replaced a leaking valve cover gasket on the passenger side and found out that if you touch the 2 cables bolted to the inner fender wall with a ratchet you create a nice spark.

Now my fuel gauge is showing way past full all the time, my temp gauge is showing almost to the red line and my voltage meter is almost pegged as soon as I start the car.

Where do I go to start tracing this problem?

Anybody have a wiring diagram for gaues on an 01 xk8?

 

Disconnect the battery for a couple of minutes. Then reconnect it. Hopefully that will solve your problem.

The gauge cluster is a computer. Disturbing its power probably has crashed it. Disconnecting the battery and reconnecting it after a couple of minutes should reset it.

 

WhiteXKR, I REALLLLYYYY hope it is that simple and thanks again for your help.

 

Do what WhiteXKR suggests and with a little luck it will reset.

Link to 2001 XK8 onelines JagRepair.com - Jaguar Repair Information Resource

 

Hopefully all it needed was a re-boot ? If not you might like to look again at the Voltage ! Off scale could mean your alternator is at fault and over voltage causes lots of problems.

 

Good luck and let us know if the battery reset indeed did the trick for you....

 

left the neg. cable off for a few minutes and re-connected and everything is back to normal, except the side mirrors will not adjust.

Also, make sure your car is unlocked when disconnecting the battery, because my alarm went off when I reconnected the ground.

 

You can try a "hard reset", similar to just removing the cable. Only this time, touch the negative and positive cable ends together (while the battery is disconnected!) and turn the key on. This discharges any electrical current which may me stored the the various chips, etc. Then with key off again, reconnect the battery and see if your mirrors now work. You will need to reset the window stops, etc.