What would you do in this situation?
 

Description:

I am at a loss to make a decision. I am between a rock, and a hard spot with my beautiful black 2000 XKR

Two weeks ago, I replaced the front-end coils/ shocks/ upper strut mounts/ & alignment, and the front oil cooler. Everything was working great, and I was loving driving the car-- which was handling great. The car has ALWAYS been garaged, and lives in Phoenix AZ

Condition of the car is very good... I had just gotten it all fixed-up, and then... BAM! The engine starts knocking... after a $500 to inspect and diagnose to eliminate the other possibilities (not the timing chain tensioners), by process of elimination, it's probably the crankshaft bearings... it cost me $450 to arrive at that diagnosis.

My Jaguar shop's retail rate ($125/hr) , while I don't think it would be worthwhile for me to spend the $$ to pull the engine, and either rebuild the lower-end bearings, or even to buy a replacement block, I'm looking for some other ideas I haven't yet thought of...

Anybody else ever find themselves in this situation?

lt will be way cheaper for you to find a good used motor and (have your man) drop it in than rebuilding that one.

l would also shop around for a new shop, im struggling with how that took what 3-4hrs tom diagnose.

sorry to hear of the dilemma
Any serious money spent on this car must be based on the heart...there is no conceivable way that it is economically worth the thousands is will cost to make this repair.
If you loved getting your hands in the proce3ss or the feeling of success when everything is running well that would be a different scenario...
wj

Used motor is probably the cheapest fix but you will end up with more in the car than it's worth (unless you got it for free).

Buy another one. Less work and probably more expensive than a good used motor, but it just feels wrong to scrap one.

LS swap is another path, probably more than a drop in used motor but potential for more power. Again under water, labor of love.

Rebuild the motor, punch it out to 4.7L and add a twin screw blower. Most expensive path, but endless options for stupid power. What I would probably choose, but clearly I have a problem.

A few questions:

How long have you owned the car ?

how many miles were on the car when you bought it ?

How many now ?

what oil and oil filter do you use ? What has been your oil change schedule ?


Z

One thing you could do for $0 is to take a sound recording of the motor running and upload here, or pop a video on YouTube if that works better for you. There are some sharp ears on the forum whose owners may come to a different conclusion. I, too, wonder why it would take 3-4 hours to diagnose a damaged bottom end.

If it does turn out to be the case, you have three options:

1) Find a replacement good XKR motor
2) Go the LS route
3) Part it out

1 and 2 won't make commercial sense, so they would be choices dependent on how much the car means to you.

My choice would be 1, but our criteria may well be different.

With antique and classic cars I have often found myself facing unexpected and expensive repairs after already making extensive repairs. According to Murphy's law, it's always the most deeply buried part I just installed that fails. Then knowing how many weekends I spent, its hard to get motivated to do it all over again. I usually shove the car to the back of the shop and then play with another car for a year. Eventually I go ahead and bite the bullet. The downside of "procrastinating" is that by the time I get around to doing it, I've forgotten how I did it previously. But value-wise, I'm always under water long before something goes wrong, so throwing good money after bad is just part of the hobby.

Pulling the supercharger to see if may the klacking was coming from it or the engine
Pulling the valve cover gaskets
Pulling the oil pan... they even left the metal filings in the pan when they put it back on.

How long have you owned the car ?
Looks lihe I bought it in 2010

how many miles were on the car when you bought it ?
97,000

How many now ?
104,000

what oil and oil filter do you use ? What has been your oil change schedule ?
Don't know... it just got changed a month or so ago... along with the front oil cooler. I had bought some Mobil 1, but wrong viscosity for the car... so my mechanic put in the right stuff.

If I had a shop... I would find a used motor and drop it in. But with paying full retail for the work... there's a lot of things that need to be removed/dropped before the motor comes out. It would be easy to be underwater with that plan....

many decades on the service side of the transportation industry have turned me into a bit of a detective. Maybe I’m just too suspicious, but I find it interesting that the issue just happened after the oil cooler change & a double oil change. Is it possible the car was run without oil, or not enough oil after oil change #1 or #2 ?

Z

I would say find another car with a good interior and trim etc but with accident damage or rusted out then take the motor from it, keep the other expensive parts that will fail next and sell what's left. If you find the right donor then overall it will cost you less than just going and buying a motor plus you'll hopefully have the next expensive spare part that you need. You might even make a profit.
Even your old damaged motor will have valuable parts that are still good and if you're not up to doing the motor install yourself you will learn a lot taking the donor car apart.

Kind of, but smaller 4cyl older cars. Same low residual value and high retail repair bill.

On one, after a lot of tearing apart diagnostic (same no oil situation), we found a semi-local used engine on eBay and just swapped it. Total cost was a few hundred $.

On another, failed timing belt led to bent valves. Again, manual tearing apart for diagnostics. Ended up needing 12 new valves ($60!) plus of course belt, water pump, etc.

Only way it made sense is through hours in the garage, hard-nosed evaluation and keeping aware of what skills we did have and which we did not. Both cars ended up delivering a lot of (mostly happy) miles after these major surgeries.

Remanufactured engine
 

I believe there are companies in Southern California that rebuild Jaguar engines. From Phoenix it would be easy to just drive over and pick up a "long block". Who you could get to do the work is another issue. The problem with a used engine I think is that you are just trading one set of problems for a new set. Again I would estimate the cost and see if it is going to be worth it. By the way be prepared for your estimate to be on the "optimistic" side.

If you put on 7K miles in 10 years, I say - and I'm not trying to be harsh here - you don't drive it enough to justify this expense on such an old car with relatively high miles.

I tend to agree with the expense vs usage statement.

However, in my view, 104,000 miles should not be considered high mileage on a modern engine that normally can easily last 500,000 miles before bearing wear becomes an issue.


As we all know, the aging factor is not that kind to these cars, and seems to be more worrisome than actual mileage.

Z

Agreed, mostly. I don't want to get off on a huge tangent here, and I feel for the OP, especially after just dumping a bunch of money into the front end.

But the XKR is probably under a bit more stress than a non-forced induction engine. And what concerns me the most, is that this car being driven less than 1000 miles in a year (on average) is sitting a lot and probably going on very short in-town trips, which are tough on an engine.

Really, something electric might be a better fit for the OP. No worries about the gas going bad.

And the car isn't worthless. Someone would certainly buy it for parts, or maybe they have a crashed XK with a good engine... enough for a down payment on a Tesla or Bolt or one of those Volvo things. Or, dare I suggest, Taycan? LOL

The real trouble here is that the early XK’s are so darn good looking it’s nearly impossible to make a rational decision about them when trouble rears it’s ugly head.

that’s one reason why I’m putting 15,000 - 20,000 miles on my ‘02 every year (so far). I’m trying to get the most enjoyment possible out of it before lightning strikes.

Z