Well, after almost a week I have my 07 XKR back from the dealer. The most interesting item was a weak battery. That was the cause of the sputtering starts in the morning, and apparently the sluggish shift into second for the first several minutes of driving. My mornings are now smooth and powerful. I also had the K013 software enhancement program performed and the C2P16704 Spring replacement. Does anyone know exactly what these two items affect? Disappointingly, they could not find the very slow coolant leak, which is what I really took it in for. They also didn't find anything wrong with the adaptive cruise control and did not perform the "889940 reconfigure the speed control module". The dealership was very pleasant to work with, so I'm happy about that. Guess I'll wait until the coolant leak gets worse and take it in again.

Paul

 

I have no business in this area since I do not have a late model R but I just had to read because it said dealer.

You should be able to go right to the service manager for an explaination of what your parts are that you are questioning and get your answers. Also to the same point you should definately pursue the service manager about not getting the work done you took the car in for.

If you bought this car from this dealer you should be getting better service.

Having had a good experience is wonderful, but its their job. You can still be insistant about your issue and still walk away shacking your service writers hand and saying thank-you.

Get to know your dealer espically in the service department. Heck the guys at my dealer all know my name but always address me as
Mr. ____. That is the Jaguar way. And buying the tech's doughnuts after a job well done is never a bad thing. You never know doughnuts now may shave 1/4 hour or more off a future repair. Espically if they know its your car they have.

Jealous, enjoy your ride.

 

The 889940 I had performed was a key piece of my adaptive cruise control issue. I thought you reported the same thing? It would just cut out for no apparent reason (although once or twice I thought it was because I was near a small plane private airport (radar?) and then would not reset for ten or fifteen minutes (unless I stopped the car and switched off)

 

I told the service manager about all of that, and even wrote the TSB # down for her, but when I picked the car up the invoice just said that the problem could not be duplicated, so nothing was done. Same thing with the coolant leak. The service manager did tell me that the technician found dried coolant that was "from a previous repair" that he cleaned off. They did two pressure checks on the system and nothing showed up. I guess I'll wait another month or two and let the leak appear again in the same place. Maybe then they can figure out where it is coming from. Seems silly that if they found evidence of a leak and I am telling them that I have to top off the coolant reservoir ever month that they would say there is no leak, but there you go. I am also sorry to say the the early morning starts are still not what they should be. Actually, any time the car has sat for several hours, it is turning over much longer and sounding like a bad starter before catching and firing up. After the first start, it is fine. Guess I'm not as happy with my service visit as I thought....

Paul

 

hughey, just for grins, have you checked the battery voltage prior to starting the car in the morning? I know this sounds silly, but what you may actually have is a wiring problem, not a mechanical problem. That is what it sounds like to me. What I mean by this is that as the car sits over night, the possible electrical problem is draining some of the energy from the battery. This will drive down the battery voltage. This lower voltage causes the starter to turn over slower, making the car take longer to start. But, it isn't a problem after you have been driving the car since the alternator is recharging the battery and getting it back up to 100%.

To do this check, all you need is a multimeter and before you start the car after letting it set all night is to connect the multimeter across the battery (set to the VDC scale). The battery should read 12.6 VDC. If you are down at even 12.4 VDC, that is a sign that you have excessive electrical draw when the car is off. If this is the case, let me know and I will tell you how to figure out which circuit it is. It isn't a hard process (can you plug and unplug fuses?). Hopefully this will give you some information to use to get the dealership to fix your problem.

 

Chris, thanks. That's what I have been thinking, too. Although my solution is to just take the car back to the dealer and let them do all of the testing. I hate to be without my car another week, but I also hate not having it running at 100%.

 

Sad news. My coupe got keyed in the parking lot at work shortly after I got it back from the dealer. It's been at the body shop for a week and is now back at the dealer to try to trace the starting issue. I had the brilliant idea to record the car starting with my iPhone, so I burned a CD with the car starting several mornings and handed it to the service rep when I took the car in. Hopefully this will help them figure out why I get the prolonged starter engagement when the car has been sitting for several hours.

The good news out of all of this is that I decided to spend more money and buy a second car to drive to work. I ended up finding a great deal on an 02 XJ Sport, so I now have two Jaguars to maintain. I also have two Jaguars to drive! How sweet is that?

Paul

 

I'd LOVE to have an XJ as a second car...one day maybe

 

And the saga continues. Picked up the XKR on Wednesday and drove straight home in the rain, parked it in the garage, covered it up, and drove the XJ to work. Finally got a chance to uncover the car this morning, washed her up, took her out into the sunlight, and the new paint work is totally worthless. Swirl marks everywhere like a 6th grader was let loose with a $19.99 buffer. I had been spending some time just polishing up the XJ last night and this morning, and that 7 year old paint job looks MUCH better than my XKR that just got back from the body shop. So, I'll be driving her back to the dealer Monday morning and giving someone a major piece of my mind. The worst part is that the dealer had the car for a week after it got back from their body shop while they changed the oil and did some repair work to the front wheels. I guess no one bothered to look to see what kind of job the body shop did on repairing the scratches. To be honest, the paint looked better with three long scratches in it than it does right now. Since the scratches were on both sides, trunk, and hood, there isn't an angle you can look at the car and not see the swirls. Sorry to be ranting, but I'm really discouraged at this point.

Paul

 

having the dealer take care of the buffer trails and scratches will be pointless, locate an independent detailer (meguiers online forum) and get a qoute from him/her.

then go to the dealership and point out the obvious, let them know youve located and received a qoute to get the job properly done and have them take care of the bill.

thats what i would do.

ever correct the cold cranking issue ?

 

You are probably correct with that assessment. My issue is time. I've already taken a couple of days off work to get things taken care of with this issue. Between having the XKR in to the dealer and finding and purchasing a "work car", but it looks like I might need to take another day to get this issue resolved. I know that the swirls can be buffed out. I could probably do it myself as I have a porter-cable ro buffer, but again it's a time issue and just the fact that I expected better service from the dealer. And no, the cold cranking issue has not been resolved. Even giving the dealer a recording of four different starts didn't help. The starter still runs on for a bit first thing in the morning. The service manager said, "you still have plenty of warranty" indicating that I should just let it get so bad that something has to be replaced. Again, not what I was expecting from the dealer.

 

I think they are just having hardtime diagnosing it, and would rather wait for a more obvious default. I can see both sides on this, maybe the issue isnt as bad as it seems.

have you gotten a voltometer to check the voltage in the morning ?

 

Well, I finally got my XKR back from the dealer yesterday afternoon, and the paint looks great again. I was very pleased with the attention to the problem, and the resolution. My faith has been restored in the dealer. When I picked the car up last week, there was a very loud and persistent belt squeak that went away after a few minutes. When the car went back, I mentioned this as I had been noticing this problem on early morning start ups. The squeak was minor, but pretty consistent every morning. Turns out there was a service bulletin on the main belt drive and pulley. Several items were replaced under warranty and now no squeak. It may just be that I have been in the XJ8 all week, but there seemed to be even more power and solidity to acceleration when punching the throttle. I'm now curious to start the car in the morning to see if perhaps the belt/pulley issue was the cause of the starting problem. I'll update in a few days.

The service bulletin number is JTB00045 and included six items that were replaced:
C2C37063 BELT - DRIVE
C2C37064 PULLEY - IDLER
C2C37055 BELT - DRIVE
C2C37056 BRACKET - IDLER MT
C2C37057 TENSIONER - DRIVE
C2S46862 PULLEY - IDLER

Cheers