After a few weeks with my new old car in the garage in still cold Germany, I thought it to be good using the time before the German paperwork is clear and temperatures climb up, to get a bit used to the car.

Original service records from the US proved the cat to be exceptionally good maintained until it arrived here. Only one single owner so far.

Because I'm always a bit skeptic when cars have such a large amount of electronics, I thought it to be good not to be totally blind.
Yesterday the Chinese Mongoose Clone arrived together with a DVD for 45$ ... shipping from Shenzhen inclusive! Installation was pretty straight forward and it seems I have a working SDD 154

Now I have to check how to read fault codes (if any exist).

Great stuff!

BR
Ralf

 

The first inspection from below offered an impressive view to an extremely clean an dry car. The only signs of wear were the welding seams of the exhaust.
Honestly: we're talking about a car 15 years of age and 134.000 mls.... I've seen cars in a worse shape than this after only three years of use.

 

It takes a brave man to immediately dismantle his new Mongoose for a peek inside.

Graham

 

Double and triple check the hoses to the oil cooler. They age a day every day, like everything else, and have an (generally assumed) life of only 10 years. The rubber/Aluminum interface fails over time and start with a gentle seepage. If it fails altogether (full separation), the oil pump dumps the oil on the road literally in seconds, leaving you stranded, possibly with a seized engine if you did not manage to shut it off early enough. Do yourself a favor and do a hard nose inspection of these (4) sections. The hoses start in a recessed area below the crank pulley, go around the radiator and then reach the cooler. Easy job, but fairly expensive parts. To me, this is the one flaw left in these X103's. And, to put this to rest, yes, we are all jealous of your access to the Autobahn with such a cool car!

Best of luck, keep us posted.

 

Somehow currently everything seems to take longer than expected ... however: sometimes a good preparation will save time afterwards.

Thanks fmertz for the tip ... will have a careful check next time the car is on the lift. Has to get up anyway for fixing the exhausts.
In between I discovered an old Dell X2 Laptop down in my Lab... a perfect victim for a clean install. 6GB of RAM, 64GB SSD HD, TouchScreen... this will do!
I managed a fresh install of Win 7 x64 ultimate and performed the necessary update marathon following the SDD install. Oh yes... I installed JTIS documentation as well. Guess this Laptop might be a good tool for the next days/weeks/months/....

I figured out that SDD 154 can even be updated including the second update patch... the third kicked me out. Good having Deep Freeze installed for those tests.



Now I have to check how to use SDD without messing things up.... would like to save all available vehicle info and config at a first step, but using the software needs some time for getting familiar with it.

BR
Ralf

 

Hallo Ralf,

Congratulations on your new Jaguar! We'll look forward to seeing more pictures.

At the link below you can download a Technical Training manual for SDD which may be helpful as you begin your adventure.

Jaguar SDD Manual

Also, whenever using SDD, it is prudent to connect a good battery charger to the vehicle's battery. Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and others recommend the Midtronics PSC-550, a very stable 50 Amp power supply with very low ripple. This is especially critical if you ever use SDD to update the firmware in any control modules, though that has proven to be risky with the Chinese clone Mongoose cables, so do your homework before attempting any reprogramming.

Cheers,

Don

 

Don, you made my day! You guys are a great bunch of people! Thanks a lot for that. I'm already half way through. :-)

 

Today was sunny enough to start some of the real work.... :-)

I still search for the reason, why the audio system does not turn off completely... if I understand the schematics right., the Nav System takes control over the Amplifier ... not the head unit. However it might not bad having a visual inspection.
So here we start...



After a few minutes the radio was ready to be taken out. Funny, that he full harness for the Jaguar Mobile Phone is built in ... even the Armrest is empty.




And here is what I was looking for.


For now I only had a visual inspection and measured the typical suspects. But without detailed schematics I don''t think it makes sense wasting too much time here.
Only thing I was able to spot were some signs of minimal water ingress. So I performed a basic cleaning of the PCB. As I expected, this did not had any effect.





And only as proof that even some German guys use well known U.S. products... here: fixing the broken edges in the upper right and left corner where the plastic became brittle




And while we have the unit in front of us, I can replace the defect bulb of the air-con display.... luckily I purchased similar lamps some time ago for my old BMW. They are a bit smaller, but with the blue rubber sock it should work fine.





Of course I have to do the job twice! because now one lamp is a bit brighter than the other. A smart guy would have replaced both at the same time....

Current losses? The cigarette lighter fell into pieces....where can I get a new one? Not that I'm a smoker, but having the opportunity charging my phone would be fine :-) California seems a great place for preventing metal corrosion.... but maybe the excessive sun had notable effects on many plastic parts and the seat belts...

 

Yesterday I finally found the time having my audience at the German technical body, doing a full inspection of my XKR and providing a report toward the authorities that the car meets all requirements for getting registered to be driven on street! May sound boring, but given the quite strict regulations we have here nowadays this was causing some concern on my side.

Luckily the car passed without a single fault! Even the catalytic converters work as new.

In the meantime I purchased a second mAngoose cable from Shenzehn. They do list two different versions of the same Cable, the second one 5$ more expensive. The web page only tells "better quality" ....

However: there are some differences.... what I noticed is the L9637 ISO 9141 Line Driver IC in the upper right corner.... it's not installed in the cheaper version.
Will check if this interface behaves differently than the first one...

 

Just again a big thank you for this Forum!

Today was a sunny day in Germany and I took the chance fixing both headrests... working great again!

 

Love the photos, and enjoy reading about your journey.

John

 

Thanks John! .... appreciate it.

Someone told me "The stupid learn by their mistakes - The smart ones learn from the mistakes the stupid already did".

So I hope I can contribute to that by reporting about all those things which did NOT work

As I'm quite new here, I'm somewhere in the middle of the learning curve I guess.

BR
Ralf

 

Hi xkr_dougie,

Did you repair the headrests by the method of trimming 12mm of sheathing off of the motor drive cables?

Cheers,

Don

 

That‘s what I did, Don.
I was able to purchase two 8mm metal connectors, which are commonly used for connecting gas tubes here in Germany (6€ each).
As those have a lenght of 10mm themselves, I hat to cut off ~23mm of sheating. Really works like a charm.

And in the meantime I hope the metal worker I gave the middle silencer to has done the welding I asked him to do


Oh yes: one thing: the right taillight has a crack. Nothing serious I would say, but if someone has a hint where to get one in a good condition and at reasonable price...

 

Rear lights. I think I just saw some on sale from a 1997 on this site's marketplace. From memory about $70.

Think you may be new. Go to very top of previous page, see black bar, look for Marketplace with "new" in explosion banner next to it.

John

 

Found it! Great!!! Thanks a lot, John!

And I just picked up the welded silencers! Good work! Of course I had to mount those immediately and test the result: wow!
Now it's really quiet underneath. No worries anymore that it could also be a cracked exhaust manifold or the downpipe. Great stuff!




And for those who are also suffering from a noisy cooling fan inside their audio amplifier in the trunk: I now have 4 spare units (why purchasing only one, when you can have 5 at the same price? )


Audio Amplifier Cooling Fan

 

XKR Dougie

Lovely to hear you are cracking on with restoring the USA import. Nice pics too.

Seems like this British car, from America, seems to have found a German electrical engineer with a sense of humour. Nice combination...

Are you still stumped as to the faulty music amp, radio, nav systems’ connection that’s causing the battery drain?

 

Thanks for the credits, David! Honestly, I'm under the impression this car had the best time in California and now deserves a bit of devotion for refurbishing those bits, an average man can't afford to be done at a Jaguar Garage.
And I have great fun doing it!

Regarding the amp: yes, the problem is still present. For the moment I simply pull the 10A fuse in the Fusebox right of the dashboard which serves the Radio Head Unit. This also turns off the amp.
In between I was able to encircle the issue a bit: The amp has three connectors: A big block connector with the power supply cables, a big block connector with the loudspeaker cables and a black pigtail multi plug

I was able to confirm by measuring each cable of the big blocks, that the signal which turns on the amp does not come via the power connector. Now need to confirm that it comes via the black pigtail cable.

In principle I already have a workaround: I would only need a relay which opens the 10A circuit feeding the radio head unit after the ignition has been turned off. But I would only use that option in case I can't find the real cause of the problem. I'm not there yet :-)

 

fmertz, this sounds like good preventive maintenance. Just got my 2004 this spring and also the oil cooler looks like it might need replacement. Any of this stuff available as after market??

 

Well, the Jaguar parts are expensive, but not that expensive ($400 for all 4). Any after-market setup involves a local hydraulics shop making new lines for you, based on the existing aluminum pipes. Unfortunately, the existing rubber/Al fittings are one-use only crimping, so all of that has to be cut off, and new fittings soldered/welded/brazed on. It involves custom labor by a skilled person, at the tune of 2 of those new fittings on each of 4 separate lines. When all is said and done, it boils down to more expenses than the Jaguar parts. The Jaguar part lasted 15 years, so getting another 15 years out of new lines is something I can live with.

Other option is to go full custom, and get these nice race car braided type lines with a custom cooler. I has been done and documented before, but it does not seem any easier or cheaper.

Best of luck, keep us posted.