We have a 2001 Vanden Plas, and it's starting to give us trouble.
It just turned 70K and we've noticed a mounting lot of problems. Besides the coolant leak, the arm bushings needing to be replace, all the warning lights we get, the mysterious oil leak, the noisy air conditioning fan, the serpentine belt squealing, the dashboard light outages, there's a new thing. The radio won't respond.
My wife told me that the radio wouldn't turn on one afternoon while driving, so the next time I drove the car, I pressed the on/off knob and the radio turned on. You aren't able to change channels however, and can't turn the radio off.
Is there any advice anyone has for us?

Thanks.

 

This is the XK8 / XKR forum, but maybe we can help anyway. For the growing list of electrical gremlins, your first check should be battery strength. Jaguars are notorious for electrical weirdness when the battery grows weak.

So I recommend getting the battery strength checked, and if it's weak at all, replace it with the proper spec battery. You just might see a lot of those electrical gremlins disappear.

Fluid leaks and A/C fans are all, of course, separate problems to be addressed on their own.

 

^ Glad i have read this post
This morning when trying to start the car, all the dash warning lights went on ,my driver seat got alive and moved in all directions by itself, lots of clicking noises from the dash and my window wiper moved without the ignition on ....i remember i read this post and after replacing the battery the gremlins were gone

Thanks again Jag forum..

 

Good you posted your question on this forum otherwise you would believe a ghost lived in the car..

 

Thanks everyone for the responses. I will check on the battery and see if that is the culprit.
And basically, the Vanden Plas is an XJ8.

 

I had weird things like the windshield wiper coming on, seat moving, dash lights doing funny things all because of a flakey ground connection. You could try cleaning all the power and ground connections and do a hard reset - remove the battery cables and touch them together (with nothing touching the battery).