1993 Jaguar Sovereign 4.0- Farewell 22/2

Well I had a bit of a break due to getting a cold and also to regain some motivation..

But today I decided that the best cure for a hangover would be to get out and have a go at sorting the front end so I can actually use the car

So I'd left off with the headlight washer line being impossible to connect up while trying to juggle the bumper also. My plan to get around this was to get a length of suitable hosing and extend the line to give me some slack.

As it so happens, the garden hose had recently sprung a leak and was being replaced so a length of suitable hosing had made itself available

It turned out to be very suitable as the outer diameter is slightly less than the standard Jag hose which helps when you're trying to get it into this little gap in the bumper..



Again, its such a poor design.. but anyway. The hose was also quite handy in that it responds very well to heat from the hairdryer which helped a lot as the hose has shrunk fit to the 't' fitting as there was no way in hell I was getting a hose clip in there!

So here we are again, bumper ready to go on



Annoyingly at this point I realised that the end corners of the bumper were misaligned, so I had to rejig those. After that it was a 'simple' case of hooking up the wires and mounting the bumper (which is a very fiddly job to do on your own..)

Then it was a case of trimming the hose to a suitable length before hooking it up and giving it a test



Hard to see in the pic but they do the job. I'm still not convinced that the washers themselves actually serve any real practical use but they're working as Jaguar designed

While I was at the front end of the car I checked and topped up all of the engine and other related fluids too, good to see that apart from fuel and screenwash, the Jag doesn't drink too much

So thats a couple of jobs finished at last, better late than never..

Cheers!


Well its not advertised everywhere yet but the Jag is officially for sale, though I still need to find a replacement...

sale ad plug.. retrorides.proboards.com/thread/174479/1993-jaguar-sovereign-2000ono-coventry

And in any case, there are still the odd little issues which I still want to sort on the car

So tomorrow its going into a garage to get the new starter motor fitted which I've had sitting in the car for a while now...

This weekend I'd elected to tackle the two door related jobs which I had planned to do over christmas but was too scared to get into taking door cards apart with the threat of driving home looming. As it turns out I needn't have worried as the Jag is quite simply put together..

So the first job I tackled yesterday was to investigate the one electric window that won't budge. I can hear a clicking in the door when the switch is operated from either the passenger rear door or from the drivers master switch, so I'm fairly confident the issue is within the door

First job was to get the door card off, so first take one screw out to get the interior handle surround out of the way



Then the wood insert can be slid forwards and pulled away from the door



This then reveals a couple of screws which need to be taken out to allow the top half of the door card to be removed

I also found this on the upper door card



Assembled on the 14th June 1993? I like finding little time capsules like this in a car, even on a relatively new one such as the Jag

So this is with the upper door card removed



Its also where my later spec car deviates from the Haynes manual in terms of method of disassembly. The earlier cars had two tabs on the top edge of the lower door card which had holes for screws to go into the door. On this later car, the lower door card appears to just be held on by push in trim clips

A bit of careful prising and unplugging of wires later and the card was removed



I then got a bit excited as I thought I had stumbled upon an easy fix



Having the electric window motor can't have been helping things, but unfortunately it wasn't the root cause of the issue as the window was still inoperable with the wires connected. Even with tapping the motor while operating the switch I could only get a slight groan out of it.. So its going to have to come out.

I've bought a known good second hand one so I'll probably swap it straight in rather than trying to rebuild the old motor. Whether I get round to actually doing this before I sell the car or whether the new motor goes with the new owner remains to be seen


So that would be where my phone died, so no more photos. But the next job would try my patience so the likelihood of any photos being taken was pretty slim in any case

Knowing how easily the door cards came apart, I decided to tackle the front passenger door. The problem here is that there is a little microswitch inside the door latch which tells the car when the door is open. So currently the interior light won't come on when you open the front passenger door for example.

Looking on the XJ40 forum showed that this microswitch can get broken legs resulting in it not working, should be a simple job to solder it up, or so I thought..

Door card came apart easily like before, Haynes came in handy to inform that there is a hidden extra screw under the rubber boot for the ventilation

Getting the door catch out was a major pain in the posterior. Due to its design you have to thread it out past the window runner (after removing a couple of the runner bolts to create a bit of give) which is a lovely job...

After all that, there was no obvious break in the microswitch legs so the whole microswitch could probably do with replacing. Though with a non latching door and no replacement microswitch to hand that wasn't going to happen, so I hastily got the door back together before the light went and before the wind chill gave me hypothermia

So that was a successful day... ¬¬

In addition to this, I need to increase my order for dash light bulbs as another one has sneakily blown..



They're little things, and I could probably sell the car without mentioning them but I'd like the car to be 'right'

So there we go, this thread may or may not see me tackling some of those jobs again dependant on how finding a replacement daily goes

Lol! Unless it's cash that's driving you I suspect the Jag will stay - they kinda get under your skin like an itch that just has to be scratched - look how many guys on the forums regret selling theirs and then spend countless weeks scouring Fleabay et al to replace it.

When I was pulling into the airport car park the other week your Jag just stood out amongst the sea of grey porridge - kinda said " I am a man, not a number" - it looked really nice

Cheers guys, it certainly does stand out which is just one of the things I like about it Unfortunately it shall have to move on


But time will tell how long I last in a more anonymous looking car

Well the time has come, the Jag has gone Bit of a grey, horrible day for it but its been picked up and is now off to start a new life on the South coast (accompanied on the truck by a nice looking 911 turbo convertible..)

Must say I've been really impressed with Jag ownership, many (aside from folks on this forum perhaps ) may have thought I was a bit nuts to be going off and buying a 4.0, 20 year old Jaguar to be my sensible everyday runabout but to be perfectly honest, its been great!

I suppose its rather ironic that the newer Saab, which has been bought to replace it for doing the daily duties, has been in the garage twice and still possibly requires a few more things doing to it.. But thats another story.

Fuel aside, the Jaguar has been no more expensive to run and maintain than most 'sensible' modern cars so if you're thinking that you fancy taking a punt on a cheap old cruiser, I'd say go for it! Of course, buying a good one is essential to not bankrupting yourself, but theres so many old XJ's out there its possible to shop around


I originally set out with the question of 'Now there are lots of big cheap barges on the net, and I've been wondering how bad they would actually be to run daily' I can now say they're fine

I also managed to satisfy my curiosity of what the XJ40 is like as my late grandad had one when I was a lot younger but I never really got to look at it properly