Those protruding edges should have been red to remind you that they're as useful as lipstick on a pig.

 

Our baby got a new set of Michelin A/S 3+ tires yesterday, what a difference in ride when the treads are new! Hope to run them up to speed today to confirm correct balance. Looking for smooth road & no cops.

 

My XK was on Michelin Pilot Super Sports when I bought it, but while there is still sufficient tread depth, I've decided this is the last summer for those tires as they're very old (7-8 years). I thought I'd try Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3s next, as they're supposedly the quietest tires available in this size. Aside from the EU tire label claiming a 3-4 dB reduction in noise from the Michelins, the shoulders of the tire also look quite a bit more rounded, so I'm hoping for a bit less tramlining, too.

Normal price here is around 1100€/$1280 for a set in 20", but a few days ago I managed to get an unused 2017/2018 set for 550€/$640! I bought them from a guy who had unfortunately crashed his BMW M6, for which he had bought said tires. Surprisingly, the front tires have a J after all the other usual markings, and looking around on the net this apparently means they're "Jaguar specification".

Only downside is that the guy had painted the "Goodyear" and "Eagle F1" texts on the sidewall yellow, so that's something I think I'll have to rectify somehow.

 

Not something I did, but my wife just finished a head rest mounted wind screen to finish the rear seat tonneau cover project from earlier in the year. Tberg, kindly supplied us with color matched Passion Suede fabric that she used to make the velcro secured head rest caps. The center is simple medium weight fly screen from the local Home Depot. Almost all of the vortex wind is completely gone now, making top down cruising a real pleasure!

She also made a cover for the pillow that I use to relieve lower back stress on long drives .

Everything is completely removable and can be thrown in a washer to cleaning. No more dirty back seats and windy top down rides!

 

 

Looks great!

 

I'm impressed! I'm scared to death to pull my dash to chase the dreaded AC drain clog.

 

 

So I finally got to repairing front bumper license plate holes and resprayed the front bumper. I ordered the black pack grills to replace the chrome grills.... But I wanted to tell the story of what happened at the auto body/paint shop that I used. The shop came recommended by someone I know and I looked at pics of there work and it looked good, so I decided to use them. Well I removed the bumper myself, because I trust myself more than anyone else and took the bumper and front splitter to them and they repaired the holes and resprayed the bumper and it looked great. I got bumper home mounted grills, put it on the car and uh-oh, we have a problem. The color is wrong, I didn't even think of checking it, I guess I was just excited to get the car back together. So, of course I remove the bumper, remove all the grills, senors, ect. and take it back to them along with a piece of the car so they can check the paint against it because the bumper is now the wrong color. So, we are thinking someone at the paint supplier doesn't know what their doing and either mixed or sent the wrong paint, so they reorder the paint using LJZ paint code for Jaguar Lunar Grey and it comes to them the same as the first batch, Wrong Color. So, I insist they use a different supplier, I then get a phone call from shop saying the paint from the new supplier is the same as the first two from the other supplier. I am left with no option but to bring them the car so they can do a custom match. So I drive the car with no front end to the body shop taking every back road know to man, so I don't have to drive fast. After having the car for 1 day and I get it back and the bumper is matched perfectly, which was a relief. So after that long story I have to ask you guys is lunar grey suppose to have the reddish/pink tint that they say they kept getting from suppliers? I have bought touch up paint and it didn't seem to have any. Just confused how two suppliers could get it wrong 3 times? Also, as a side note the shop did not charge me a single dime more than the original quote, even after they had to respray the bumper twice, so it wasn't like they were trying to get more out of me and the final finish product looks great... Any thoughts?


First respray with factory code LJZ

Final respray with custom match

 

Interesting difference as it appears that your old paint seemed to darken over time. I assume they used the color camera to mix the custom match.

 

Weird. When I had my (now trashed) Mina spoiler painted Pearl Metallic, it matched perfectly off the paint code. Maybe your CAR is wrong? Has it ever been resprayed? It sure LOOKS Lunar grey though...

 

Yes that is what they did...

 

That is what I am wondering as well, I bought the car from a dealer that gave me tons of records from the previous owner and there is no documents that show any body repair, but maybe it was done under the table. I have seen other Lunar Grey cars and I don't recall any of them having the pink hue to them... I bought some touch up paint from an online source and used LJZ code and it was almost a perfect match, no pink hue.. Very weird...

 

First, yea that paint is just wrong.

Second, you would know if your entire car was re-sprayed. There would be little traces of evidence, like the placards in the door inners might be missing, clear coat not perfect on seams/creases/around chrome trim and headlight/taillights/under the doors, stuff just not put back on perfectly, etc. Not that this is all bad but you would know. No re-spray/re-assembly is perfect like when the robots do it at the factory.

Glad you got it worked out.

 

I don't see any signs of a respray... If it is, it would be one of the best jobs I have ever seen... Maybe the shop just didn't want to throw their original supplier under the bus, and the new supplier actually got it right.

 

 

Interesting, Jahummer

Well for what its worth if you ever need paint again, ScratchWizard must know something that the shops don't, because the touch-up and aerosol paint I received from them was almost a perfect match when selecting LJZ... That's what I painted my rear finisher with, it was so close there was no blending required...

 

Received my replacement shock , installed and no more CATs symbol

 

 

Don, have you had issues with your 2011 AC drain? You should have the updated version of the so called duckbill, that shouldn't need any servicing. Only the early 10MY 5.0L have the old version.