Hey RJ,

Just went back and saw that. So now at least I know I have a functioning brake switch. I think I'm going to take the seat out before I try and get back under the dash. Last time I got under there it took a few days before my back was right again, lol. At least with the seat out I should be able to lay pretty much flat on the floor. Hopefully this will fix the cruise control issue. I have found a source for those steering wheel control buttons if I have to replace them.

Joe

 

Just in case you had previously update your incandescent bulbs for LED bulbs, I did that before and the cruise control stop working immediately. Then when I put back the originals bulbs, my cruise control came back to life on my XK8 Victory Edition 2006

 

HI Ledmi,
That was going to be one of my next projects. Not sure why that would cause the cruise control not to work but I'll keep that in mind. I put one of those USB chargers into the old cigar lighter hole over the weekend. It's the kind with the digital voltage read out. It's showing 13.8 volts, so the new battery is still doing well. But every once in a while I'll get those "Trac not available" and "Transmission" warning message in the dash when I first start the car. But if I shut it off and restart the messages go away. I'm convinced that auto makers just went waaaayyy overboard with all the electronics in these cars.

 

The cruise control and transmission were having faulty message and the problems were the brake bulbs LED even they were Canbus rated.

When I replace for the old incandescent type Cruise and Transmission were back as normal.

English car. My first car was a MGB and even then all the electrical Lucas was a nightmare.

 

I'm only changing out the bulbs in the dashboard and gauges and the center console. I can see where changing the bulbs in the brake lights would screw up the system.

 

As posted previously I am living on the edge with a 7-year old battery. I also have one of those USB gizmos in the cigarette lighter that shows the voltage. Before cranking I have been about 11.8 volts and when it starts it goes to 14.4 or 14.5. I was getting frequent random messages having to do with abs, or traction control, or cruise control that would go away the next time I started. But I have discovered a "trick" that has resulted in no weird messages. Basically I turn the key to the second position where the car does the self-checks and I don't actually start the engine until the checks are done (a couple of seconds). Since doing this I have not gotten any weird messages. Of course the proper answer is to get a new battery which I will soon be doing.

 

FYI: using a quality battery tender will dramatically increase your battery life. CTEK, NOCO Genesis, and Delran Battery Tender Plus are all good brands.

plus, hooking up a battery tender whenever the car is not being used overnight or longer will keep
many of the electrical system gremlins at bay.

i have several theories why that is . But they are only theoretical musings.

Z

 

Jaguar weren't building the car for you - they were building it for the original well off buyer who simply didn't care whether the car suits your needs 20+ years later. Jaguar benchmarked the competition at the time and beat them hands down. They couldn't do that with carbs, manual windows and mechanical signals that pop up.

 

Wow! I've been sitting here wondering how to reply to this one. A couple of thoughts:

1/ I was referring to "auto makers" not singling out Jaguar. My wife's 2024 Hyundai has more whistles, dings and warning signals than any normal driver needs to have. The damn thing rings a tone if you shift into Drive from Reverse and do not have the brake pedal depressed all the way. These are the things I'm talking about.

2/ The ever popular Steve Martin line "Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me" I didn't realize these cars were only meant for people well above my stature in life. If that were the case maybe the manufacturer should have put a plaque on the dash indicating that these were not to be purchased by individuals below a certain economic level.

3/ Maybe another plaque indicating that these vehicles were disposable and not made to be driven past a particular date, kind of like the "use by" dates on food.

4/ A third plaque stating that these cars are perfect the way they are and, therefore, if anything goes wrong with them just leave them on the side of the road and come back and buy a new one.

I've been rebuilding cars since my teens. I've taken engines apart and put them back together. I've worked for hot rod shops and race car shops. I'm just trying to say that sometimes simple is better. I know that technology is constantly moving forward, it's just that technology for the sake of technology is not necessary. I like the car and enjoy driving it and many of the folks on here have been very helpful with suggestions on repairing various parts on it. However, if this is going to devolve into "Jaguars are the absolute greatest cars every built and if you're have a problem it's because you don't deserve to drive such a refined machine" then I'm outta here.

Sorry for the rant but I've never been told I'm below the status of the car on a forum.

 

Sorry, but you seem to have taken my comment the wrong way. I'll just repeat that when Jaguar were designing the car their target market was well off people looking for an expensive new car with every modern option known to man that was going to be maintained no expense spared by the Jaguar dealer until the warranty ran out, when they would trade it in for a new one.

The target market was not the second hand car buyer 20+ years down the road who bought the car at 90% off its original price. Jaguar simply don't care if that makes it hard for you to keep the car running, because you were never their customer and even if you were, the car is already a decade or more out of their warranty.

This isn't a comment on your stature in life, just the reality of the second hand car you bought.

 

Yeah I agree that the reaction to dibbit's comment seems a bit over-the-top. The first vehicle I really "noticed" when I was a kid was the XKE I saw at the New York Auto Show in the early 1960s. Then when the family moved out to LA in 1964 I was drooling a few years later when my uncle bought a new XKE (must have been in the late 1960s). These vehicles (and other luxury vehicles) were always in the category of not easily being in the grasp of "average" wage earners and driving around in one sent the message the you made it. Similarly I recall seeing the XK8 when it was introduced at some auto show in LA and the sticker made it clear I'd better fuggedaboutit--was about $20K+ more than I would be comfortable with. When in 2008 I finally decided to make my wife happy by selling my 1995 Corvette, there happened to be a specialty car lot across the street from where I worked and there were a number of XK8's on the lot. I figured even used they would be greatly more than I wanted to spend just based on the original sticker. Not so--they were all much less than I expected and I eventually ended up wih the one I still have. But I agree with dibbit that these were intended for the "well off" buyer and got all kinds of comments from friends and others who thought I had suddenly won the lottery.

 

Hey Seismic,

I get that certain cars were more expensive when new and thus were targeted at buyers who were above the blue collar level. But shouldn't that mean that those cars were built to last? Or were the manufacturers of the opinion that the buyers would only use the car for a couple years and then it was someone else's problem for which the manufacturer had no responsibility.

When I was in grammar school, we're talking late '50s, my parents moved into a small neighborhood of working class people. My old man always drove a car that was at least 10 years old. They were built like brick S**thouses and would run until he crashed them. I remember going with my parents and buying their first new car, a '60 Chevy Biscayne. It had a radio and a heater. That was it. But the thing would run and run and when I was in high school I got to drive it. Of course the old man was still driving a '56 Ford Victoria. Again, it ran and was easy enough to fix so I could get myself to where I needed to be.

All I was trying to say in that original post was that "car companies" in general seemed to put electronic things in cars that weren't actually needed and, because they, perhaps, weren't fully tested, tend to go wrong and when they do they affect other aspects of the car that makes it undrivable. A perfect example is on my Jag, with it's new battery, sometimes when I start it up in the morning after it sits for a few days, I get the "Gearbox Fault" in the dash message window. Then if I shut it off and start it again, no message. Now I know there is nothing wrong with the gearbox but clearly there is some gremlin in the electronics somewhere that causes the computer that runs the car to think there is a fault. Same for the "Trac not available" message. I'm guessing that if the battery is not putting out the absolute peak volts at the time the car is started all these faults pop up.

Again, my apologies for the rant.

 

No need to apologize but I have a slightly different take on cars lasting. I am probably your vintage and my recollection is that you could count on American cars expecting to need a valve job or ring job after a few years. But these were sort of routine and almost any mechanic could do them. When Japanese autos became more prevalent in the market in the late 1980s and on, the reliability and longevity was staggering compared with most American cars but over time the basic mechanics of all cars became much more robust. That is still the case but as the bells and whistles and electronic controls have been introduced, it is those items that fail or cause gremlins and mechanics no longer repair things but, rather, replace things.

 

10-4 Seismic. That's what I'm finding with this car. When one "black box" doesn't talk to another "black box" some other "black box" won't do what it's supposed to do and I end up with a really beautiful piece of lawn art. The kicker is the solution was as mysterious as the problem. On the way back from "the shop" that said it hadn't yet found the problem "the problem" just seemed to go away and I was able to get it to pass the smog certification. I guess I did something to make one of the gremlins happy, LOL.

 

I'll agree with the first part. The lux-o car manufacturers made the car to last through the warranty period. The well-heeled buyers wanted new super-cool luxury cars. After 3 or 4 years it's no longer a super-cool new luxury car. So, it gets dumped off and the rich guy buys a new car. Jag certainly didn't give a rip about buyers two decades in the future. The car wasn't designed to last that long.

But about them beating the competition, I'd quibble a bit. I have two contemporaneous BMWs, a 325 ragtop and a 525. The 3-series was the cheapest model available, AFAIK, and it retailed for $35K to $38K, depending on the source. My Jag retailed for around $71K, or almost double. Yet the BMWs have variable intake and exhaust timing, full drive by wire, the computers even check all the lightbulbs. The electronics are far more advanced than the Jag. And the suspension on the 5-series will run circles around the Jag. OTOH the Jag is about the prettiest car on the road today, so that counts for something.

 

It's off the subject, but you may want to consider replacing your upstream O2 sensors. I did mine and my CAT monitor set up almost immediately, after months of fruitless driving. My best guess is that, as they age, often the sensors get "lazy" and the electronic signals don't transition as quickly as they should. I know my BMWs have a secondary air pump and when the upstream sensor gets old and lazy the SAS monitor won't set. So, perhaps related.

 

Hey there Y2K,

Not sure if you saw my post about the CAT monitor clearing. The guys at the new shop I took it to called one Friday (5 weeks after I brought the car to them) and asked if I could pick it up and order a new throttle body (they though that might be the problem). So I got mama to give me a ride down there on Saturday morning. I got home and just parked it thinking I'll get on the old interweb and look for a throttle body later. Just for jollies on Monday morning I went out and connected the OBD2 and, as though by magic, the CAT monitor read OK!!!!! I drove it right to the smog place and it passed and I now have a legal on the streets of California car.

Joe

 

Yes, I did see that. Congrats. My post was in case you ever have to clear codes again you may wind up going through the same thing. Replacing the upstream sensors might save a few gray hairs and ulcers.

 

The car to compare it to at the time was the Mercedes SL (R129) in 5.0 V8 form. More expensive when you added all the options that Jaguar had as standard and slower than the 4.0 XK8. Only the 6.0 V12 was faster than the XK8 and of course the XKR when it came out, easily beat the German V12.

For the BMW I think you'd have to look at the M3 version to get close to the same performance as the XK8 in 1996 and AFAIK that didn't come with an auto box as an option. Your 325 in auto form would have been a very nice car, but slow in comparison to the V8 Jag and as ever with the German cars, all the options that Jaguar came with as standard, added quite a bit of cost to the base price. Anyway, when it comes to Germany vs England (with the engines made in Wales), I'm naturally going to favour the British entry.

 

Well getting under the dash with the seat out was a whole lot easier than with it in place. Of course this old body is going to need some Bengay tonight. The hardest part of the job was getting the upper slot on the switch module onto the bolt post up at the top of the bracket. I couldn't get far enough under the dash to actually see it so it was a matter of feeling around and trying to find the post. Once that was on it was just a matter of putting the nut on the bottom post and tightening it down. I'll have to go for a ride later and see if the cruise control works. Well, I'll have to put the seat back in first.