Finally--something we can ALL agree on!!

Doug

 

Just to clarify my vote on pressure valve relief with no failure. Valve was installed several months after my second failure, used the repair kit which leaked at the splice point, followed by a full hose replacement and the pressure relief valve. My previous car (99 XK8) also had a failure.
I live in a hot climate w/o a garage, lower and raise the top frequently.
I won't let the hose bursting problem spoil the fun of open top crusing.

 

I opened the top on a hot day and it burst at the hood latch. Since then I have been using the top manually. Bit of a PITA but it works. Maybe one day I will get around to fixing it

 

I have had the pressure relief valve since 2010ish (maybe 2009 even) and last fall I noticed some leaking by the pump area. I haven't had a chance to dig into it to see what it is, but I would guess its a hose back there. At least it wasn't a green shower

 

hi sam . i do not have a psi valve installed yeat . as i am still working on my 97 i don"t drive it much . but i plan to change the orig hoses and install a psi unit when i do the repair. my luck i would get the green shower with my wife in the car.

 

Walt the creator of the LSI pressure relief valve installed the first one and I installed the second one around the same time. I had replaced the latch and latch hoses with the factory ones (this was before replacement high pressure aftermarket hoses were made) about a year or so before installing the LSI valve so my hoses were exposed to the high pressure for that period of time. Today I still have the same hoses to the latch and the hoses to the rams have never been replaced. I did notice that my rams are leaking a little at the seals but I can live with that for now because they still work. I am sure the hoses or the rams will give out but I will deal with it then.

This poll was created by Sam a long time ago and I am sure the stats are a little different than what it shows because most people today did not know it even existed.

 

I "voted" for the valve as that's what I have installed now for the last 6 month but I had a resistor in their before for about 2 years. No leaks. Should I "vote" for both ?
Steve

 

Designing a question set for a survey can be a very, very hard thing to do. It's easy to end up building in data distortions.

As Worrasf has pointed out, there are cases that were not anticipated, not handled correctly in this old (2011) survey. But in fairness to Sam it was a first attempt, put together pretty quickly.


To really do the comparisons that were intended you would need to ask more (and more precise) questions, such as ...

- Questions about what went on before current owner got the car.

then, questions like ...
- "Whether or not you later installed a pressure modifier, did you run your car for a period of time with no such device installed?
- If so, did you experience a hose failure?
- Details: time, mileage, climate ...

then, question sets like ...
- "Whether or not you had run the car earlier with no device installed, did you run it for a time with a resistor (or external pressure valve, or modified internal pressure valve) installed? (Separate question sets, as above, for each device.)

Then, if you've really designed a good question set, and if survey responses provide a big enough sample size, you can start to have confidence in what the numbers say. Otherwise they have to be taken with more than a few grains of salt.


My own experience (just one data point, or actually two I guess) is as follows ...
- 2001 XK8. Ran 2007-2014, the last 4 years or so with resistor installed. Original hoses, no failures.
- 2003 XK8. Ran 2014-present. Resistor already installed when I bought it. Also modified internal valve for lower peak pressure in 2014. Manual latch operation is used during hottest months. Original hoses, no failures.

 

Hose condition prior to installation is a key element. I believe HOT climate is a big factor with the sun making the inner cavity of the windshield an oven.

My XKR has always been up north. I installed the Valve two seasons ago. The hoses and latch looked excellent. No problems since.

If you are going to install a limit valve, the only PITA is if you have an XKR with Premium Sound, the pump winds up on top of the DVD/Changer chassis, inside the fender cavity. It's a squeeze, but you can get it out far enough to flip it and install the valve.

 

You may be right about hot climes. My car, which did suffer the green shower about two years ago, came from down South. I forget now which state, but remember thinking there was less chance of salt corrosion in its past.

 

Agree. I think we can take it as a given that hot climate, heat in general, is a big factor.

One supporting fact is right under (or rather over) our noses. The latch hoses fail much more often at the latch end -- where it can get much hotter -- rather than at the pump end. This is so even though both ends see the same pressure pulses.

Also, reported failures do seem to occur mostly in areas of hot climate. (But this could be deceiving too; maybe that's just where the convertibles tend to live.)

 

I cannot fairly vote on this issue. I replaced all hoses, had both rams as well as header latch overhauled with updated seals when I first purchased. Shot gun approach. I have not had a line burst while the vehicle was in my possession. The rams were leaking. Reduce voltage, no way. I increase the RPM to 1500 when operating my top. love the additional voltage and SPEED which the top operates. Sorry guys, Rich.

 

Go ahead, Rich, rub it in.

 

We've owned my wife's 2006 XK8 since February 2012. It started life in Beverly Hills, California then moved to Hilton Head, South Carolina after a couple of years. It wound up in Jacksonville, Florida which is where we found it in late January 2012. I have all service records and there are no reports of ragtop issues....

My wife parks her car in the shade as much as possible, especially during our hot and humid summer months. No way to know if this action has extended the life of her hydraulic hoses but it certainly can't hurt. The car is now more than 11 years old so I am keeping my fingers crossed. A local Jaguar dealership service manager told me several years ago that there are only two categories of this generation of XK8/XKR convertibles: those that have had the green shower, and those that will have the green shower....

 

On this topic, Clarke's fourth law applies:

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert."

I think that service manager has made one of those predictions that can never be proven wrong. If we show him a 90s-vintage original hose that has not failed (and there surely are some) he can say "just wait".