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We just lost Tuna the Husky, the best car dog we've ever had, to an aggressive, fast moving, cancer.
It first took her ability to run, then to climb stairs, and walking was becoming difficult.
We chose to send her on before it took her dignity as well.
She was happy to the end.
Her last picture.
My sincere condolences. Always so difficult and painful when we lose our canine family members. Do your best to focus on the good times you had with her....
Crisp in the morning for the drive into campus and warm and sunny in the afternoon after work for a fast jaunt through the countryside and along our twisty river road, flashing through the sunlight and the trees in all their brilliant fall colors.
It is so nice having a performance car that I am totally happy with, that I can look at and say "Yes, that's just the Jaguar I want to be driving". While I can appreciate other sports cars, such as the nice late model Aston Martin I crossed paths with yesterday, I have no desire for the AM or regrets to choosing this XKR.
For me, this XKR sits right in my sweet sport of performance, styling, safety, reliability, economics, and Jaguar racing heritage.
Crisp in the morning for the drive into campus and warm and sunny in the afternoon after work for a fast jaunt through the countryside and along our twisty river road, flashing through the sunlight and the trees in all their brilliant fall colors.
It is so nice having a performance car that I am totally happy with, that I can look at and say "Yes, that's just the Jaguar I want to be driving". While I can appreciate other sports cars, such as the nice late model Aston Martin I crossed paths with yesterday, I have no desire for the AM or regrets to choosing this XKR.
For me, this XKR sits right in my sweet sport of performance, styling, safety, reliability, economics, and Jaguar racing heritage.
Sadly my XK8 seems to be terminal. If it is, I am going to miss it a lot. But it makes me happy to see yours still running and taking you on adventures. I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your beautiful dog. I remember the eyes.
We have lost 12 dogs during the past 40 years and it rips our hearts out each and every time. But we know there is always another great rescue dog that needs a good home so we welcome one or two of them into our lives and we quickly fall in love with them. I hope you will do the same....
Sorry to hear about your XK8, Lanny. While I know you have the skills to fix or fab anything, sometimes one has to make the call on the best use of their precious time.
I'm sure you know about the Rainbow Bridge story and I for one hope it's true. Losing your pet (particularly dogs) stories is something I can't handle though it's a reality. Dogs and convertibles seem to go together, mine do. The pain you feel now is the price of the love you received for so long. If I had to choose between my XK8 and my Bearded Collie guess who is gonna win.
He was the faithful constant companion and best friend to my ill wife before her passing. Beautiful car BTW.
So sorry for your loss, TM
After quickly coming off the throttle from a spirited acceleration recently, my 4.0L XKR engine lost significant power and began shaking in a way that immediately made me think, "This feels like a big intake vacuum leak." Fortunately, the low-power XKR never quit and I continued on to my destination.
When I returned home and opened the bonnet with the engine running, I could hear a loud hissing from the rear of the supercharger area. I searched this forum for "supercharger vacuum leak", and found several helpful articles
The articles documented an early model (4.0L) design-flaw where the supercharger-intercooler duct seal displaces from between the duct seal plates due to the high intake vacuum that occurs during a sharp off-throttle. Later 4.2L models fix this by adding a flange to the rubber duct seal and a groove in the plates to accept the flange (see pics below).
Our son and I easily disassembled and fixed the leaking duct seal using my early-model parts, but I have no doubt this will occur again.
The upgrade kit appears to be NLA, so I am now in search of someone parting a 4.2L model XJR/XKR that has the flanged duct seals and grooved plates.
Early model nonflanged duct seals above, later model flanged duct seal below.
Later model duct seal plates are grooved to accept the flanged duct seal
I've been daily driving my XKR all winter and while it's been great fun, I have occasionally been getting a low coolant warning message and smelling a slight whiff of maple syrup ever since fixing the duct seals above. This weekend I decided to track down and fix what felt like a small coolant system leak. I was hoping it was something simple in the easy-to-access hoses up on top and not problems with the hoses deeper in the engine.
With the engine cold, I got out my trusty coolant pressure tester kit ($90 https://www.harborfreight.com/radiat...kit-63862.html) and pumped the coolant pressure up to 2-bar/21psi. Either the green or the orange caps work.
Coolant immediately began foaming from the center left hose on the "V8" supercharger top cover. Success! And it's easy to get to! I disconnected the hose, examined it and, aside from the small hole, the material appeared sound inside. Since the leak was so near the end of the hose, I snipped off the last half inch of the hose and reattached it and the spring clame. I then topped up the coolant reservoir with distilled water and repressurized the system for 30 minutes with no further pressure loss. Problem solved!
I did have that cover off several times for the duct seal repair above. While I try to be careful not to stress old hoses like that, I must not have been careful enough. This isn't the first coolant hose failure I've experienced with this 23 year old Jag and is a heads-up to begin looking for a full set of replacement coolant hoses.
This coolant pressure tester tool is extremely easy to use and has saved me so much time and money over the years vs going to a shop to diagnose and fix problems like this. I can't recommend it enough.
The air intake hose retaining bolt is off from removing the intake to visually check the octopus hose NORMA connection to the back of the right-side head for any coolant leaks. All good!
Last edited by sanchius; Mar 5, 2024 at 06:28 AM.
Reason: fix some typos
After a summer of flawless fun top-down driving, the dreaded High Gearbox Temperature warning popped up one morning with a cold engine (2001 XKR).
I googled 'xkr "high gearbox temperature" site:www.jaguarforums.com' and liked what I saw. The Mercedes 722.6 5-speed automatic transmission in the 2001 XKR is considered to be very robust and this is one of it's few flaws due to a known weakness in the temp sensor integrated into the gearbox wiring harness (called a "conductor plate"). It can be fixed by replacing the conductor plate without removing the transmission from the vehicle. Nice...
Since I already had the trans oil, seals, dipstick, and filter, I ordered a wiring harness connector and conductor plate from FCP-Euro, which quickly arrived.
Since I was going to be in there anyway, I decided to upgrade to the popular 722.6 'blue-top" shifting solenoids that make the gear shifts much more crisp. As my shifting felt vague and soft rather than crisp, I was pretty sure it had the stock brown-top solenoids, but I would have to extract the valve body to be certain. References:
Since the 722.6 trans was extensively used in many different brands and models, there are are many YouTube videos on how to do this service. This was the best one:
As prep, I took a couple ibuprofen since this promised to be some extended vehicle repair yoga getting up and down from under the vehicle and I'm not as young and spry as I once was.
First, the trans wiring harness is detached and the connector removed from the transmission
Then the trans oil pan comes off, taking care not to contaminate anything with grit...
Paying close attention to the geometry of the shift selector, I dropped the heavy valve body...
Once on the bench, the stock brown-top solenoid pair (top center) on the upper side of the valve body were obvious. I sealed the valve body in a bag, refitted the trans pan to keep out dust and grit, and ordered a set of blue tops from: https://www.mbpartsource.com/oem-par...oid-2402700089
Again, with it's wide use, there are many aftermarket upgrades for the 722.6, but since this my first time into an auto transmission, I'm going to keep it simple with just the blue-top replacement.
Part II, Reassembly, will continue once the blue-top solenoids arrive.
This thread documents our adventures with our 2001 carnival red convertible XKR.
To us, the first-gen XKRs embody the very spirit of the vintage racing Jags we had campaigned years before: solid race-bred engines producing bags of power matched with competent & well-balanced suspensions, all wrapped in a particularly inspired example of Jaguar’s trademark curvalicious and stunningly beautiful body design.
lovely creature,,,im really enjoying my recent XK8,,,if i could only do photos lol
if the car was negleted why was the person picky about the sale? best w the car
Jon89, the XKR has ~146K miles.
Thanks for the interest, Gonville. The reason the seller was picky about the sale is that he had rescued this XKR from a highly neglected state and had put a lot of his time and advanced automotive expertise into getting it operational again. His goal was to sell the reborn Jag to someone who would continue the rescue and put it to good use, instead of breaking it up and using the parts to fix other XKR/XK8s.
Photos are pretty easy to include here via the "upload" button with the picture icon (12th icon from the left) in the advanced reply window.
I've learned that documenting our trips and repairs in words and pictures lets me live three times: once having the original experience, reliving it again when I compose the story, and once again when I reread it years later, often after forgetting that I even did it in the first place.
For example, I wrote this years ago when crewing and occasionally driving with a Jag XK120 & MkII race team at the Steamboat Springs vintage races sometime in the '90's, which keeps that unique time alive for me:
.
"...The Woman in the Camaro had taken pole position thanks to her very well prepared car and by jumping the start during the morning's qualifying run. After the women's group got started and settled onto the track, The Woman in the Camaro kept her lead, but she was being pushed hard by a lightweight Ginetta racer. The two drivers were a study in contrasts. The little Ginetta smoothly rounding the course, lap after lap, while the The Woman in the Camaro seemed overaggressive, putting a lot of raw power down onto the track, but in jerky fits and corrections. We all knew it was coming and the crowd at the grid corner were doubly delighted to have it unfold right in front of us. Coming into the tight turn, the Ginetta slid up beside The Woman in the Camaro, the light sports racer allowing her to hold off braking just a bit longer than the heavy American muscle car. In the corner, the little Ginetta slipped by the Camaro and danced out front for the lead with the finesse of a gypsy pickpocket lifting the wallet of a loud overdressed tourist. The Camaro bellowed it's outrage to the crowd, but the overapplication of power coming out of the tight corner only got her sideways on the track, losing her more time and dignity as she disappeared fishtailing over the hill. I looked around at some of the more experienced racers shaking their heads at the display. I didn't have to ask to know what they were thinking, "She just doesn't get it, does she? Victory here doesn't mean coming in first, it's not about intimidation and getting a big ego stroke. The best achieve something far subtler, reaching a graceful smoothness out there, building a delicious rhythm not only with the car and the track, but with the other drivers". But what the hell do I know, I'm just a mechanic. And so the woman's race wound to a close in that order. The driver in the Ginetta, effortlessly lapping the course in the bright sunshine, showing us all how it's done and the The Woman in the Camaro, with her roaring downshifts and uneven bursts of power, showing us how it isn't... "
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Last edited by sanchius; Aug 12, 2024 at 04:58 PM.
The Mercedes blue-top shift solenoids arrived (left) and their outlet shape was distinctly different from the stock brown-top solenoids (right)
Having nothing better handy, here's a rough measure of the outlet sizes
I installed the blue tops in the replacement connector plate and mounted the CP on the valve block
And fitted the valve block back under the transmission, along with the external wiring connector interface and the oil pan.
The wiring connector was the worst. It just didn't want to go in correctly, I wasn't going to force it and risk damaging it, but it was very reluctant to fit.
But after playing with it for ~45minutes, I finally got the connector to sit correctly and the rest was just bolting everything back together.
I carefully refilled the transmission with ATF from the engine bay (below). I forgot to mention that there's no transmission dipstck, you have to buy a special extra-long MB or aftermarket dip stick and thread it in until it hits bottom. There are lots of youtube videos on refilling the transmission oil, apparently the 722.6 is sensitive to overfilling, so I filled and checked it in small increments, first with a cold system, then a fully warm system.
I cleared the codes and the replacement connector plate fixed the problem! The false Gearbox Fault/High Gearbox Temperature warning is gone. Everything appears to be working correctly, with bonus points for no ATF drips anywhere. And going to the blue-tops has definitely made the shifting much crisper & firmer.
I am happy to report that It all worked... Not bad for my first foray ever into an automatic transmission.
I came across an old story I wrote years ago back when I wrote years ago about going to racing school in this very well dialed in Jag Mk-2 from the vintage race team I crewed and wrenched with back in the '90s and thought I'd share it here.
"...finally came the chance to take the wheel of a fully race-prepped Jaguar on a track in competition with other drivers. In the beginning you simply try to get around the track without screwing up, tentative and apprehensive as you do your best to absorb all the new things unfolding around you so quickly. It takes a bit to set your cockpit procedures, gauge checks, the best shifting/braking methods, spotting corner workers while working out your driving lines and braking points. Then you start to push the car with more and more more certainty as it begins to click and you get a glimpse of what the all fuss is about. But an instant later, you miss the line or blow a shift and find yourself all tied up in mental knots again, juggling aggression and caution, pride with fear, your skills with the unknown. Before long, your confidence is back, everything becomes right again and you transition into a wonderful world-without-time where life reduces down to a 3-second stream-of-consciousness window of total focus on setting up the next line just right, late braking into the curve and late apexing out under acceleration, winding it out in the straight, shifting and winding it out more, then braking, braking HARDER as the wall rushes up to you, downshifting and pushing into the next tight corner hotter, accelerating out faster, passing that Alfa, dropping cars off your tail, then getting smoked by a someone even faster on the long straightaway, transitioning into the next curve, settling deep into the suspension and smoothly taking the wide sweeper in slow-motion at 70mph just inches off the bumper of the vintage 911 in front of you, trusting the Jag, trusting the other drivers, notching it up lap after lap, pushing it harder and probing your limits before suddenly it's over, the checkered's out and you're pulling into the pits with muscles trembling and a huge grin on your face..."
