I used to own a 1998 sedan, which I sold. I now own a 2003 XK8, which I love! BOTH of these cars have had a complete interruption of electrical power requiring multiple jump starts and battery replacements.

My XK8 has had numerous nuisance warnings along restricted engine performance alerts that disappear after maybe 5 minutes continued driving. The gentleman I sold the 98 sedan says the car was not designed to EVER have a loss of electrical power! If this occurs, your ONLY recourse to have the dealer do an electrical system reset. Otherwise ALL the silly alerts and lights will continue.

Have any of you heard or experienced this?

 

Pure bunk...you can do a hard reset by disconnecting the negative terminal and holding the negative and positive together for 5 minutes or so. This allows all capacitors to discharge and reset all systems.

Electrical sues are the weak point in an XK8, check all ground connections and be sure your battery is good.

I was having weird unrelated issues and ended up replacing the main battery ground strap. Been 6 months and no more issues.

 

+1 for that. But personally I have never done it that way. It just seems counter intuitive to put + and - together. I have just left it overnight. An hour or two wont do it.

If you having lots of electrical gremlins its usually down to a duff battery.

 

There seems to be a growing trend of owners who wish to routinely 'reset' the system by touching the battery cables. This has very limited/ no benefits and also the side effect of wiping out all sorts of presets.

If there are continued warning lights not matched by actual defects, it's a bad or low battery or connections. Address those.

 

The method used by Jandreau will fully, and without harm to other components, discharge the capacitors in the quickest manner. Applying the disconnected negative lead to the positive lead, simply provides a quick and solid path to ground (negative lead is still connected to the body/frame) for the capacitors' electrical charge to bleed off.

See this thread for more discussion: https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...-reset-154078/

 

Take your car to an AutoZone, Advanced Auto or Sears and have your battery load checked if your battery tests good check your battery cables and the ground connections at the battery and the grounding strap from the frame to the transmission to engine bolt. It is located on the right side of the transmission below the starter. Note; do not disconnect or play with that grounding strap with the battery connected to the car remove it first then reattach it once done. If all of that is checked and you still have the problem you should check the fuses and connections at the High Power Protection Module. USE CAUTION when checking it the feed is directly from the battery with NO fuses… It is located in the trunk in the spare tire well close to the battery. An improperly placed tire has been known to crack the fuses.

As for the concern about the hard reset that has to be coming from someone that has little knowledge of the procedure of a hard reset. It is easy to do and the only issue is that you will need to reset your windows, seat program and radio stations.

 

I agree with the above. The other benefit is that the car has to re-learn your driving style. Apparently it takes about 9 cycles to do this? I am not talking about a simple battery disconnection but a full re-set. The car has to relearn fuel trims, MPG and a lot of other things.

I am NOT saying you should do this on a regular basis but I have heard many reports of sudden improved performance etc after doing hard re-sets.