My username says it all- I recently purchased a very clean, straight, and obviously broken 2001 Jaguar XKR. I am no stranger to level 10 wrenching, but a new entrant to the Jag forest. I look forward to the challenge.

The good:
XKR. Clean body. Engine is really good. Clean undercarriage. 100K miles.
Smooth acceleration, front end shows signs it has been recently redone, including suspension.

The bad (so much):
CE lights (no, I have not run an OBDII scanner on it!)
TCS/ABS lights
strange whining noise and refusal to shift out of lower gears when cold
potential exposure to corrosive salt water because it's a Hurricane Katrina car!
Bad window regulator on rear window prohibiting convertible top operation
Bad cats (I'm taking that on the dealer's note, they may indeed not be bad, just bad sensors, etc.)

This is a mess of a car a dealer wanted off of, for the reasons above. But it runs and drives now and looks honestly pretty fantastic. I suspect the transmission is all shades of gone... so I'm going to pursue the lowest cost used/salvage/rebuilt option to replace. I know what I'm getting into, and I look forward to every step. The frame is straight, the body is in great shape and the engine is solid. I figure the rest? We'll address that one step at a time.

My question to the community: I want to get this driveable, so I can address the electronics etc. as I go. Any advice on 2001 XKR transmissions? Am I insane? The exact symptom is "when cold, the car doesn't like to leave 1st and whines with a gear noise. This goes away as the vehicle warms up. This only occurs in gear, and cannot be replicated in park". i.e. it's not the supercharger.

 

I am no expert on the transmission but I know the XKR uses a Mercedes transmission that is very robust. (MercedesW5A580 five-speed)
However, any auto box is going to give trouble if the fluid is bad, and it often can be brought back to life with fresh fluid.
New fluid and filter is relatively cheap and it sounds like you could change it yourself, so it is worth a try.
I bought my XKR last year with MIL on and the previous owner thought it might need new catalytic converters.
Mileage was 116k and there were no codes related to the cat, but it had not run the catalyst test.
I had to fix a few issues on the emissions system, and it had a blocked fuel filter.
After fixing that the misfire went away and it passed smog check just fine with the old cats..
Hope you are successful with your car. Good Luck!
Alan

 

Re. The transmission, I would start with making sure the fluid level is good. It sounds like it's probably low on fluid, but given that this is a flood car, perhaps there was ingress of water into the transmission?

 

Katrina?!? Don’t think I can PM you yet so posted here. If need a replacement tranny, see mine from a 2001 XJR in the forum’s marketplace.
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/market/261898

 

I will! I will let you know after this entire car gets an enema. It's such a pretty beast, hopefully it will respond to some treats and fresh fluids.

 

yeah, too early to tell until you check it with a good scanner. Although the TCS/ABS is famous for having bad solder on the ecu connector (and can be fixed quite cheaply with the right skills) its also famous for throwing TCS/ABS lights because the battery is a bit weak, and if its been sitting at a dealers for a while that could well be it. Plus, check you actually have an AGM battery. My car came with a wet cell and I always got electronic gremlins after a few days of sitting unless I kept it on a trickle charger. Haven't had a problem since I replaced with AGM. O2 sensors will tend to die on these, so hopefully that is the source of your cats problem and not the cats themselves. If you need to do O2 sensors, there's an easier way to get at the upstream sensors through the AC drain ports in the dash. Diagnostics will start to tell the story.

Transmission, concur with above, start with a fluid and filter change, its due one anyway. Get the special dipstick for measuring the trans fluid level (your car has the Merc tranmission meaning it actually has a tranmission dipstick tube even if it doesnt come with the dipstick). When you do that, you should also replace the transmission ecu connector which has seals on it which tend to degrade and leak, causing other trans problems as well as gradual fluid loss. Replacing requires draining the transmission of fluid, so might as well do both at once. Its not too hard a job. Refilling is finickity because those mercedes transmission like having a specific amount of fluid in them. When I drained mine, I actually measured the fluid I took out of it so I could replace with exactly the same amount.

Good news that it sounds like front end suspension has had some work, inspect the foam rubber isolators at the top of the front shock towers as those absolutely will degrade and fail if they are original, or bad aftermarket replacements and the bushings on the bottom, and inspect the swaybar endlinks and the swaybar bushings themselves. Do not buy any Uro suspension parts I've had better luck with Uro hoses but not suspension parts. There's a wealth of info about those suspension mounts on these forums, suffice it to say, buy one of the good polyurethane rebuild kits for those, not foam rubber isolators.

What else? Check rear diff for leaks and unscrew and clean the breather from the top of the rear diff which will often stop or slow any leaks from the output shafts. Its actually quite easy to get at the breather for the rear diff. Getting the fill plug off it, conversely, is a #$%^ but if its never had a rear end service, at those miles, it wants one. There is no drain plug, you open the fill plug and draw the fluid out with an extractor, then re-fill until it reaches the fill plug.

Coolant hoses at the back of the engine love to leak because they use crappy connectors. Various info about that on the forum. Some people replace with new, some people replace with conventional coolant hose fittings.

So yeah, ^ that's everything I've had to fix on mine so far lol. Basically, run diagnostics and get under the car and find all the leaking things.

 

The rear window regulator is something of a biotch to do, but it's doable with patience AND the incredible writeup on jagrepair.com. You'll find that a drug-addicted ex-Ford designer came up with the rear window regulators. There is a repair service on Ebay. It's kinda pricey at $250 per, but you get a bulletproof regulator back, and it'll last longer than the rest of the car.

 

Lots of good info from Throwback.

Since you didn't bother to include any pictures of your new beauty, I'll keep this short...

• Some lessons learned bringing back a neglected 2001 XKR can be found here: https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...le-xkr-219604/
• Learn how to use the Advanced Search function here. Much of what you will need to know is already documented here or on this awesome site: JagRepair.com - Jaguar Repair Information Resource
• The majority of XKs here have the ZF trans, so there's not that much info on our Mercedes transmissions here, but there is lots of info on it on the Mercedes forums.
• I use the $100 BlueDriver OBD-II scan/reset tool and like it because it does what I need and easily works across our other OBD-II vechicles.
• If you are in the part of CO that requires emissions checks and your CO remissions requirements are similar to those in CA/NV, once you clear all your main check engine codes, there's a elaborate / mysterious drive sequence you need to do (documented on this site somewhere) to clear the final generic "codes recently reset" code. This was always a huge hassle for me back in NV.

 

I would add a task to check whether the original chain tensioners have been replaced with the later metal-bodied ones. At 100K they may well have been, but lift the RHS cam cover to check: it's potentially an engine killer if they let go. You'll find lots of information on here about this.

There's not much I can add to what's already been posted above: get the old trans fluid out and replaced. There are some seals that give trouble which you can either do at this stage, or defer until the transmission proves to be sound.

Check also there's no water in the trunk around the security module. It's a low point for water to collect.

Probably no more so than anyone else who runs a 20+ year old Jaguar.
You are going in with an eyes wide open attitude, which IMO is absolutely the best approach to a challenge such as this.

Best of luck!

 

No you're not crazy. As Sir Micheal stated, you have your eyes wide open. That's good and you will be rewarded at the end with a really enjoyable car. Not to mention the satisfaction of saving it and doing most yourself. Spend wisely and it won't hurt too bad. You sound like the right man for the job.

BTW, I concur (for what that's worth, LOL) with all the advice above. Although I haven't had and problems with my URO top shock mounts. Many have had short lived with theirs. TM

 

I will point out that I paid substantially more than you for a substantially lower mileage car, and still had to do all of the above ^ including the timing chain tensioners which I somehow forgot so in retrospect, having owned one of these for a while, I think your way is less crazy than mine. Actually, a 100k mile car that has been driven and maintained is usually better than a 38k mile car that sat a lot. Unless its got rust underneath

Also, so far the jobs on the car that were the biggest pain in the butt were the pernicious octopus hose which I made a handsomely compensated mechanic do, and getting the fill bolt off the diff which took me 2 days and a tool I didn't know existed until I did that job. O2 sensors aren't so bad once you know to ignore the jaguar procedure and go through the dashboard instead.

Oh yes, and grab yourself a copy of JTIS (full technical reference) and the workshop manual and electrical reference manual from the sticky thread at the top of the forum. I put a virtual machine package together for JTIS so its fairly easy to install in Virtualbox on windows or Mac

 

I just had the ABS light issue solved in mine (after renewing the battery) by installing new ABS sensors in the rear.

1999 XK8 Convertible Topaz Metallic (a gorgeous 25-year old blonde)

 

As requested, here are a couple pics. Superficially, pretty nice! Came out this morning to find at least 2 oz. of ATF spotting the driveway, which is likely related to the transmission issue, eh? Ha.

 

Just about to say we need some pictures!
ive got 2 cars I'm working on at the moment. 99 convertible and 2003 coupe. Had both the front subframes off to weld up the chassis behind. Replaced v mounts etc while I'm at. Cost a few quid, still at it . Both cars now solid and ready for the mot in uk. Are you mad? No, I love it lol. Can't wait to get them out when the weather's better and enjoy my efforts.
The best of British to you, you already know your going to enjoy it.

 

You can have a trouble free car sooner than you think. Just get caught up on the missed maintenance. And there's sure to be a lot of that to discover.


These car are especially sensitive to adhering to the prescribed maintenance schedule. But said maintenance is expensive , and the second , third, or forth owners might not be diligent as the first owner was.

I've had my 2002 XKR for over seven years. I was fortunate to find a car with all the known x-100 issues fixed already by the seller, very nice to have a complete set of maintenance records. Until I needed a radiator this year, I'd only spent about $100 on the non consumable items, like for a CPU fan, etc. And thats with a car now showing 194,000 miles on the odometer.

You can have the same experience, or better. So stay positive.

Z