Folks,

My obsession with the XJR6 ended a few days ago, because I was in total pain when Rose, my 1995 XJR, suddenly died due to a mysterious loss of engine oil. She was under normal daily use when suddenly I heard a louder than normal engine whine and saw the oil pressure indicator jumping up and down, and before I could find a gas station to look at the oil level, the oil level low warning light lit up. I knew I should stop the Rose immediately but down under I knew it was all too late so I drove slowly for a few miles to finally stop at my nearest known workshop. They found almost no oil left and a huge circular crack extending laterally and vertically in the oil sump pan behind the steering rack and under the harmonic balancer. The team excluded the possibility of a hit from below as there musts have been an extraordinary noise which would not escaped undetected, and the spot where the crack was was well protected by the cross beam and steering rack. Metal fatigue was the only explanation. See pictures in the next post.

Rose joined my stable 11 years ago after I won a bid for an X300 manual gearbox from eBay UK. She was well cared for by her first owner who wanted only dealership maintenance for 17 consecutive years, but Rose's conditions gradually deteriorated in between later owners. I subsequently acquired Rose in 2013 and began a 10-year restoration to bring her back to former glory. There were many twists and turns during the auto-to-manual conversion and overall restoration. The challenges, big and small, were well documented in my various posts in this forum.

Briefly, the conversion was a success, but them Rose fell into a 3-years' coma, requiring something like a PhD study on X300's notorious no-start potential causes. There were less than a handful of X300 left in Hong Kong, and very few people knew and were willing to work on them, especially an XJR to be converted into manual. Whatever, I managed to gather knowledge from all corners to help my local mechanics. I also sought help from XJREngineer who overcame the immobilizer, and provided professional data to enable an exhaust workshop in the UK to entertain my then go-alone attempt to produce a set of stainless steel headers (exhaust manifolds). The Rose's restoration journey subsequent extended to such areas as neutralizing the immobilizer, sorting out dash warning lights (air bags, ABS and traction control), cleaning the fuel tank, replacing fuel pumps, fuel injectors, fuel pressure regulator, cam belt tensioner, and tracking down a mysterious engine oil leak (the o-rings inside the sump pan). The next phase was performance improvement: made-in-Japan coil packs, supercharger rebuilt, and rebuilding the braking and suspension system. The manual conversion refinement included sourcing an X40 clutch master cylinder, and finding and fabricating the missing linkages and bushings of the stick shift mechanism. Other interior improvements included sorting out the sagging headliner, fixing the clock and radio heads, and repairing the driver seat position adjustment mechanism (replacing the seat ECU harness), and among the many challenges was tracking down the causes of water in engine ECU, troubling Andy twice to rewrite the replacement ECU. End of last year, Rose got a supercharge pulley upgrade. In recent months, tremendous efforts were spent on tracking down the sharp squeaking sound on start up and acceleration. All idlers, pulleys and belts were replaced but did not cure the problem. So the generator and water pump were also replaced, again they were not the problem - the harmonic balancer was. Only then I discovered that the workshop that replaced the supercharger pulley did not replaced the harmonic balancer. I actually bought two harmonic balancers, I had to find the second one because during the Pandemic there was no shipping from Hong Kong to the US so I found one in Canada had it shipped direct to the US for a rebuild. While re-installing the harmonic balancer, the workshop found the front brakes faulty and many bushings needing attention. Those bought from BP and installed not long ago were apparently less durable and had to be replaced and redone.

There were nonetheless many moments of joy, when Rose fired up the first time after the auto-to-manual conversion, when she woke up after 3 years of coma when I almost gave up and imported a factory manual XJR from the UK (Gabby) which was a different story. Gabby arrived with rust in the usual places. So when Rose recovered all restoration work on Gabby was suspended, and was put to covered storage. In her best days, Rose was a beast beating and surprising many unwary modern cars on the road. She had room, class and presence and performance that kept turning heads everywhere I took her. She also had a new paint, Jaguar Penda 18" wheels and spacers. But all these ended in tears last week. With all the goodies on her and new parts that might keep her on the road at least for the next 5-8 years, she suddenly needed an engine rebuild or an engine transplant. These are just too much to bear, and just when I needed to shift my attention to my post-retirement priorities. So in despair, I offered Rose and Gabby as a bundle at an impossibly low price on FB's marketplace in Hong Kong, and fortunately a nice gentleman incidentally a Jaguar enthusiast came along quickly to grab them. I knew there may be interest in them elsewhere in the world but would not want having to deal with shipping that would prolong my pain...

Money apart, I have spent countless hours looking for technical solutions and new and used parts from all corners to restore Rose and Gabby. There are still many parts lying here and there and I shall find time to sort them and make them available to X300 lovers. Hopefully, Rose and possibly Gabby will find a new life one day.

 

What a shame. It's been interesting reading your exploits over the years. Good luck with your future projects.

BTW, in all my years on this and other forums, this is the first time I've heard of a catastrophic engine failure on an X300.

 

Echo all of that. Best wishes

 

Forgot to post a picture showing the location and shape of the mysterious crack found in the oil sump pan housing. Here they are.
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A few years ago, a broken Champion spark plug in the spark plug well blew one of my Made-in-Japan coil packs left me dumbfounded; this time the oil sump pan is another sign, so it is time to pass and move on. Whatever, this forum has tremendous technical resources and wisdom that helped keep Rose on the road and made her shine in the boring roads in Hong Kong - she will be remembered. Hopefully she will be reborn some day. A Jaguar enthusiast in Hong Kong has just taken her home and will see what he can make of Rose and Gabby. His current collection in the Jaguar series includes an X-Type 3.0 AWD, a Daimler Super Eight, and an X350 XJR.

 

Sorry to hear of this incident and that you off-loaded the cars already. Was there no hope of a transplant from Gabby into Rose?

The damage to the oil pan looks like an impact. Did you have an undertray in place? Maybe that was an old impact that finally cracked open?

Are you certain it wasn't an oil cooler hose that burst? Too late now anyway but whatever the cause, any engine run without oil for too long (not long) will let go in terrible ways. In 2017 my XJ12 luckily escaped any engine damage due to a burst oil cooler hose. I stopped the car and engine as soon as I could, which took some seconds as I was cruising on the freeway at the time!

I always admired your XJR and your dedication to it. Hoping there will eventually be a Rose Bronze AND a Turquoise XJR on the streets of HK! On to your next project and good luck.

 

I am sure that Rose could live on a donor engine from Gabby, but having done so much work on Rose, I just thought it was time to pass and let someone have a chance in managing the recovery project. My contingency was, if no one came forward within three days after my posting them on Facebook, I would just put Rose and Gabby away for some time before I regain the will and energy to work on them again.

About the engine splash guard, a few months ago, I saw it slip away when Rose was cruising on the highway. I never felt safe without one, but couldn't find one on Gabby so I obtained the measurements from our dear friend Naki and asked a local workshop to fabricate and installed one. This was done during a two-month long tracking of an alignment issues which led to the replacement of the brake pads, suspension and control arms bushings, the vee-mount etc. Then the workshop also worked on a high-pitch squeaking sound on start-up and rapid acceleration. These led to replacement of all belts, pulleys and ilders, generator, water pump and the harmonic balancer. I believe that any pre-existing cracks on the oil sump pan would have been discovered during such extensive work done on Rose's underside. Moreover, had any sign of oil loss emerged earlier, the engine failure could have been prevented. Whatever, this is now water under the bridge. The important thing is that Rose and Gabby have gone to a new home with promising signs of a come back some days later.

 

Hi Marcus,
I'm really sorry to read what happedned to Rose. As others have said you really put your heart and soul into this car. Hopefully, the new owner will be able to ressurect Rose using the engine from Gabby. Thank you for your great enthusiasm in keeping Rose on the road throughout all her trials and tribulations.

Regards,
Andy