A colleague of mine who has the exact same car as me (4.0 XKR) got a warning yesterday that said something like "Traction not available". His car lost power, he had to pull over, switch off and on again and then all was well.

Any ideas what might cause this? Thanks.

 

Sounds like a major electrical power glitch.

Start with the basics: are the battery connections clean and tight? Make sure there is no water on the trunk floor below the carpet.

Is the battery ground cable to the chassis clean and tight? Is the battery positive cable to the 'high power protection module' in the trunk clean and tight.

Also have the battery tested wherever they sell batteries.

 

sounds like restricted performance also, unless the car shut off alltogether. Is that what happened? I'd try to pull the computer codes also to see if any are stored from the event.

First thing that came to mind was throttle body and/or its connector. Losing traction control isn't related to engine losing power also, the message may have just been supplementary to the loss of power.

Get some more details and post back up. There is also a ton of threads related to similar symptoms if you want to have your friend read the many historical documents we have in the xk8-xkr subforums, and remember, the 1998-2003 XJ also shared the very same motor, so there may be some diagnostics over in that subforum that also applies. best of luck!