Hey Folks,

Have gotten some great assistance here before and with an open Saturday ahead of me, I'm looking to work on the car a bit. I've got a couple of small things I'd like to look at:

1) The hood latch - when I pull it, only the passenger side pops up. If I walk over to the passenger side corner (by the windshield) and push down slightly, the driver side will pop up and I can then open the hood. Any ideas on why? The car has not been in any accidents so hood alignment issues are not the problem. I'm thinking it's either the release mechanism or the spring. Since when I push down on the passenger side, the driver side pops up, I almost want to eliminate the latch as a possibility because it obviously has released...or at least partially. Could it be the spring not pushing the hood up slightly on the driver side when the latch is pulled?

2) The fog light switch light - my dad's XK8 keeps the fogs on all the time once you push the button. You can turn the car off and on again and the fogs come on...like it stores the setting. My XJR I have to turn them on every time I start it and I love having the fogs on. The little green light on the left side of the wheel only seems to come on after about 20 minutes of driving. Not sure if it's just a dirty contact or a faulty bulb. How do I get to that bulb? Does the plastic cover pop off or do I have to remove the entire wood panel?

Aside from the repairs, one thing I recently have been looking into is my drop in fuel economy. I used to get 270 miles to a tank and now I get about 220 on average. The only adjustment I made was dropping my tire pressures from the 100MPH+ firmer pressures to the regular, more comfortable pressures. While I've dropped a few PSI at each wheel, I didn't realize it would make almost a 3MPG difference. I'm thinking about raising the tires back up on my next fill-up just to test the theory and eliminate any possible engine issues, although nothing has appeared and my ODBII shows no errors. For the most part, I make a short (4 mile) work commute on city streets in Los Angeles so it's definitely city MPG. I'll ask what others are getting, but I know there's probably a dozen threads on this. These numbers are all in the regular mode and not sport.

Thanks in advance and happy Friday folks!
-Jon

 

I would start with a little lubrication and manual exercise of the latch mechanism. Having the hood not unlatch is a very difficult problem to fix.

My XK8 fogs default to 'off' on each start. Perhaps it is a customer option programming thing as there are several.

What actual psi are you running now? I kept toying with mine until I got the most even tire wear at about 32 psi. Higher pressure will, indeed, give much better mpg.

 

I was running the factory "maximum comfort" settings of 26F/28R. I just put them back up to 32/34 though. I was curious as to how much more comfortable it would be at those pressures and the only difference it really made was to my MPG.

 

2) My fog lamps default to off on start also, and they will only operate with the low beams on.