Good morning all! I am new to this site so I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Stan . I'm married with 4 boys. I live in landenberg Pennsylvania and I am a remodeling contractor.
I bought a 99 xjr in February dirt cheap with the intention of fixing it up for my wife for a valentine's day gift. The car has 190k on the clock which I know is high but the car was garage kept and cosmetically very nice. The car had a restricted performance code during the drive home so i drove it to my mechanic. It had a misfire that would shake your hands off the steering wheel at idle.
He started working on it and after swapping plugs coils and injectors finally pulled the right head off to see what was causing the miss. I had an opportunity to get another low mileage motor so i suggested we just swap. He insisted that he could just fix what i have and I would be in great shape. Several months and several thousand dollars later I
finally got to drive it home. Heres what I had done
Rebuilt heads
new chains and tensioners
new plugs
new rear wheel bearing
rear brakes and rotors
new tires.

NOW. after suggesting that we just replace the motor on several occasions, I developed what I believe to be a wrist pin bearing noise. The mechanic was very concerned and bummed out and stands behind his work. But I'm wondering now if I just buy a new/rebuilt long block or let him.mess with this one.

I will add thatI absolutely love this car. I have driven many cars and I love driving this one more than any other. I would like to get it back to a great reliable car. Any suggestions on which direction to go now would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Stan


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Welcome Stans1999xjr, we hope you enjoy yourself on site and find the information you need for your repairs and find many friends here. It would be very helpful if you'd also introduce yourself in the New Members Forum under Forums (top left), General Jaguar Forums.

For your issue, I'm sure you will get some excellent advice and direction, there are some great people here. You sound like you went the right direction for the standard repairs. Do you have a OBDII code reader for possible future code retrieval? There will be suggestions offered I'm sure.
For the wrist pin noise, what brings you to that? Do you have a video you can provide with the noise for us to listen to? Is your noise similar to this... ...be patient, he inserts a video of the engine running for your comparison. Not saying this is your issue, just giving you an example of one. We look forward to your response....

 

To me, and I don't mean to make assumptions or unfair opinions of your mechanic. However, yes, he can be bummed, and yes, he can stand by the work he's already done. But now you'll throw another who knows how much at the issue to "fix it" but at what future cost? I had a mechanic who did a similar - he stood by all the work he did on one of my cars - and not a single thing he did actually solved the problem. Bill Gates could give you a lifetime warranty, but when it's your ipod that breaks, it doesn't mean much.

Personally, if you've got 200k on the clock, I would just bite the bullet, and replace the motor. I assume that it wasn't a high priority job for him, as you mention it took several months. That seems a little excessive for that list, but I'll admit I've never had to send heads off for a rebuild and these obviously aren't chevy heads where Joe's Speed Shop would have you done before race night.

At least if you replace it, you've got a much better base to last another 200k on. Just my .02

 

I'm trying to guess what originally happened to the motor - did your mechanic tell you why the heads were rebuilt? I'd guess timing chain tensioner failure and bent valves.

FWIW - your initial thought of swapping the engine was right. It's given you and your mech a double kick in the tenders.

In hours, rebuilding the bottom end with bearings will be as/more expensive than finding a short motor and installing your fresh bits inc heads, chains etc. Faster and cheaper.

I would recommend a new oil pump also.

You can use both types of short block (AJ26 to 2000 AJ27 to 03) there's some parts to change but it's not a nightmare job.

 

I'm fairly new to the Jag world myself but having built a few motors in my time I would be worried about yours if they did the heads. Did it overheat? Did it run with fluid in the cylinders? It sucks to spend the money but a full rebuild is usually an insurance policy against future problems. In most cases heads that have to be rebuilt have gotten hot.