Good day fellow enthusiasts,

I just changed the rear rotors and pads on my 2013 XJ 6cyl. with 56,000 miles. Tried to start it and the dash comes on but the engine doesn’t. I used the suggested procedure of pressing the start button then press the brake pedal. I get the “press the brake pedal while starting” message. I press it all the way to the floor and it does nothing. I checked the battery as suggested in other posts and it is fully charged. I tried to bleed the rear brakes but only got the fluid out of the RR caliper. The LR caliper only spit out 1.5 oz. under 20 PSI from my Mityvac. I tried to bleed the line by having my son pump the brake pedal as I open and shut the nipple. Nothing came out.
I’m guessing there is air in the line or in the ABS? Or maybe the line is collapsed?
Are there any tricks to bleeding the brakes? How do you bleed the ABS unit?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
JB

 

jbryan, there is nothing special you need to do when bleeding anything out of the ABS unit. When you get fluid out of the caliper, you are pushing it through the ABS unit and flushing it of air too.

When bleeding the brakes by stepping on the pedal, did you have a long tube attached wiht the free end inside of a jar with clean fluid in it? You also need to make sure to press the brake pedal all the way to the floor and then let the pedal return to the normal position by itself before depressing it again. Did you make sure to keep sufficient fluid in the brake fluid reservoir?

Out of curiosity, when you pushed the piston in on the rear calipers, did you force the piston in or did you open the bleed valve and let the piston go in by pushing a little bit of brake fluid out. I have found that Jaguar ABS units do not like having the rear calipers force the fluid back at them.

As for bleeding the brakes, since you are in the US, the process would have you bleeding the right rear first, then the left rear, followed by the right front, finally ending at the left front. Nothing really special about this car and bleeding brakes. When I do it, I get a quart bottle and about 5 feet of 9/32" ID clear tubing. I then attach one end to the bleed port, run the tubing to the top of the wheel arch (taping it at 2 points away from the high point) and then running the tubing down to the jar. I then open the bleed port and pump the brakes till I get clean fluid out. This is also normally enough fluid to get all the air out. I can then close the bleed port and move on to the next wheel. Then all you have to worry about is keeping the fluid reservoir filled enough that you are not introducing air that way. If you do introduce air, then you have to start all over.

 

As for your no start problem, I would say to first start with checking that the brake pedal switch is properly mounted. This will require you to look under the dash at where the brake pedal goes up to the hinge point. You should see a plunger from a switch box in touch with the brake pedal arm. if not, remount the brake pedal switch and see if the car will start now. You can also verify proper operation by stepping on the brake pedal and verifying that the brake lights come on. if this is good, then leave your foot off of the brake pedal and turn on the car. Now, depress the screen wash button to force the wipers to run. As the wipers are moving, depress the brake pedal and press the start/stop button. Did the wipers stop? If yes, then you have a problem with the starter. If no, then your starter did not get the command from the ECU to start the engine. Lets take things from there and see where this leads us.

The other thing that I would say to check is to verify that the gear selector is in the P or N position. Granted, the gear selector should put itself there anyways. But, a good thing to check. You can try turning the car on, then shifting the gear shift to N and then attempting to start the car.

One last question. When doing the brake job, did you need to use a large mallet or something of the sort to free stuck parts on the car? If so, you may have immobilized the car. This is where you will want to look in the owners manual and follow the procedure for clearing the immobilization.

 

Did you push the rear pistons in or did you wind them back with a tool?
When you press the brake pedal, do the rear pads move and squeeze the rotor?
You problem sounds like a lack of brake pressure due to air in the system. You might try a gravity bleed, just leave the bleeders open for a while and
see if fluid stars to drip out.

 

Thank you all for the replies. Since posting it has snowed four inches and of course I’m working on the car outside.

I will I’ll check on the brake switch and the immobialization setting. I had to bang off one of the rotors.

I started bleeding from the RR and then LR using a mityvac. I stopped after the LR produced only 1.5 oz. I will try again tomorrow first with a gravity feed. Removing the caliper from the mount and lowering it down to drain. Maybe this will unlock the line?

i will then do the front two.

Tomorrow is is supposed to be 50 and sunny.

I’ll report back. Thanks again for the ideas.

JB

 

On the XJ the rear caliper pistons MUST be rotated while pushing them back in. I forget which way but I believe it's counter clockwise.
They will NOT move without rotating them. This true for just about 100% of the rear calipers because of the integrated parking brake function the rear calipers also provide.

Just a suggestion but the Harbor Freight brake piston kit DOES fit our XJ's and works very well. I think with one use it would pay for itself since the kit is under $40.
Just be sure and use a 20% off coupon!

Brake Tool
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Thanks for the replies. I used a universal two pin disk that attaches to my 3/8 ratchet. I wound them in and then had to use a hand held battery powered driver to finish the job.

I was was able to get 3.5 oz of brake fluid out of the LR caliper. The car still will not start. Still has the press brake to start warning displayed.

Long story short wife was tired of waiting to get her car running so it just went to the dealer. I’ll let you know what the solution was.

Thanks again,

JB

 

Im having this same issue!!
any updates???
how did you fix it??

 

I am having a similar problem,
I just changed the rear pads and caliper on my 2013 XF V6 SC with 83,000 miles. I tried to start it after flushing the brake fluid, and the dash came on, but the engine didn't start. I get the “press the brake pedal while starting” message. I press it all the way to the floor, and it does nothing. The only thing I hear is two click sounds from the engine. I checked the battery, as suggested in other posts, and it is fully charged. I bleeded all the brakes. I used 2 person method. The only thing I can think of is that the starter has gone bad, but the car was working perfectly fine before. So I have no idea what could have gone wrong while replacing the rear calipers.
Any suggestions?
Thank you

 

13XF, sounds to me like you have a lot of air in the system and you are not building up enough pressure to trigger the pressure switch. I would go back and bleed all 4 wheels. Also make sure you do them in the correct sequence. I seem to have good luck using simply a piece of clear tygon tubing taped to the top of the wheel well and letting it hang down into a jar with the end of the tubing submerged in fluid. This prevents air from getting back into the system. The big thing is making sure you do not let the brake fluid reservoir to get too low. Yo uget too low, it will suck air inot hte system and then you have to start all over again.

 

I will try that tomorrow and see if that works.
Thank you

 

Thermo, Can you please tell me what would be the correct sequence to bleed?

 

I use a scan tool to do ABS bleeding it has a sequence to do the brakes,2015 with a 3.0 and try pushing as hard as you can with the brake pedal it might just be your out of air in the boost system not giving enough to start the car.

 

13XF, you start with the right rear corner of the car, then move to the left rear. From there you move to the right front, finishing with the left front.

When I do a bleed like this, I watch the tubing and I make sure that I can see a color change in the fluid. It should go from like a darker green to an almost clear state. This will tell you that you have moved all the old fluid out of the system and got a complete flush done. From there, you are just making sure that you have no introduction of air into the calipers. This is where I leave the tubing connected and then close the bleeder valve. From there, I pull the tubing from the bleeder port and dump the fluid in the tubing into my catch container. I tend to tape the tubing to the top of the wheel well (tape at the 11 and 1 positions so the highest point is visible to see any air that is in this tubing). By having the 18" (45CM) of height, this ensures no air is going to get back into the caliper. From there, it is making sure you keep the reservoir full enough to not let air get into the system. If you are not sure of how many pumps you can do with the brakes, I would say to fill the reservoir, do say 5 full pumps and then see where the reservoir level is. It should be in the half range. If so, you can give another 2-3 pumps and then you must refill. It is better to do a bunch of small fills of the reservoir than to do a few large fills. No need to risk putting air into the system.

Also, if you are in doubt that you have all the air out, pump a little more fluid through the system. A quart of brake fluid is cheap compared to having to do a bleed over again.

 

Allways the bleeding from further away to the nearest of the master.
You need to have brake light switch enaged (Brake lights should lit) to have engine cranking. Note: You might need more force added to the pedal, once you have consumed all the vacuun from booster when you did the bleeding.

 

Which scanner?

 

I used XTool D8 it has the ABS Bleed sequence.

 

Are your brake lights coming on when you push the brake pedal to start the car?
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