Hi everyone. I posted about a week ago in the new member forum. I had a 1998 XK8 I bought as a non running project about 13 years ago. After getting it running, and enjoying it for the summer I sold it and bought a 2002 XKR the followimg year. I also had an X-type back in that era.
For the past couple of years my wife and I have been discussing picking up another XK8 convertible, so we have been occasionally looking. Up until now everything we looked at was more money than we wanted to spend, or a complete basket case.
A couple of weeks ago one popped up for sale about a 3 hour drive away. Affordable, decent looking condition, but not running. Unfortunately we couldn't coordinate our work schedules to make a day to go see it. After a week I was getting frustrated and noticed ANOTHER for sale about 3 hours drive in the opposite direction. Looked identical similar price, also not running.

We went to look at XK8-2 and it was obviously well cared for up until the point where the "headgaskets blew." Body and interior are in good shape for a 1997, just dusty, and a few bumps in the body that appear to have taken place while it has been in storage the past few years. Under the hood a slightly different story.lots of mismatched fasteners that I didn't take as a sign of good maintenance/ repairs. We hauled it home on my car trailer.
When we got home I started giving it a once over. I pulled it apart enough to remove the spark plugs and see if coolant was in the cylinders. The spark plug wells were filled with oil on the left side, the same issue as my old blue 1998. I cleaned them up, cranked it over a few times with no plugs in it. Then reassembled everything. After a couple stumbles it fired up, and we drove it off the trailer. We took it for a spin up and down the driveway and most everything seems OK. A bit of clean up, and an engine misfire. It idled for about 15 minutes and wasn't showing signs of overheating at all. The biggest issue is that whoever started working on it seems to have thrown away exactly half of the bolts they touched. One holding the air intake tube, two from the mass air sensor, 3 from each coil cover, one from each coil etc.

The following day I heard back from XK8-1. He had a day off coming up, and it was a day I could take too. I asked my wife if she wanted to get another one. She said if we could get it running in a couple of hours like this one she trusted me. I went to look at it, and in person it was rougher than it looked in the pictures. Pretty big dents in the rear 1/4 panel, worn interior, missing pieces. He said he was driving it last year, and stored it for the Winter, but couldn't get it to start this year.

I was going to walk away, it looked like it needed a lot, and I already had a pretty decent one at home. But I had driven 3 hours , so I spent some time pointing out the issues, and what I would do to go about fixing them to make it more appealing to the next buyer. He said, "You're the first person to look at it that seems to know these things. I think you could save it. With everyone else I think it would end up in a scrapyard in a year." Then he dropped the price by a third.
I called my wife, again she said she trusted my judgement. I told him, it needed the list of things I pointed out, but I still didn’t know if the engine ran, and therefor if it had transmission issues and suspension or brake problems...I said if we gave it another shot to see if the engine would start I would give him his lower price if the engine at least seemed OK.

The battery in it was weak, we tried jumpstarting from his truck, and it stumbled a bit. We tried his portable battery pack, no luck. Finally I removed the battery from my truck, put it in, and jumped from his truck. It fired right up, and ROARED. He said "yeah, the previous owner put a performance exhaust on." The previous owner apparently did a LOT of questionable work. The guy I bought it from didn't seem to be into working on cars much, so I beleive him when he said he didn't do much of the modifications.

So I towed this one home as well. Both are Carnival Red, 1997, and a 2000. Trim colors are different. The 1997 seems pretty low content, but is in good shape. The 2000 has more options, ( heated seats, headlamp washers) but is rougher condition, and missing a lot of pieces.

 

Good luck with your cats. Sounds like you have the expertise to get them going again. Worst case you make one good one out of the two and have plenty of spare parts.

 

That would probably make the most sense financially, but I hope to avoid that. Both of the cars are very solid, and rust free. I hope the engine issues on the 1997 are very minor. If not I don't think using the engine from the 2000 would be an easy swap.

Aside from that the 1997 mostly needs little things, like missing bolts. I might borrow those from the 2000, and replace them with non original bolts. But I don't think its enough to scrap the car.

i plan to get the 1997 in the garage, and let it sit while I concentrate on the 2000. I will probably resell it once I have most of the issues resolved. Hopefully I can get enough out of it to pay for the 1997 and its needs.

Also the 2000 has a very low VIN number, and the paint and trim codes seem odd based on the trim charts I have seen online. Either the online trim charts have errors, or this was a very early car and the codes were changed after it was built.