In November of 2017, the paddle shifters of my 2013 XJL stopped responding. I could be driving and shifting just fine and then randomly they would quit working. So I took it to the dealer as it was still under warranty. They told me it was a spring in the steering wheel that needed replacing. Now, just two years later, the same thing is happening again. The dealer explained that if it was the spring again, parts and labor would be ~$1100 to fix.

I don't use the paddle shifters for typical driving but I live on a good size hill at elevation. Going down the hill into town I will downshift to slow the car and save the brake wear. So use is something less than 5% of drive time. The car has 56k miles.

Has anyone else run into this? I searched for it on the forum and didn't find anything.

Happy Holidays and thanks in advance.

 

Never happened to me, but I use the paddles infrequently. IMHO the "spring " handles much of the communications between the steering wheel and various functions like entertainment system,cruise control and more.

 

I don't know but it looks like a simple repair?
Replace both paddle switches.
C2Z4184 LH
C2Z4185 RH

I find them for $30 from Jaguar.
Paddle Switches



Now do the paddles quit working or does the transmission quit responding to the paddles?
Because the only spring would be in the paddles themselves.
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The component that interconnects the steering wheel functions to the car is called a "clock Spring" and I have no first hand experience with any failure of this and my XJ is 7 years old and I have over 103k miles on her. So please keep us posted on this
From workshop manual:

Two gear change 'paddle' switches are fitted at the rear of the steering wheel and allow the driver to operate the transmission as a semi-automatic manual gearbox using the Jaguar sequential shift feature. Each paddle switch has three connections; ground, illumination PWM (pulse width modulation) supply and ground switch signal. The paddle switches are hardwired to the steering wheel RH (right-hand) switch assembly. Operation of the paddle switch completes a ground path to the switch assembly. The switch assembly converts the completed ground signal into a LIN bus signal which is passed via the clockspring to the CJB (central junction box) . The CJB converts the signal into a high speed CAN bus signal to the TCM. Pulling the LH (left-hand) downshift - paddle provides down changes and pulling the RH upshift (+) paddle provides up changes. The first operation of either paddle, after sport mode is selected, puts the transmission into permanent manual Jaguar sequential shift mode. Rotation of the JaguarDrive selector back to the D position, returns the transmission to conventional automatic operation.

 

OK, not sure how relevant this is, but I'll try. A few years ago, when the car was still under warranty, my heated wheel would turn off if I turned it more than 45 degrees, all other functions on the wheel (audio, cruise, paddles etc worked fine, even with the wheel cranked over). The dealer ship blamed the the clock spring embedded in the wheel and replaced the whole steering wheel (the original switch gear was retained). After the repair everything worked fine. Is there more than one clock spring?

wombat

 

PS. Surely a damaged clock spring would also throw an airbag caption? Could the wiring to the paddle shifters be frayed and shorting out?

Just throwing ideas out,

wombat

 

Wombat, a bad clockspring may or may not throw an airbag warning. There are many wires and connections inside the clock spring. So, having a failure on 1 wire would have limited effects. You may find that the number of wires will be minimal as I seem to recall that the radio and cluster buttons all share 2 wires each and as you push different buttons, you are engaging different resistance values which the radio/instrument cluster knows as a specific function.

 

Thermo,

Thanks for the reply, and it makes sense. However, I thought the airbag system was on the constantly monitored, safety critical circuit? I'm not a wiggly amps expert and will gladly defer to anyone that prefers a multi meter vs a large thumping stick.

Just chucking out ideas,

wombat

 

Wombat, the spring clock has lets say 10 wires that it affects. These do all the controls on the steering wheel. But, if you have a single wire (lets say) that is not making contact all the time, the other 9 wires are working just fine. So, everything associated with those 9 wires will do what they want. But, the things associated with that 10th wire will not work at all. So, you could very easily have a sat airbag operation, cruise works just fine, but the paddle shifters can give you grief. This is where you have to look more for a cause than the result. To me, it sounds like say the wiring harness for the clockspring is rubbing on something in the casing of the steering column. So, this say stray piece of sharp metal is slowly eating through the insulation on the wiring and after a year lets say, it finally gets through and shorts out the wire. This is where asking the question during every repair of "what caused it to fail" should be asked. Some times the answer is simply, "it is old and it wears out". Other times, once you pull that string, it leads you to some interesting places.