Hello,

I am new to the forum and even though I tried to find answers in gerenal threads, I still have many many questions I hope I am not doing anything wrong

I am looking for buying my first Jaguar and decided to go for X350 XJ. At first I wanted to go for X308, but I felt very uncomfortable behind the wheel due to my height (I am 192 cm tall). Unfortunately, in Tbilisi there is just one X350 for sale and it seems to be far from perfect condition.

The main issue is that the car has been sitting in the garage for last 6 months, just because his current owner bought XF and forgot about this at all. There is no service history, but the seller claims everything used to be great, with no problems before putting it in the garage (I did not expect to hear anything else ). The car has dead battery. I was able to jump-start the car and take for a drive, but the battery does not seem to hold any charge. During the driving, car displays lots of error codes, like "parking brake failure" "transmission smth" low tyre pressure, cruise control smth and etc. Even when I tried to accelerate with full throttle, for a second all electrical things went out (radio, display, headlights...) and came back. The acceleration does not feel to be as good as I was expecting from 4.2 V8, but was quite normal. There was even Check Engine light on. I tried to clear all faults with my Bluetooth ELM OBD connector and torque application from my phone and it actually worked for a while, but after I tried to open throttle and accelerate harder, everything electric once again went out and all the errors popped up instantly. One more thing that felt wrong was the gearbox – it changes gears smoothly (when driving slow, I wasn’t able to accelerate quickly due to that cut outs), but when taking the gearbox from D to R, there is very hard kick.

If this was a BMW or a Merc, I would assume that dead battery is the only faulty part there and maybe some fluids need to be replaced, but I have no idea about electrical systems on Jaguars, so I am trying to be cautious. On the other hand, this is the only car for sale and I am not really able to walk away easily, so can you guys advice how bad might all this be?

The car is 2005 Jaguar XJ 4.2, short wheel base, imported from USA. Around 160.000 miles on odometer, but the engine sounds good and runs very smooth (it started without any troubles when jumped from my cars battery). There is a strange squeaking sound from somewhere near the belt, but that does not seem to be too important. The interior is clean and tidy, exterior also looks very good. There is a small trace of some well repaired damage from the back, but nothing is deformed or badly repaired.

One more thing – I was expecting the suspension to be softer than it is, but there are no noises from front or rear and ride height is levelled, so I not think there is something wrong, although I have no idea how to check it

Shall I invest more time and money (maybe get a battery and take someone from garage to check electrical systems through BOSCH mobile diagnostic tool) in checking the car, or shall I walk away?

 

Forgot to mention: I was unable to engage parking brake when parked the car.

 

First off, wlecome to the forum! i had to look up Tbilisi, as I had no clue where it was.

These cars can display a plethora of bad symptoms with a faulty battery, and honestly, you probably won't know what is or is not wrong until you get a fresh battery and a hard reset.

I certainly wouldn't purchase the car as is. There are too many unknowns at this point, and it would help to have a mechanic, or at a minimum someone with a suitable scanner, check over the car.

The bump when you place it in gear could very well mean the transmission needs a fluid flush, along with other transmission accessory parts replaced. There is always a possibility of a torque converter going, or worst case scenario, a transmission needing replaced. The car does have fairly high miles (160,000 miles) so as with any high mileage car, anything could go, especially with no service records to prove any preventative care was performed.

A squeaking belt could mean it simply needs replaced. I have found it is also common for belts to squeak if they have foreign substances on them, such as coolant, so I would check for leaks.

The air suspension on these cars are typically the weak link. If it is riding extra firm, that could indicate an air suspension fault, which typically places the suspension in the hard setting as a default. It should display a message in the dash area, but with all the other codes it is showing, it could be lost in the mix. Air supsension bits aren't cheap, especially if bought new, but an increasing amount of members here are changing to more cost effective and simpler coilover suspension.

If you haven't already, check out this thread for more information:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...d-know-112913/



I know it can be frustrating to find a Jaguar, let alone a well maintained one. But patience and lots of searching will pay off in the end. You didn't mention the price either, which always plays into how good of a decision it might be. With these cars, you almost have to plan on doing work yourself if you want to keep the running costs reasonable. Cheap Jaguars can grow in to expensive Jaguars in no time, but ofcourse doesn't mean they will. As with any car purchase, be smart about it.

 

Thanks for your reply!

This car is for $4000, but it is very hard to say that it has anything to do with its condition. I just found another XJ for sale that is much worse (bad interior, marks of badly repaired frontal impact) and the guy is asking $12000.

I read the thread that you linked and all appears to be good, apart from the fault codes on display. This Saturday I will get to the car with a new battery to do another test drive and see if those fault codes dissapear. I will put updates hee too.

How shall I check suspension? Shall it rise after engine is up and running? Or I can assume it's OK unless any codes appear on the dash?

 

Hi Greg,

I agree with chillyphilly that a lot of the codes and dash warnings should extinguish with a good battery, although some may take two or three drive cycles to disappear or may have to be cleared with a scanner.

If the suspension is sitting low, it should slowly rise after you start the engine. Leave the transmission in Park and listen for the air compressor to run. It is mounted at the front left of the car behind the bumper cover, near the left fog lamp. It will run for up to 2 minutes and will then be shut off to cool and won't run again until the car exceeds 25 mph or the engine is shut off and restarted.

You can visually walk around the car to see if any corner sits lower than the others, which might indicate an air leak at that corner. If you aren't sure, measure the distance from the center of the wheel to the lower edge of the wheel arch in the fender/wing. The factory specified ride height is 386mm front and 373mm rear.

Here's a photo of our '04 XJR on which the ride height has been calibrated to factory spec:




Please keep us informed!

Cheers,

Don

 

Change the battery and hard reset the car. That should put the car to a proper starting point from where you can make proper evaluation. Then take to a mechanic you trust for a ppi. As above poster said, you should thoroughly check it out, as things can get expensive really quickly.

Good luck

 

You need a new battery to properly even diagnose the car. I would do that first then do another test drive. Most of the warning codes should go away. Keep us posted.

 

Hi Greg

Main question is - are you able to get parts easily in Georgia ? There are a lot of internet suppliers who can supply OEM and after-market parts and will ship internationally. You can also find a lot of used stuff on eBay. However, if you have import restrictions or high import taxes you could find things are more difficult.

With these cars the engine and drive train is pretty much bullet-proof, but you can end up having to replace a lot of suspension bushes as some of these do not last long. Your car is on 160k miles so a lot of things should have already been replaced. One thing is essential with these cars, and that is the equipment and software that reads all the fault codes, including the Jaguar-specific codes. A lot of code readers only read the engine-related codes, but this is no good as there are a lot of others that deal with the suspension and other things. What most garages do when presented with a car with so many fault codes is to clear them all, then start again and see what comes up. This would need to be done after you have replaced the battery. Quite a lot of faults occur due to bad earths on the bodyshell. There are three behind the headlamps that can corrode badly and cause all manner of fault codes to be generated. In many cases the owner has to remove them and install new stainless steel or titanium bolts to hold the earth straps.

Inevitably, with a mileage like that, you're going to have to do some repairs and maintenance.

FWIW I bought a X350 in 2010 at 30k miles and drove it to 115k miles.I part-exchanged it last November for another, younger, one with less miles so you could say I like these cars ! They are a superb piece of automobile engineering, but can suffer a few issues like all cars can. I presume you know the whole car is constructed from aluminium ? There is very little steel in the car; try going round it with a magnet !

 

 

Update:

I got the new battery om 100AMPs and cleared ECU faults.

The cars works great. All the errors dissapeared, suspention rised instantly and leveled without any delay. Engine runs amoothly, transmission shifs are smooth and without any bumps in any situation. Accelerating is great with smooth gearchanges. Parking brake works fine too. And the milage in clock reads 105000 miles, although I do not trust it due to some wear on steering wheel

Now about the problems: the steering wobbles on higher speed and car is dragging from side to side when accelerating hard. Seems to have bad tyres/wheels and/or some worn rubber parts in the rear suspension. The under bonnet seems to have repainted at some stage but it nothing really bad. The sound from the engine bay is from an tensioner, des not seem to be allarming, just some high pitch noise that goes out when engine is warmed up. Engine oil level is below maximum, definitely needs change.

All in all, I think everything is fine. Diagnistics does not show any faults, just one stored code P1754, that I assume is battery fault.

 

Hey, that's great news!

 

Hi
It does sound as if there is quite a bit of work to do on the suspension. The bushes that wear most often are:-

- Front lower wishbone trunnion bushes (large ones on the end of the two arms)
- air spring lower bushes front and rear
- rear lower wishbone ball-type bushes.
- rear anti-roll bar links
- rear tracking rod ball joints

Bushes on the upper wishbones front and rear do eventually wear out but do last a long time. You could also need wheels balancing and a full 4-wheel alignment doing. Uneven tyre wear also influences the handling.

Ball joints on the front suspension are long lived unless the ball joint rubber boot has been split or damaged for some time and let in water and grit.

 

Well, thank you all for your responses.

Today I went to the guy to take the car for registration and pay for it, but he declared that he decided not to sell the car...

 

Bummer

 

So bad...
It seemed that you had found quite a good car for the price, as they seem to be rare in Georgia.
Did the seller give you a reason?

 

So who paid for the new battery ?

Good luck with your search, that now has to start again !

 

I did, but he paid me at the end...

======

I found another Jaguar XJ. This time it is 2004 XJ6, imported from Japan (RHD), with 117000 kms on the clock. The car looks good and drives well, but it has "check engine" light on, ABS malfunctions and stability control is also off.

The suspension and engine work good. Gearbox had a small bump when changing o 2nd, but on high revs gear change is very smooth. My Bluetooth OBD reader and torque app found to error codes: P1000 and C1165. The owner said he thinks a sensor on rear brake malfunctions and he ordered new one and there is nothing else wrong with the car. I have no idea if he is correct.

The car has not got Xenon headlamps and tyre pressure sensors, although has Navigation display and CD Changer and parking control all around. Guy is asking for $3300, although I will need to make tax clearance (it is newly imported) and it will cost another $750. The interior requires deep clean and the chrome needs polishing (maybe even replacing on front bumper).

here is the advert for the car for photos: https://www.myauto.ge/en/detail/23438520 (the video is something from Youtube, but photos are of the actual car).

I have no idea bad those to errors are, shall I walk away?

Thanks
Grigol

 

Basically, you should only buy the car when the vendor has fixed the problems, unless he is prepare to drop the price.

Sometimes these things are serious faults, and sometimes not, but you do not want to be the person to find out you have a lot of serious faults. It could just be the battery. From the way you describe the interior and the external chrome, this doesn't sound like a car that has been looked after very well, so maybe wait and see if another car turns up. The car is RHD, but don't you drive on the right like the rest of Europe so need a LHD car ?

 

I currently drive RHD car, so I do not think it would be an issue. The chrome and paint does need some attention, but I think that is more due to shipping side effects than the care of the vehicle. When importing a car from Japan, usually cars sit for at least 3 months.

I am very worried about the error codes in the first place and the other thing is the V6 engine. It seems to drive well, but on daily drive, is it good enough? I only hear horror stories about some guys here with 3.0 S Types... Although this engine seems to run very good, are there any known reliability issues?

The vendor is a car dealer, he will not mend the car. Although he will give me the sensor for free.

 

Tyre pressure sensors were not there for a 2004 MY.
Gearbox may be an issue. Was the gearbox never flushed? that may be the reason for the hesitation to go on 2nd and so could be easily cured.
Otherwise, I agree with Fraser Mitchell: regarding the other issues (check engine, ABS, DSC), you should ask the vendor at least to charge the battery (even better, ask him a new one) and replace the rear brake sensor to see if the warnings and codes are still there.
If not, I would stay away.