This past weekend I was able to take my first, newly purchased, 1996 XJ6 VDP out for a good 400km drive. What a wonderful experience, plenty of power, STILL a head turner, and extremely comfortable. The benefit of this drive also afforded me the chance to see what was wrong with the car, thankfully the list is quite short.

I had no radio at all, it was stuck on a station but the aerial would not go up even though the radio appear to be on. I came back home and read up on the forums available and saw that removing the positive connector of the battery for 5min and then touching it to the negative connection would "reset" the radio, it did not
HOWEVER the radio NOW no long is on, its completely turn off but I still get this faint clicking noise in the speakers.
Does ANYONE know what on earth to do? I would love ANY help on how to fix my radio. I really do not want to buy a radio from Futureshop or Best buy, they look tacky and would ruin the class of my interior


I also found that the car is changing the memory in the side mirrors back to some strange previous preset, I'm unable to reprogram them too. Any thoughts on what I should do?

Apart from those MINOR inconveniences I had a lovely drive, I'm impressed with this car! I've got no idea where Jaguar got such a bad reputation for quality when they were producing mobile works of art like this.


Many thanks

 

I think the memory of the mirrors has to do with the remote as well...if you unlock it, it automatically goes to the MEM 1 setting (IIRC). If you want all of your settings to be 'default' set them to #1, and see if that fixes it.

Can't help on the radio, but I would be checking fuses first. You can always buy a salvage radio pretty cheap to keep the jag all stock, if it comes to that. The radio could have just died...first failing the remote power lead to the aerial, now altogether with its power to even come on.

 

Thank you very much for the insight, you guys and your expertises are invaluable to me.

I actually took the positive connection off the battery for 45min and reconnected it and the radio appeared to be dead, the on/off button didn't work. I popped a tape in and it reconginzes the tape says "SIDE 1" but doesn't play any sound. I couldn't eject the tape using the button however when I turned the car off it ejected the tape out. Now the radio says "87.7FM" and again appears to be on but doesn't play even static.

Do you all think that the aerial being stuck/broken would send a message to the radio saying not to play?

Also does anyone know where I could find the list of where the fuses for each specific item in my car would be? My manual is useless for this. Any forum that would have that in it?

 

your radio is possessed, call a priest immediately

No on the aerial question, that's not related. Everything is being tied to your head unit, sorry. Start looking for a good used unit.

If you're radio shows something on the screen, operates the tape deck (albeit selectively) it won't be a fuse either. Its either on with power, or dead...no lights or display...unless it TRULY is possessed. <- exercise it!

 

Ah I was afraid that I would need to call a priest, I hope I can find one on ebay.

Well I will keep looking around trying to locate a good used head unit because I REALLY don't want to go to Jaguar Canada to ask them to find me one


Thank you for the lightning fast reply

 

Actually before I leave for the evening to do some shopping for my Jag, will a head unit from a 1995-1997 work in my 1996 XJ6 VDP or does it HAVE to be a 1996?

 

Is it asking you for a radio code? I can't remember if the x300 models have them or not.

 

No it's not asking for a radio code, just simply refuses to play anything including static noise. I'm also missing the code cards that come with the car, they were lost by the previous owner and Jaguar Canada has advised me that I have to take the radio out to get at the serial number so that they can get the proper code, apparently their system of using the VIN number only works as far back as 1998.

 

Per the radio, there is a known issue with the solder connections internal to the faceplate becoming intermittent or completely bad. The symptoms of this are exactly as you described, the radio initially had power but you could not control it, and now that it is actually off you cannot turn it back on. Your best bet is to buy another Jaguar head unit from eBay or the like, sending yours in to Alpine for repair may not be worth the cost these days. In the USA there is no radio code required for the head unit in the X300.

Per the seats, it sounds like one of the potentiometers within the seat has broken. The posts on these pots are plastic and by now have become quite brittle and prone to breaking. When one or more of the pots report out of range (or not at all), the seat memory module will not allow you to program in new settings even though it will still attempt to operate the motors it can still control (in your case the mirrors). This does not affect the seat controls you use to adjust the seat.

Hope that helps some.

 

I don't mean to hijack the thread but I am actually going to be replacing my factory head unit in a couple of weeks. The radio is flawless and comes from a 97 VDP with only 60k and has been garaged it's entire life. Let me know if you have any interest.