Hi,
Because of a failing temperature sensor on the XJR the valve seat dropped and ruined the engine. This happend with the previous owner. I bought the car and stripped down the engine. Its now undergoing a rebuild. One head was properly f**ked and i sourced another head. Both heads are now checked and cleaned. Also valves ground and reshimmed all valves.

Bottom end is all measured up and honed. all rings and bearings are replaced. Aswell as a complet topend and bottomend gasket. I've seperately ordered the MLS headgaskets.

I noticed that this engine already had MLS headgaskets when I tore it down.
Would this indicate previous replacement or was that from factory done?

The full album with pictures of the car and engine rebuild can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...3170219&type=3

I'm awaiting a few bits from SNG Barret before I can close the engine again.

Cheers
Jeffry

 

Wooow!
I'm deeply impressed! Good work and quite a big job! My respect for this!
Wish you good luck for the next steps!
Do you want to keep the car afterwards or sell it?

Regards, Alexander

 

Thanks Alexander,
It was a lot more work then anticipated....
The car was checked by a jaguar specialist here in the Netherlands by the previous owner. He diagnosed it with a dropped valve seat. Then he told the owner he can drive it home (100KM) without any harm. Who with a sane brain would advice that to his customer....

Anyway, i bought the car with a valve seat dropped, and turned out it was chewed up in the engine. So still keep learning
Anyways, i dont know yet if i keep it or sell it..

 

The MLS head gaskets are factory on that one. I did head gaskets on our Jaguar car club presidents 02 XJR 100 soon after a small S/C pulley and a very large balancer pulley upgrade kit and PCM reflash. It lifted one of the heads under full boost. It received the same MLS gaskets as it had originally. The only difference is that it also received ARP head studs. Those suckers were expen$ive!!! But, you gotta pay to play. At least there's no more lift from the head(s) under full boost.

 

That's gonna be a real nice ride when it's done.
Definitely jealous..

 

Looks nice ! I think I would hold on to that one after knowing all that engine work was was done right.

 

What year is the car? It looks like a 4.0 engine, Any thoughts on upgrading to a 4.2? Putting on a KB supercharger? If you are spending the money to rebuild, you might as well do some mods.

 

Jaguar changed to MLS gaskets from MY2001, so from about 9/2000.

 

This XJR-100 is from 09-11-2001. I was just expecting the non mls headgaskets when I opened the engine.
This is my first ever jaguar I work on, and i have to say I like it.
Well not really the first because I made a series one e-type all aluminium bonnet once.

I was contemplating upgrades on the XJR and I did my research on all sorts of upgrades. I would love to upgrade it, but I have to keep myself in check with the scale of this project and budget.... Its very tempting to go all the way, and trust me, I know what all the way means.

For now I just rebuild it, then drive the car to see if I like it or not. Based on that I can make future plans for any upgrades.

Another thing I had to fix on the car was RUST!!! It had lots of rust due to our salty winter roads. So engine bay had quite some work needed and underbody aswell. Mainly the enginebay had some rotten through areas. The shock turrets had the most rot on it. So while the engine was out the car was repaired there. Also the sunroof has been removed and resprayed because of RUST and the rear bumper. That had some nasty parking damages. So all in all I blew more on the budget then I wanted, but I'm the guy that try to do it right in one go, instead of half arsed.

 

Do you have picture of the original MLS gasket failure? The older composite ones were very easy to fail but not so many with MLS seen with the same problem. Even the high boost twin screw engines have been fine with 4.2 MLS gaskets and stock head bolts.

 

@XJR-99 The original MLS headgasket was fine. It dropped a valve seat in the engine. So that caused the havoc in the engine.

 

Ok, sorry. I just forgot the orginal reason.

 

No worries!

 

Very nice.
Looks the car from old member DJRoy, several will remember him and his car.
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/n...sterdam-68660/
Seems your car made a forum-entry before you did .

E.

 

Correct Erik
Roy is a close friend of mine. I knew of the car, and know the previous owner very well. Sadly he is coping with difficulties at the moment, and jaguars are not on the prio list. So that how I ended up with a jaguar.

 

that looks mighty impressive work :-)

i have the 4.0 supercharge engine which has done a head gasket and after several people promising to repair it and one wanting to buy it i have been let down by everyone!

So i am now thinking about repairing it myself. I am not a mechanic but pretty handy with the spanners and have built a fair few old aircooled vw motors.

So do you have any tips or tricks or pics for me to get started. I am hoping to do it with the engine in situ and just trying to get a bit of first hand help to get me going. I did notice in your pics you get into the top of the engine with the supercharger in place so just looking for what is necessary to come off if you would be able to help at all.

thanks mate and good luck with your rebuild.

 

Completely different world from the type 1 and type 2 engines there my friend. I know, my first car was a 66 Karmann Ghia back in 89'. The AJ27 is a force not to be reckoned with lightly, but I know exactly what you mean by people letting you down. I do just about everything by myself. Anyways, don't skimp on doing just the one HG. The S/C would only get in the way and by the time you get the heads off, the charger is only bolted down by 3 bolts. Do yourself a favor and just remove it before you pull the heads.

 

Hi mate, thanks for the reply. i know what you mean about the engines, my old aircooled motors are like sewing machine engines in comparison!!

I am bringing the car into my workshop tonight to make a start and will take your advice about removing the SC, and i will be doing both heads too, no sense getting that far into it and not do them both.

I think i will document it all and photograph the hell out of it for future reference.

cheers mate, si.

 

Be mentally prepared for it to not be a head gasket failure. The primary reason that head gaskets fail is that the engine was overheated. If the engine is overheated, often one of the heads drops a valve seat and valve/s gets bent. With the 4.0 engines, the timing chain tensioners can start to go bad and the valve timing goes off slightly on one head. This can mimic a head gasket failure if a couple of the valves kiss the pistons and bend just enough to no longer seal.

I was told that my first 4.0 S-type I purchased with a bad engine that it had a blown head gasket. The engine still ran on 6 cylinders. When I tore into the engine it was trashed! Turns out one of the timing tensioners was failing and caused the problem.
6 bent valves, tops of 2 pistons torn up.

Read all the posting on removing a supercharger before you start taking yours apart.
There are some tricks posted on how to get to the EGR screws, and how to take off the throttle body and inlet manifold to the supercharger. Reading up on this will save you a lot of time in the long run.

 

Man, I miss that damn little VW of mine. I did so much work on it that I had that engine essentially oil leak free! Yes it had oil in it and yes the engine ran. LOL!

As for the EGR, I just disconnect the tube off the exhaust manifold first and then off the EGR valve. It's the 4 bolts where the TB elbow bolts to the S/C inlet that's a royal pain! I hope you have lots of time, lots of patience and hopefully a wife that's not a nag! LOL! Btw, I wouldn't bother adjusting the valves unless the heads need sent out for repair, then let the machine shop deal with it! No swivel foot adjusters there!!! Haha!!