I just had the thermostat replaced on my 2008 XKR coupe.I had read that the supercharger had to be drained and bleed when replacing the thermostst and confirmed with the service writer that they would do that. When I picked up my car I had a chance to talk to the mechanic and I mentioned the supercharger draining and he said it didn't need to be done. I pushed a little mentioning how I read that its a high point and needs to be bleed. He said that's not the case. This shop specializes in european cars and is well respected. The mechanic is supposed to have worked at a Jaguar dealership for 25 years. The car appears to be running fine.

 

what happened to your thermostat, not a common fault on the xkr of that year.

 

I thought it was very common. The gasket was out of place.

 

Yep i thought it was common as well.

 

It does need to be bled. I did my thermostat replacement myself. Common problem.

 

My thermostat went just after Christmas took I have the n/a 4.2 and the thermostat is quite a reasonable time consuming job around about 2.5-3hrs to do and yes very common problem on our jags

 

What happens if you don't bleed? Because they didn't.

 

So I'm a little confused here as I have never heard of this failure. I don't know how possible it is for a gasket that is locked down to be out of place. Was this ever replaced before so it could have been installed wrong. Was was the cause of the problem. Was this diagnosed by a dealer/indie as the problem. Just trying to understand the fault.

 

The gasket kind of rips and then part of it flips up and stops the thermostat from shutting all the way, I believe. I have a photo somewhere but it will take me a while to find it. Happened on both my X350 and X150 at around 60k miles.

 

As I understand with most heat exchanger systems they run off the radiator and not a seperate unit (correct me if I'm wrong when it comes to the xkr) that being the case as long as the radiator has been bled the supercharger would have been bled at the same time

 

Isn't it essentially the same as the STR (the car I have)? In effect there are 2 coolant circuits that share a header tank. The thermostat is in one and the SC another so there's no obvious need to mess with the latter.

I've had to drain and fill the non-SC part and never had a problem leaving the SC part alone. I asked my local jag place and they said the same.

 

I just asked a service writer at Jaguar of Orlando if anything needed to be done with SC for a T-Stat change and he said no. But I've read on here many times that it needs to be done. That's the main reason I did't do it.