Good day all,

Ran into some issues on the weekend and looking for some advice.

2000 Jaguar XJR - 173,000KM (Canadian)

Let me give you a play by play on the issues leading up to my parked broken car.

Last week:
-Low coolant light goes on (still visible in reservoir) and I top it up
-Notice an occasional idle issue (low idle, miss?)

Saturday:
- Driving about 100km
- couldn't get heat from the HVAC, thought maybe an electrical issue
- Engine temp gauge reads perfect - the whole way
- Car drove cruised perfect the whole way
- Pushed the car WOT only once.
- Idle seemed a bit off at the stop lights
- Get about 5 minutes from my destination
- come to a stop and low coolant light comes on
- at stop, idle is very erratic, definite miss in the engine
- Car drives fine when not at idle
- Get to my destination, idle is erratic still
- Turn car off for a few minutes, restart and white smoke billows out of the exhaust
- Noticed no smoke prior to this

Inspection:
- Refill the coolant, reservoir is empty
- No lights, no codes
- Pull all 8 spark plugs
- All are dry except for 1 (covered in oil)
- Some of the spark plug chambers have oil in them
- Pull the intake and inspect Throttle body
- Notice some oil in the throttle body (common blow by?)
- Reconnect all components
- Restart
- White smoke
- Restricted Performance light
- Codes present
- Read codes & Reset
- P3606 Cylinder 6 misfire (same cylinder with oil on plug{should have cleaned it})
- P1316 Misfire rate exceeds emissions
- Restart, obvious misfire, and white smoke
- No codes present, no restricted performance

I have attached pictures of the plugs and smoke below (Seems I missed one plug)

Questions:
- If it is a head gasket, why aren't the plugs white?
- Is the valve cover gasket(?) leaking making the cylinder have oil in it?
- Is it a Nikasil issue in the one cylinder?
- If my car didn't have enough coolant for the heater core to heat the interior, why didn't the car show any signs of overheating?
- Did I catch it just in time?

 

Watch the Video of the exhaust ( 2 of them)

 

Stock gauge won't tell you anything until it overheats. Then it's to late.
I would guess the exhaust smells sweet? or like antifreeze.. Looks more like steam than smoke.

 

exhaust smells sweet like coolant

A shop told me it may be an EGR valve? are these water cooled? Seems a bit odd?

 

Sorry to say this but your head gaskets are done. I just went thru this on my own car along with many others on here as well recently. You have to upgrade to the multi layered steel head gaskets. I believe it was 02' on up that had the mls head gaskets.

 

Addicted2boost
i'm getting quotes of 25 hours to do the head gaskets. Book time is 17hours..

 

head gasket time.

 

Believe me when I say this... Including myself, nobody wants to do this job. It took me forever because there's just way too many steps involved. However, I performed my own valve adjustment. Watching for grass to grow in the desert would've been less painful and more exciting then doing that head gasket job over again.

 

Book time is not realistic. You need both head gaskets replaced and also need to check that the head isn't warped. The mls gaskets are standard on the 4.2L and will help prevent this occurring again.

In the future monitor the temp. real time with a smartphone app, the Realgauge mod from thejagwrangler.com, or Ultragauge.