So I finally bought a 99 XJR in black, 98k mi, rust free, knowing it had some issues, primarily the tensioners needing replaced. Now that's it's sat in my driveway for a few days I've had time to discover a bunch more things wrong that I didn't notice at purchase.

At the moment, tensioners are a priority, as I'm kind of playing mechanical triage to get the Jag up and running to get it inspected and safe to drive.

With each of these issues, i'll be doing a lot more research on forums before doing the job, but I figured I'd ask here with a few things that don't pop up in searches, or aren't always explicitly stated in how-tos.

Onto what I've found so far:

-Timing Chain Tensioners:
Considering it's already rattling pretty bad on one side, and I have no idea if the other tensioners have been replaced, I'm just going to go ahead and do the full set of chains and tensioners all around. I've read that valve cover gaskets are worth replacing since they're coming off anyway, so I'll go ahead and do those. Is there anything else to keep an eye out for, or just replace while I'm doing tensioners?

-Oil in the intake, and looks to be under pass side injectors as well
Pulling off the intake, I found tons of oil in the intake tube, all over the air filter, coating the underside of the intake tube, and down near the pass side injectors. I've read a clogged part load breather can cause oil in the intake, which I'll get to checking soon. Other side seems dry. Fortunately the coil packs themselves were all dry..

Checking the oil dipstick I noticed it's way above max (almost 3 inches!). Could there be something clogging the dipstick itself and causing that to read wrong, or is the previous owner just neglectful? And would a ridiculously high oil level cause it to be coming out everywhere it is? Or am I just going the completely wrong direction with all this?

I'll change oil soon, and pull valve covers and intercoolers to get a closer look at that leak.

Finally..
-Coolant: Looking into the coolant reservoir I see.. Green! I've read that Jags take special orange coolant, and this is one that I've found conflicting opinions on on the forums. 99 seems to be the year that this changed up.

Assuming it's normal all-purpose green coolant, should I expect my seals to be smoked, or can I safely top it off with more green until i get a chance to drain the coolant anyway? The tank lid says nothing about a specific coolant type to use.



Sorry for the long post, starting multiple threads seemed wasteful. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Oil in the intake tube is from the part load breather (located on the D/S valve cover) being clogged. It takes a small drill bit (13/64 if memory serves me right) to clear this hole. Clean the intake tube after this is done.

I believe the previous owner overfilled with oil to perhaps try and stop this tensioner noise. If I were you, I would not start that engine again until the complete timing set is replaced. The tensioners let loose when the oil pressure is lost via the split tensioner case.

When you replace the valve cover gaskets, make absolutely sure you replace the rubber grommets under each bolt. There's 14 bolts in each cover. That's the key to keeping the cover gaskets as leak free as possible.

 

NA

 

Concerning the dipstick, a running change was made increasing the oil capacity by 1 quart. No changes were made to the engines, but for some reason Jaguar felt the need to up the oil capacity.

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...e-help-125327/

It could be that either the previous owner or oil change facility "overfilled" with the now correct amount of oil. Three inches over the full line sounds excessive though.

 

The early engines can be overfilled by one quart, but more than that is likely to cause trouble. Make sure the wire gauze is present in the cam cover baffle and flush it with solvent to get rid of excess oil while you have the cover off.

 

Yup, after one time starting it to test the alternator, I'm not going to start it any more until I've replaced the tensioners. I'll change out the oil and fill it to correct levels as well, as the oil in there now hasnt been changed since it was parked 1.5 years ago.

Had a moment today to look into cleaning the part load breather, and it was definitely clogged. The drill bit broke through the carbon pretty easily, but it was built up enough to block flow completely.

I'll pull the pass side valve cover later this week to get a look under. Is the baffle the plate inside the valve covers over the full load breather?