Do you care about the health of your water pump and battery? Are you concerned that your XJ's water pump may fail or that your battery isn't charging? Are you miffed because the factory left out gauges for temperature and voltage? If so, there's an easy $20 fix: an OBD2 Bluetooth scan tool and the free Torque app for your smartphone.

Here's my new set of gauges:


The phone is my ancient HTC Droid Incredible, which was just gathering dust in a drawer. Although it no longer has phone service, its Bluetooth capability still works fine.

You'll need to download the Torque app (free) for your Android phone and buy a Bluetooth OBDII scan tool. Simply pair the phone to the scan tool, open the app, select the types of gauges you want (I wanted just 2, temperature and voltage, but there are more and you can display up to 6 simultaneously).

I bought my Bluetooth OBDII scan tool on Amazon. There are many available choices at varying prices. Here's the one I bought for $19.99:
It simply plugs into the port on the bottom lower left side of the dash, near your left knee.

If this was helpful, please press at the bottom right.

Stuart

 

Resurrecting my old thread because I noticed that the photo is missing. Here it is:

 

Thanks

 

My XJ has a temp gauge

 

Actually no it doesn't.

That is the problem. Your car has an indicator NOT a gauge. Key difference is Jaguar made the indicator nice and smooth so it moves very little. Problem with this is when you have a coolant leak and the engine over heats you have no indication or time to shut things down. We have dozens of threads with the same statement; The car never overheated and the temperature gauge did not move or moved very little.

This was done as the average driver gets stupider and stupider. Jaguar had many service visits because drivers saw the temperature gauge moving around and thought they had a problem. So Jaguar and the other manufacturer's fixed that by damping the reading so much that the gauge rarely moves. Remember we are entering into self driving cars because the decline of any driving skills.

Same idea why the dip stick was removed. Nobody bothered checking oil anyway plus it was a way for dirt and contamination to get in the engine. Heck even now where you don't even need to get out of the car to check oil levels very few do.

So Stuart is doing what should have done by Jaguar at the factory. Install real gauges that tell you what the car is doing. Thankfully with OBDII and these cheap aftermarket scanners you can do it very easy.

What will really blow your mind is there is no way to measure oil pressure in the 5.0L V-8! To do it you must find somewhere and drill and tap to add a sensor. I think the 3.0L does have one?
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If you don't have an old phone lying around search Amazon for "obd2 display" and you'll get a ton of options $50 or so. Some even have the option to set an alarm when coolant temp creeps up so you can just hide it somewhere if you don't want to look at it all the time.

 

That is VERY good advice!
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Thanks