please tell me where to find air system struts or shock absorber for 2013 XJL

 

You are likely to get more accurate assistance in the appropriate XJ section of the forum. This is the XK8/XKR section....

That said, you might try calling SNG Barratt Group, Welsh Enterprises, and FCP Euro. Google their websites, look up their phone numbers, and call them with your VIN number in hand. They may very well have what you are looking for....

 

Welcome to the forum jaguar2013,

I've moved your question from XK8/XKR to X351 forum. This is the place to post questions about your model.

Please follow this link New Member Area - Intro a MUST - Jaguar Forums - Jaguar Enthusiasts Forum to the New Member Area - Intro a MUST forum and post some information about yourself and your vehicle for all members to see. In return you'll get a proper welcome and some useful advice about posting to the forum.

Graham

 

Jaguar2013, welcome to the Forums. Lots of good information here. Please stop by the New Member section and tell us a little bit about yourself. We pride ourselves in being a better car group and as part of this, we like to get to know a little bit about each other. This also gives you a chance to meet those that make this place what it is.

As for your part search, your year XJ does not have the air ride suspension. It actually has a magnetic fluid filled shock. So, this may help you to find the correct parts. Like others have said, there is a few vendors (SNGBarrett for example) that can get the parts that you are after. You can also try the following 2 internet sites:

OEM Jaguar, Land Rover and BMW Rplacement Parts (dealership out of Cleveland Ohio): I have used them and as long as you go through their internet site, you can get some good prices. If you call them and go through the dealership directly, then you will get the standard Jaguar price for the parts.
JPLV (aka, Gaudin Jaguar/Porsche of Las Vegas, NV): Another dealership that I have used to get parts. They are more willing to work with you over the phone to ensure you get the correct parts and their prices are pretty good. Let them know that you are a member of JaguarForums.com (they are a sponsor here as I recall and appreciate knowing that their advertising money is being wisely spent).

I am sure someone is going to come along and be able to give you specific part numbers. A bit of information that may be needed is whether you have the supercharged/normally aspirated/XJR version. There may be slight differences between the supercharged and XJR versions as I recall.

 

Thermo are you sure the XJ got the magnetic shocks up front? It was planned on introduction but I have not seen any?

Do you want the front or rear shocks?
Are you having problems?
Only the rear uses air shocks on the 351 XJ and they don't seem to fail as badly as the previous generation XJ's. In fact I have not heard of any failing but there may be some out there.
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clubairth, I will check the schematics that I have, but, if you open up the hood of the car and look at the top of the struts, you will see an electrical connector that I believe goes to the strut to do the active dampening for when you put the car into dynamic mode. When you apply power to the strut, it causes the magnetic fluid inside the shocks to become more viscous, which causes the suspension to firm up, minimizing body roll during aggressive driving. I thought they used this same idea on the rear shocks to help out things overall.

 

Huh, I was pretty sure that the XJ had magnetic shocks. But, a quick look at jaguarparts.com says that the car has air shocks. I guess I am going to have to do some looking at how the dynamic ride control works so I can get a better idea of what is going on. I guess that will teach me for making assumptions about things. Granted, this makes me wonder where the air compressor is located and why the car doesn't have a "kneeling" function. Kinda like I could see Jaguar trying to alter the ride height when in dynamic mode if they have air shock control. Guess more research is needed on my part to get a better appreciation for the car.

 

I think the shocks/struts are made by Bilstein https://cart.bilsteinus.com/results?...02330036450326 The fronts are what they call Damptronic and the rears are listed as "air" but that is for the rear suspension to load level. I think, that they have an electronic valve that either opens or closes to change the damping. IMHO

 

OK, I have been doing a little bit of reading and we are all wrong. Gotta love that one.

The dampers, they are a nitrogen and oil filled "dampener" that has a variable orifice inside to adjust how much/fast oil can be moved inside the dampener. The fronts have an external coil spring and the rears have an integrated air spring. The amount of dampening is controlled by a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal (aka, a signal that has a variable amount of time that it is on and off, but is running on a constant frequency, in this case). When the car is stopped, the PWM signal is off (ie, minimal ON time and maximum OFF time). This results in maximum firmness (done to save energy per the shop manual). As the car starts to move down the road, the computer (ADM) starts looking at the 4 height sensors, position of the steering wheel, the front and rear accelerometers, and wheel speeds (and a whole host of other inputs). It runs the parameters through the ADM to figure out how much dampening needs to be applied to give maximum comfort in the ride. The dampening is controlled via a variable sized orifice to give an infinite amount of adjustment to the dampening levels.

The amount of air applied to the rear air spring is only that needed to keep the right height of the vehicle level.

For those that want to learn more about the rear suspension, the workshop manual has a long write up in section 204. For those without the manual that want to know more, let me know here and I will start a new topic and start getting into more of the details of the system (which is beyond what this topic is really about).

 

Thermo I believe your research supports my findings that these are, in deed, Bilstein shocks as they are the company that invented the mono tube nitrogen filled shock that are installed as OEM on many luxury and performance cars. These shocks come fully extended when new because of the nitrogen pressure (I've installed them on more than one car). Here is an interesting utube video .

 

Thanks much Thermo!
That's what I thought as I came from an STR which has a very similar system but no air springs.

Yes if you want to it would be interesting for a deeper look at the suspension. I am very interested in what differences there are between models/years. I have read complaints about hard ride and also soft ride? My XJR is a great compromise of comfort and handling but not sure it really has much of anything different. Maybe mainly programming differences?


I found the compressor and tank by accident and they are hidden pretty well!
Under the spare in the trunk is the tank. Just after the battery towards the rear of the car is the pump.

My XJ is new to me and I go thru the entire car when I get something new. This includes stripping the trunk bare. Mainly because the spare tire is never checked and will need air! We had a detailed discussion over towing eyes front and rear which brought up the foam tray in the trunk and what is suppose to come in it.

Here is what the air stuff looks like. I circled the pump as it's not real obvious. You can see the black hose that runs from the tank to the compressor in one of the pictures. Also a good shot of the dual battery setup for the start/stop system.






I was installing the 3 trunk nets anyway so I had to remove the side liners to drill the holes and just kept going!
Interesting that there is a rear strut bar on the floor of the trunk. Can you see it?
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