This is a really stupid question and we are HOPING that it will have a really simple answer.

We are moving overseas and have a lovely 2002 Jaguar XJ8 that we are selling. Today, we showed it to a young couple who were interested in it. They took it out for a test drive; we stayed behind. Lesson 1: Never stay behind.

Afterwards, as we were driving home, we just happened to look up and noticed that part of the sunroof cover was missing! The part of the cover that has the "handle" to slide it back is not there! M.I.A!

The sunroof itself works when you press the control buttons - the partial cover just slides back and forth with it but we can't figure out where the other part of the cover is!

We're trying to figure out what happened, and all we can think of is that maybe when they were driving it, they pressed the sunroof buttons without first manually opening the cover and something fell off? broke off?

In the area where the sunroof slides back into, we reached our hands back in there to see if part of the cover came loose and fell back there, but we don't feel anything.

Can anyone explain this mystery? Not a good thing to happen when you're trying to sell a car!

Thank you.

Denise & Tony

 

Did they buy the car? If not, perhaps they were parts shopping and took it with them...

 

No, they didn't buy the car. My husband said there was no use ringing them and asking about it because they would just deny it if they accidentally did something to it. But seriously, we can't figure out what happened. The missing section has to be somewhere.

 

Probably on the road side somewhere, if they broke it and were unscrupulous enough not to tell you.

Important lesson learned, never allow anyone to test drive your car without you in it.

Even if they had left a car with you as security, you don't know that it is legally theirs.

Just be glad that they brought the car back.

 

They seemed to be a very responsible couple. 40s, married with 3 children. He is a pilot in the USAF.

I am asking the forum how - literally - this could have happened? If they started pushing buttons when they were driving the car, and they pushed the button to the sunroof without first manually sliding open the cover, would that have caused part of the cover (I assume there are 2 sections to the cover since the only one remaining on our sunroof does not cover the whole area now) to "break away" or something?

I just can't understand where the other *half* of the cover is. We never used the sunroof, but isn't the interior cover just one-piece that manually slides open and closed?

 

I don't know whether your sunroof is the same as mine in my 2000 XJ8, but in mine, the rear of the two parts of the sunroof's inside cover went missing one day. Turns out its mounting clips detached from the moving hardware when it was open, and it was left behind inside the opening that hides the sunroof when it is all the way back... Raise the rear of the roof and look in the opening with a flashlight to see if it is there.

In my case, I was able to hook it with a piece of bent wire, pull it back and re-attach its clips to the mating pins on the front half. I pre-bent the clips gently to aviod a repeat performance. It's worked fine since.