Yup. I drove about 2 miles this morning and the car felt great. Then I felt a slight rumble, probably a misfire. Drove another mile and the loss of power was evident, I pulled over and shut her down. I couldn't see anything going on under the hood and no CE light. I started it back up drove 1500 feet and she caught fire, drivers side I believe the first cat? I opened the trunk and grabbed the spare wheel cover and tried dousing the flames, it kept burning. From the God of heaven a guy pulled over who had an extinguisher and I put it out. I burnt my hand pretty bad from the spare tire cover melting on my skin. The other day, I noticed a misfire and she triggered a FF13, I re-set the CE, and just 4 days later she caught fire. It now triggers that same 13. I not sure of the damage yet, I may have gotten away with it not being too bad, I don't smell any burnt rubber. The question is, where do I begin to diagnose this? It is a Marelli ignition. 92 5.3, 72k

 

Reading Kirby's book now, from page 168 on. Described to the tee, what happened to me.

 

From what I gather so far, It's either a Marelli ignition issue or a cat meltdown. I took off my distributor cap and rotor, although slightly used both have no cracks, burn marks or anything. What's next? Plugs? Wires?

 

Lucky escape for the XJS.

Spare tyre cover melting on your hand sounds potentially very serious. Are you OK?

Graham

 

Marelli failure on one bank (driver's side) dumping raw fuel into hot cat and we know the rest of the story.

Thankfully the damage doesn't look too bad - new cat (or hollow out the case) and rehab the ignition.

 

Thanks Roger for your concern. Probably 1st or second degree burns on on my index and middle fingers, but it isn't stopping me from diving in. I need to find out what caused the marelli bank failure, cap and rotor look great!

 

isnt there a controller under the dash that could cause problems?

 

Distributor cap 3 views rotated. Rotor both sides, and what's left of my spare tire cover.

 

first thing i bought was my Jag. second thing i bought was the blokes fire extinguisher.

 

I believe the problem lies with the dual level cap and the rotor. There are fellows on this site who know far more about the Marelli set-up than I. One "level" fails to make contact not firing any of the spark plugs in the corresponding bank of cylinders, thus dumping raw fuel into the hot cat and starting a fire. I would replace both cap and rotor to start.

 

i know you said the cap looks fine, but i would be checking spark on both banks after gutting the cats.

 

Ouch. This is something that I've been dreading of happening to my '92 since learning they can spontainously combust. I just don't have the resources at this moment to do anything due to repairing my motorcycle, truck, purchasing the XJS and buying tires, relays and brake rotors and pads in the last month and a half. I really need to sit down with Kirby's book and see what it suggests as preventative measures. Present plans are to replace the cap, rotor, plug wires, all rubber hoses in the fuel delivery system.

By the way, nice lookin' '92!!

howlinowl

 

@TalkRadio

Sorry to hear about your mishap. Hope the hand is ok. I had exactly the same failure within a year of having my XJS. I managed to save mine as I had a fire extinguisher in the car. (I now have 2)

Your cat is probably dead so getting a SMOG pass may be a challenge, but you can wait until you need that before dealing with it. The most important thing right now is to get back on the horse ! Yours is a very pretty car and you've probably had the worst experience you can have with these cars and you and the car survived. You've experienced a Marelli failure first hand and I guarantee you will not suffer from it again, because you will know for sure the feeling when the car loses power and you'll pull over straight away and you won't restart it and you'll have 4 fire extinguishers. Having the failure on the left hand bank is actually better than the right hand bank, because the right hand bank cat runs near to the transmission oil cooler lines and they can get burned and thats a whole heap of fun to fix apparently. Thanks to a PO messing around with aftermarket cats on my car, My steering rack boot caught fire on the left hand side, because the cat sits closer to it than it should. It was the thick black smoke coming from that that finally convinced me something was wrong :-)

Anyway, as to why you had the failure in the first place, as you will know, you have basically 2 of each component, ie 2 coils, 2 power modules on the radiator top panel.... I just did process of elimination and swapping parts from A bank to B bank to find out what the problem was. In my case it was a failed coil. To do the diagnosis I had the fuel pump disconnected by pulling the fuel relay and I pulled a plug lead on each bank and inserted a spare plug and then watched for sparks as I swapped parts over. It was pretty obvious I had zero spark coming from 1 coil. I then replaced BOTH the coils and I've been fine ever since.

I spent a lot of time looking at the distributor cap, etc, then I started reading about getting a replacement, and how some "real" Marelli caps don't have Marelli stamped on them, and some fakes do, etc, etc So I finally decided to leave the cap and rotor alone, but I pull it every few thousand miles or so and have a look inside. From your pictures, your cap "looks" ok but I'm not completely convinced a visual inspection would show a problem in every case of failure. My money is on a single coil failure.....

 

I appreciate the time it took for you to write that sarc. It's been 6.5 hours since the incident, I am just starting to accept the seriousness of it all.

She shut down and I just jumped out of the car to wave others around me, I just figured she stalled. It happened last week, but restarted and off I went. As I was about to push the car to the side I saw smoke coming up through the hood, I opened the hood, looked down and saw flames. First thought, because prior to buying a 12 I scanned and read through Kirby's book at least 5 times, I said to myself, "I'm having a marelli fire." Must be love because without thinking I jammed my head under the car, in which I now have a golf ball sized welt over my left eye and saw it burning good. I ran frantically around looking for anything I could douse the flames. The spare tire cover came to mind. Again without thinking I jammed my head under there and tried to put it out with the spare tire cover, in which melted all over my hand. I tell you this, I felt nothing until it was over. At this point there were 60-70 cars watching me, and I'm sure everyone was calling 911. I got out from under and stood back thinking, "That's it, I can't stop it, it's going to burn to the ground." I grabbed everything that was important and threw it on the grass. I kid you not, some guy in a car about 15 back from me yelled out his window, "your car's on fire." Within 30 seconds of that a car in the other lane pulled over and a guy came running with a fire extinguisher, In which I grabbed like a guy who found water that's been in the desert. Again I jammed myself under there and 2-3 squirts she was out. The fire department arrived 10 minutes after that. You are correct, it won't happen again to me, it may to someone else. Because like me I said it won't happen to me, my car is running to good. Just yesterday she was peeling 25 foot hole shots. If you have waited, or don't think you need one, GO today, GO now and get a fire extinguisher. With the help of other Jag enthusiasts within this forum, I will find the problem and fix it. This thread will go on, for my and your sake. My car has only 72k, it's just about as mint as they come. It can happen to me, it can happen to you. If she misfires, and you will feel it, pull over and shut down. Remember I got away with one last week, I'm not sure how to fix a FF 13, but that was my warning.

 

Check it out before running with it. If it got hot enough to catch fire, it may have gotten hot enough to melt internally. Once the matrix melts and collapses, it could cause an obstruction and it won't flow as well. The restriction could cause other issues.

If you are lucky, you might be able to get by, but take a look.

 

I'm very impressed with jaguars heat shielding around those cats. That prevented major damage. Everything looks great under there as you can see, it was fuel that was burning off, and the extinguisher came at the right time. The only thing charred/burnt is that cable/wire. It seems to have had some coating on it, now burnt off. What is it? A ground?

 

No SMOG issues here in New Hampshire. I'm cutting them both off in a 1/2 hour, I'll either gut them or run straight pipe.

 

Sounds like a horrendous experience. I hope you bought the extinguisher man a beer!

I'm glad that both you and the car survived relatively unscathed, could have been much worse.

 

B Coil Failure.12+ volts from A, 6.2 from B.Performance Jaguar 60$ new Coil. Shout out to Brian Welker from Fasterjags, he is a monster. Tell him I sent ya.

 

@TalkRadio

Agree about Brian, he's a great help for the XJS... I am anxiously awaiting delivery of my catcooler twin fan conversion kit. Hopefully you got 2 coils so you can fit both new ones and keep the working old one in the trunk "just in case"