the job. The higher the rate per mile, the quicker your job is likely to be accepted.

 

That sounds awesome! Had no idea that existed.

 

Unfortunately I can't tell you which website, as the selling dealer took care of it, but they explained the process.

 

if you serviced the car at your local Jaguar dealer in Chicago I would contact them and see if they could get Jaguar North America to assist with some of the repair costs. Either with a dealer in Utah or towing it back to Chicago. Jaguar Northfield has been extremely helpful to me and the service manager very responsive.

Jaguar North America covered the full cost of replacing the sunroof on my 2013 XJ out of warranty an 90% of the cost for the Sticky button issue. They like to hear that you service your car at the dealer and that the dealer speaks well on your behalf. I also spoke directly with JNA said what an enthusiast I am etc and I am certain that helped my case.

good luck! By the way how many miles are on your car.

 

I have used this service to ship furniture and they also will ship ,your XJ https://www.uship.com/vehicles/

 

66k miles.

 

Were there any indications before the engine failure? Any prior history of engine problems? Or did it just fail out of the blue?

What does "blowing out a piston" mean? Did the con rod fail?

 

I am honestly not entirely sure to be honest - I am not very car-savvy. I was just told that it looked like a piston broke through the engine or something like that. I'll ask again when I talk to the insurance again.

 

Sounds like big or small end failure (the ends of the con rod). According to this discussion, some earlier models had bearing issues, which would do the trick :

https://www.jaginfo.org/threads/xj-3...harged.109038/

Has anyone else heard of this?

 

Get your car home. It will give you breathing space to properly evaluate your options.I have a 2013 Xj 3.0 sc that I bought with a blown engine. I priced a used engine and it was way cheaper to buy a brand new short block from the UK and rebuild my own engine. The short block was 2850 pounds. It cost me 320 pounds to air freight it here to New Zealand

 

Thanks all - I ended up selling the car to salvage for about $4k and moving on. Recently got myself a Jaguar F-Pace S but hopefully I still get a chance to chat with all the XJ crew.

 

Glad to hear that you've solved your problem, but VERY sorry to think of the financial hit that you took, while dealing with it.