Hi;

Has anyone had/have or heard of issues with a 2005 XJ Super 8?

We saw a used one at a Jag dealer this weekend with only 31K miles, sweet ride. Everything is fit-to-finish and the engine bay is immaculate. Got the CarFax report, nothing with title discrepancies appears and the service report just show a couple of key FOB resets and brake(s) check.

Thanks in advance.

 

I think having a look through this forum should give you a general idea of what types of issues you might expect. Some of the more expensive repairs that seem common to the XJ8 are the air suspension and throttle bodies.

I am the second owner of a 2005 Super V8 with 80K miles. The only repairs I have made in the 2 years of ownership were replacing a clogged heater core and one $5 control arm bushing that was unfortunately only sold while attached to a $700 control arm. I have seen the occaisional "vehicle too low" warning so I have to imagine I have some air suspension repairs in my future.

So far I could not be happier with my purchase. The higher repair costs do not come close to outweighing the joy of driving this thing.

 

After mid-year 2004, much of the known issues had been addressed like the torque converter. The Super is best model out of the line up. Get the power and chrome!

Name me a modern luxury car that is worry free; there aren't any. I have 80K on my car it is has been pretty solid.

 

A 5 year old XJ8 with 31k miles on it ? Sounds like a good deal to me if the price is right. I am assuming you will get some sort of warranty to cover major items, like I did. A 2005 should be very good; my 2003 is superb so far.

Like all expensive upmarket cars, the maintenance costs reflect this, but as the cars become worth less with depreciation, these costs can then seem a lot of money as time passes, so people tend to skip them, (shame on them !). I don't expect the German cars are any different. The Japs concentrate heavily on reliability, but seem to ignore the rest ! I had a Mazda Xedos (= Millenium in the US), and it was very, very reliable, but not a car I loved very much. The Rover 75 that came after it was very, very, slightly less reliable, but oh so much more loveable, so much so that when I bought the XJ6, I wondered how I might keep the Rover as well !

Only expensive job I have had so far is paint bubbling in a couple of places, due, I suspect, to Jaguar not being totally up to speed in 2003 on how to paint aluminium, (I assume you know the whole car is made of aluminium, rivetted and glued together using aerospace technologies - a technical tour-de-force). Unfortunately, at 7 years old I was outside the paint warranty period. Anyway, it's all fixed now.

Apart from this, my car has been OK and I have done over 7000 miles since May this year. Previous owner only managed 30k in seven years, and suffered a mammoth loss in depreciation, much to my benefit as I could not possible afford a new Jaguar, but so far I can afford the servicing. I just had a 70k service done (not for the miles but the age), and this cost me just under £400 including our tax of 17.5%. This was the main agent price for private owners of cars over 4 years old.

 

Thank you all (BGRSuperV8, mosesbotbol, Fraser) for replying back regarding the XJ.

Seems like the XJ8 is a solid car. Funny though that some of the issues you all have/had are the same one's I've experience on the X-Types.

-expensive control arm replacements
-torque converter.

If all works out I'll be trading in my bottom-feeder X-Type and moving on up.

 

Suspension, (control), arms are available on the internet for less than Jaguar Main Agent prices, but still a bit expensive, but the bushes that fail are now available separately.

http://www.thejaguarshop.com/Jaguar/...%20onwards.htm

You then have to find somebody to press out the old and press in the new bushes, so this involves additional labour to just swapping the arms over. A chap in a main agent, (no names,no packdrill!) said the secret, (if you can get the bushes), is to pour boiling water over the old arm, and the bushes then come out fairly easily on a press, due to the expansion of the aluminium of the arm, (unlike a steel one). Then for the new bushes, put them in a fridge for an hour or two, and heat up the arm and hey "pressto", in they go, and no damage to the arm due to excessive force.
So far, I have seen no posts on a Jaguar forum on the quality of these bushes or the ease of fitment, maybe somebody out there has some experience they may like to share with us.

As for torque converters, these have failed on X350s as we all know, but how many as a percentage of total production of X350s ? All variants, V6 petrol and diesel and the V8 use this same gearbox, and other manufacturers will also use it, so unless failure figures are available somewhere, I would say it is surely no higher than other cars using the same box.

Incidentally, the main failure I am aware of in the UK with X-type autos is the transfer gearbox behind the autobox for the AWD cars, not the autobox itself. The autobox is a Jatco product and used on other cars too, but I don't know who makes the transfer box.

You really will find it difficult to escape the major gearbox makers products on modern cars. They supply the whole industry !!

 

That's a bit on the control arms for sure, would really be concerned about heating/expanding the opening and the cooling it quickly. Granted is alum, but still....

As for x-types in the US...since I own two (2) STILL, over 7 years here is the replacement lot: (maybe I'll copy this over to the X-Type threads)

1.) Coolant return hose and reserve bottle...multiple times
2.) Lower Oil Pan Casket (big $$$)
3.) Drivers side auto window regulator
4.) Batteries
5.) Auto fuel door apparatus hinges
6.) Drivers side window washer fluid nozzle
7.) Front Lower control arm bushings.....OUCH.
8.) Throttle bodies and IMT values and O rings.

Some of this stuff can be R/R by ones self. Heck even the throttle body R/R is well documented.

 

I would thnk taking an aluminium control arm to water boiling point is unlikely to harm it, but heating way beyond this could affect the crystalline structure of the alloy, so I agree, care is needed.

 

What model year did you have?