Ownership is good, except I'm a bit worried about its lack of DIY potential. I maintain my cars myself, 98% of the time. I realize that this is harder on newer cars. But still, help me out here?

I've had 3-4 things I wanted to check, the first was to find the battery, the latest today was to find where to check engine coolant (I found a bottle with coolant in the engine room, but I don't know if this supercharged car is like my Cadillac CTS-V that has separate coolant system for intercooler). I've bought a CD version of a service manual, but so far I've found nothing in it. Nothing. It takes forever for it to search the 4000 pages, and when I e.g. enter "engine coolant" or "underhood service" I get nothing. I've also looked for a table of required items so service at what intervals. No luck. And there's not even a Haynes manual available, strange with Haynes being British and 52k sold.

Any DIY'ers out there? Or at least people that check the fluids themselves? Am I doing it wrong? Can one buy a proper paper service manual like they have at the shop?

While we're at it, can anybody give me some links to vendors (preferably UK or US) in the following categories:
-wear parts, brake pads, filters etc. Preferably a home page with a full exploded view of the car, part#s etc.
-junkyards where they take these cars apart, if I should need a fender one day
-fun aftermarket parts, bling, wind deflectors etc.

Any help is appreciated

 

Sounds like you might want to first get an owners manual.

 

As Mikey noted, first you need to get a Driver's Handbook. You can download them, one section at a time from topix.jaguar.jlrext.com .

I agree the service manual can be difficult to use. Everything I have looked for is there. It is just hard to find. The ebay service CDs are as good as it gets IMHO. There is Alldata.com for subscription service data. I tried it for one of my Jags years ago and was not impressed.

Search for and download JEPC (Jaguar Electronic Parts Catalog). That will give you Jaguar part drawings and numbers. You can search the internet for parts and find cross references with that. Again, finding parts can be difficult, but they are in the JEPC if you look long enough.

Many people, including myself, do most of their own service. The information is there, it just takes some hunting to find it. The forums are a big help. Someone has probably already had most problems you will come across. Searching the forums will give you insight on what to do.

Good Luck!

 

I got the service manual CD on Ebay and after playing with it for a while managed to find any info I need. I downloaded it to my laptop and when I need to search for a specific area I look at the table of contents and click on the area that I'm looking for. When done just click on the home/1st page and look up the next area.

 

Can you tell me what page you see the maintenance schedule, no hurry? I want to see if I have an abbreviated version.

 

The maintenance schedule is in the owners manual.

 

May I just humbly point out that we might be failing the first test of DIY, getting frustrated at the instruction manual.
The other day, a girl came here asking a question about the engine she had taken apart in the 5.0 XK. No one could answer so she asked how she could get a workshop manual, again non one could answer correctly. She returned one last time and posted free workshop manual for us to download.