Here's my happy story.

I just purchased (in February of 2014) a 1997 XK8 Coupe. The car was gorgeous, pristine, and only had 41,000 miles on it. I bought it from my local Jaguar dealership which had actually sold it to the former (and only) owner in 1998 when it was brand new. The former owner sold it back to the dealership in January of 2014 - not as a trade-in, but simply sold as he could no longer get into the car (he was a man of advanced age).

When I state "gorgeous, pristine" I mean it. The paint was flawless, as was the interior. The dealership had invested over $4,000 in getting it into showroom condition both mechanically and aesthetically (if you had a time machine and could travel back 17 years in time).
When the salesman and I had agreed upon a price (a little less than they were asking, but not an insulting offer), I asked if the secondary tensioners had been replace. He checked with the service department and the answer was "no".

I was well aware of the problem with the tensioners with the car and simply couldn't bring myself to live with the fear of the inevitable.

I made an appointment with the service department to have them replaced with the third generation (aluminum, I believe) tensioners. The service representative stated that that was most likely unnecessary as the mileage was so low to which I replied that that is certainly the case, but the brittle plastic tensioners were manufactured when Bill Clinton was the President of the United States.

So - after a voluntary repair bill of a little over $1,800 dollars, I now have the peace of mind that my engine won't go nuclear (okay, there is the potential Nikasil issue, but I'll leave that for another day).

I believe that this action was a great investment on my part.

On a side-note, the car had (what I thought were) brand new Pirelli tyres on it. They were pristine and I assumed that the dealership had purchased them brand new.

I ended up having a flat tyre with no visible puncture.

I took it to a tyre shop and asked them to patch it.

They called me back and stated that they could not do so.

The reason?

The tyres (all four, actually) while lovely to look at were manufactured in 2001. They were not new. They were 13 years old. I had them all replaced for an additional cost of over $900 dollars.

Ah, the joys of Jaguar ownership!

 

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks for the interesting tale.

Don't forget your intro in the new member section.

 

At least in the US, tires have a manufactured date coded on the sidewall. It's part of the DOT number. You can Google it to decipher the code.

I bought the blue cat with tires that had about 3/4 of their tread left; however, as you discovered that did not mean they were good tires. Turns out they were almost 9 years old.

I now always check this when buying new tires. Sometimes the reason tires are on sale is because they have been sitting in stock too long. One set offered to me was 3 years old! Rubber has a sell-by date just like anything else.