Hey Jahummer, where in Florida are you? Do you have a shop of your own, or do you just toy with the car for fun?

 

Purchased a new rack direct from Jaguar and installed it today. HUGE difference. At low speed steering is VERY tight, heavy and stiff. Response at higher speeds is heavier but quicker. Does not feel like the same car and is going to take some time to get used to.

 

Have you still got the variable assistance turned off in the CCF? If so try turning it back on and see what it's like?

 

Yes it is still off. Plan to enable it when I make some other adjustments and load that last map.

 

Well, the XKR-S GT / F-Type brake ducts fit on a regular XKR just fine...









They hang down a fair bit lower than I expected, very much in the air stream so you can expect that they actually work.

 

 

Zoom into the first pic, they just clip over the existing wish bone arm. Dead simple part and probably easy to duplicate if someone was so inclined.

 

Thanks, I couldn't see it well on my phone. It does appear to be very simple and even around $50 for the pair is probably ridiculous, but I suppose we should be thankful it isn't more.

 

Where does one find the setting for that, do you know? I'm interested in this.

 

Sorry I never updated this, but I did turn the assist back on in the CCF. Honestly I can’t really feel
A difference. Perhaps at speeds above 100mph I may but have yet to take it higher than that yet. The most appreciable change was going from the standard equip’d rack to the GT rack. Made it a completely different car.

 

No worries, thanks for getting back to me. So is that all you can do with the CCF, switch the assistance on or off? You can't enable or disable the maps available in the software?

 

The maps are stored in the cluster (probably
for speed data) and so far I don’t know of anyone who has attempted to modify them, perhaps it is because they are also embedded in the cluster software which can’t get a bit tricky since odometer info, vin, etc are stored there as well.

I have heard there are indeed various maps over the years and the one for my XKR differs from the R-S and perhaps the GT as well but what those maps afford is unknown to me. And while the Servotronic II assist is speed based I am not sure how much benefit there really is to it.

 

OK thanks again - I wasn't looking to modify the maps as such, just see if there was any control over which one(s) were used under certain conditions. I'd have liked maybe just a little more weight in the steering if there was a way to do that without having to swap out hardware was all.

 

I wish it were that easy but the majority of the steering feel comes from the rack gear ratio and hydraulic assist valving. I believe the servo assist is primarily to ease parking and affect the amount assist over various speeds.

 

And what is really mind blowing from a machinist stand point is that the rack has variable pitch so in the center there's much less wheel angle change per degree of steering input versus the outer areas. Pretty clever when you think about it. Really stable at speed but turns lock to lock quicker with less steering wheel input.

 

That took some getting used to for me when I bought my car. To this day it still catches me out a bit when I change over to my wife's Mercedes and back.

 

For posterity I'm posting the only picture of the XKR-S GT front knuckle I could find in all the internet (here). Wish I could've found a bigger pic, but beggars can't be choosers.

 

I finally got my hands on an F-Type / XKR-S rack for my XKR.



Keep in mind this p/n is for a RHD rack.

Straight swap as expected.

On the bench the standard 4.2L XKR rack is 3 turns lock-lock, the F-Type rack is about 2 & 1/4, so about 25% less.

Not sure how that works out with ratios, but less turns is better I suppose.

It certainly feels different, even just backing out of the workshop I immediately noticed the added weight to the wheel, it felt just like the F-Type's I've driven previously.

Through the usual roundabouts & chicanes on the way home it felt noticeably sharper.

Worthwhile? Well I have to say yes.

 

I reckon you wished you hadn’t waited so long. I told you it would be worth it!

 

It was just a matter of finding a rack in this country, it appears that only one F-Type has ever been parted-out here, and this is the rack from it.