I have recently brought a 97 xk8 for myself as a weekend car. Unfortunately it was quite badly mistreated by the previous owner and im determined to fix it.

I have two questions and could really do with some help.

1. On the throttle body there is a vacuum hose that should be connected to a black cylinder on the top of it. Mine is missing so where does it come from so i can replace it.

2. My alternator is charging at 14.20 volts when I checked the voltage at the battery terminals.
The voltage gauge on the dash is a mm below 13 volts and the little red light is on on the gauge showing a charging fault. The dash also displays "battery not charging" even though it is.
Could someone tell me how to fault find this problem even though my alternator is charging.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Welcome to the forum Scrappy.

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Afraid I can't help with your specific questions, but I'm sure someone who can will be along shortly.

Strange that there is 14.2V at the battery terminals, but showing <13V at the gauge, must be some bad wiring between the gauge and the battery, that's a lot of voltage drop for something with no load.

 

Cheers Cambo351. Im all introduced now . Fingers crossed i can get it sorted.

 

Assuming you refer to Item 14 (Actuator Vacuum Pipe)?


(click on the image to enlarge it)

I haven't had an XK8 with this early pattern TB but the Parts Catalogue suggests the Vacuum Pipe is only fitted on vehicles with adaptive speed control.

I'm sure someone with direct knowledge of the early TB will be along to tell me if this is gibberish!

Graham

 

My xk8 had the same issue. It was charging but the dash indicated otherwise. It was the pigtail connector to the alternator.

 

The vacuum hose on top of the throttle body is cruise control. The hose runs to some control valves located inside the right hand side wing ( looking from the drivers seat ) You need to take off the wheel arch cover to see them. There is another hose that runs from those valves to the back of the engine just under the throttle body, which is the source of the vacuum.

If your car has the cruise control option, you need these hoses and control valves to have it work. If the vac is missing, you will get an engine fail safe mode when you switch the cruise on. If you do not have cruise, just ignore it. The throttle body may have been changed at some point and the cruise part of it redundant.

Let us know what you find.

 

Hi yes the actuator pipe. I wondered why i got engine failsafe mode when the cruise was on. Cheers guys I can now trace those pipes and sort that out.

I disconnected my pigtail connector yesterday and all the contacts are clean and seated correctly. I will do a resistance test and go from there.