Would you folks be kind enough to give me a little reassurance? I can be a little paranoid but it's for a good cause.

I pick up my 2001 XK8 tomorrow (80k miles) & plan to give it some love; would you confirm that these are ok?

Oil change- either Mobil New Life 0w40 or a 5w30 full-synth (& new filter, obviously)

Gearbox- LT71141 ATF (again, & new filter)

PAS fluid- replace with ATF

Brake fluid- replace with DOT 4 or DOT 5.1

Spark Plugs- fit dry, torque to 25Nm?

Clean the throttle body whilst the inlet is off for plug change, change the air filter at the same time.

Any other hints & tips you can provide would be appreciated.

RH

 

Hi,
A car of this age, a must is to check the condition of the battery. If you are in any doubt, change it.
These cars do not like having less than required amount of juice to keep the multitude of electronic systems in tip top shape.
Check and reset any codes the car may have stored, just so you have a base line to start from should things go wrong.

 

Go round and take each wheel off.
If they haven't been off for a bit you may have to use a hide mallet to get them off.
Clean up the corrosion, put some Copperslip or similar on the studs and torque the nuts up to what it says in your handbook (varies from year to year).
The supplied wheel-brace is not designed for the Kwik-Fit impact wrench torque and finding you can't get the wheel off at night in a blizzard is one of the least endearing aspects of car ownership.

 

Battery's brand new, thanks.

I'll pull the wheels off like you suggest- I'm all in favour of an easy life. Having said that, the previous owner is a tyre fitter, so I'd expect it to be perfect already in that respect.

RH

 

That pretty much guarantees a 3/4" drive impact wrench !!

 

With a new (to me) car, I always do all items on the Service Schedule to baseline maintenance.



Ignore 'Pollen Filter' as we don't have them in the UK.

Graham

 

And when you have finished all of that, come and join us at the new unofficial OCD detailers club, because when you start cleaning you will find more and more, and before long you will be just like the rest of us.
Happy days,

 

Many 2001's still have the older plastic bodied secondary chain tensioners. These should be checked and upgraded to the later metal bodied ones.

 

I'm not sure that DOT 5 brake fluid is compatible with these XK8s. Be sure you verify that before you decide to use it....

 

Jon89, he wrote DOT 5.1, which is OK.