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Been using the Jag quite a bit over the last couple of days and touch wood, the charging system has been behaving just fine. Sitting bang on 13V on the gauge (bearing in mind it reads a bit low, that's where I expect it to be) aside from drooping a bit at idle if I've got heavy loads on. Not to an excessive extent though, so I'm happy enough so far. The cruise control had decided to go on strike, but today has rejoined the party. Guessing the car has just been a bit cranky because I've not used it much lately because the charging system has been unreliable. I did one silly little thing this afternoon I'd meant to for a while now. It's no secret that the V12 XJ-S was rather a rapid car in its day, and still feels plenty nippy today. However I'd never actually looked at how quick...so I timed a couple of 0-60 runs there's a layby which means if the traffic is quiet it's perfectly safe to just boot it from a standing start to 60. It's actually pretty rare I do that...as it's simply not necessary and I usually find my acceleration limited by the other traffic anyway. Well unless it's wet as in that case you treat it with complete suspicion at all times...I tried to pull out of a junction briskly on a damp road once and abruptly discovered that this was a really bad idea. Far too much torque, a limited slip diff and 1700kg worth of Jaguar deciding to go sideways is a handful. What I was not expecting was the result that came back from today's test was to be 5.6 seconds. That's plenty respectable in 2021...in the mid 80s that must have been stupid fast. That's also after 83K miles and without any performance upgrades, and actually due a service. Not the sort of thing that usually interests me, but I'd really be curious to chuck it down the strip at Santa Pod just to see what numbers came back. Based on today's test I reckon it would be far more respectable than you'd expect for a heavy luxury car from 35 years ago. I am going to miss this car when I pass it on. She's just so comfortable. The speed isn't so much notable as the effortless way she builds it, whether you're trundling around town at 30 or joining the motorway... getting to 70 briskly just requires the lightest squeeze of throttle. Oh, and the noise. Everyone should drive or at least be a passenger in a V12 powered car at least once. They really are quite special. It's something I've never done before, but the keys will be getting handed over this time with a clear understanding that if he ever decides to sell the car in the future that I get first refusal to buy it back. Hopefully in a year or two we'll move to somewhere with more space and a bigger garage. If I had a garage to keep it in I know I'd not even consider selling... it's seeing the bodywork visibly degrading with living outside that has really made my mind up that she needs to go to a better home. Oh, and the fact that the guy I'm selling it to I've been messing about cars with since I was 12 (35 now), and I know he never expected a chance to try out an XJ-S any more than I did. Plus he's entirely responsible for my having a Jag soft spot. I still really regret not buying the dark green XJ6 in this photo.  Especially as the guy who did buy it went and scrapped it following a trivial fault developing...which hacked both of us right off as we'd both poured a lot of hours and money into sorting many problems that car had when we got it. It was really quite well sorted when we sold it. So even though I'll be closing the book on this for a while in a month or so (I'll probably still relay any major updates still), I may well wind up with it on the drive again in a year or three. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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I do love an XJS but the idea of owning one scares me, they look so flippin complicated!
I was lucky enough to have ridden in a V12 on a few occasions as my friends dad had one from new in the mid eighties.
When It was away with electrical issues he was loaned a Lynx Eventer which I got to experience.
The acceleration was like nothing else I'd experienced and the styling was something else, especially when you were coming from an Austin Princess !
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Nov 22, 2021 11:29:29 GMT
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I've been looking for a good usable V12 XJS for a while now. Couldn't find one in the end so I have a 1995 Supercharged XJR now instead. The 6 cylinder one. If i see a half decent XJS I'd be very tempted though.
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I do love an XJS but the idea of owning one scares me, they look so flippin complicated! I was lucky enough to have ridden in a V12 on a few occasions as my friends dad had one from new in the mid eighties. When It was away with electrical issues he was loaned a Lynx Eventer which I got to experience. The acceleration was like nothing else I'd experienced and the styling was something else, especially when you were coming from an Austin Princess ! They are complicated cars. However - with the possible exception of the control system for the HVAC system which is some serious Rube Goldberg nonsense - it's nothing you won't find on any other car from the 80s or 90s. Just that there are two, four or six times as many of the components as you might expect. The engine bay *looks* insane because of the simple fact that A: there are 5.3 litres of V12 crammed in there. B: The injection system is all plonked on top of everything. C: The car was designed by committee. Oh, and D: because of the low nose the layout really isn't all that well optimised. With a bit of patience, research and brain power you can figure most things out. The biggest headache simply is that doing anything usually involves removing about ten other things, which in turn require five other things (each) to be taken off. So anything requires patience. Changing the cam cover gaskets for example - pretty much the entire injection system, both inlet manifolds, fuel cooler, throttle linkage, cruise control actuators, 90% of the ignition system...just what I remember off the top of my head. It's one of those jobs which is about a day's worth of work to get to the hour's worth of work you actually need to do. Oh, and don't drop anything into the engine bay, or just accept that if you do that you will probably never see it again. The electrical system is complicated...I can remember four fuse boxes off the top of my head, plus they're not well labelled and at least one is buried under trim. Touch wood though, save for a couple of dirty connections and the alternator needing some service work which could have been issues on any car I've not had many problems electrically. -- -- -- Tomorrow is MOT day for the Jag. I noticed three things on a quick check over a couple of days ago that would need attention. [] Windscreen washers were on strike. I could hear the motor running and smell screenwash, but nothing was coming out the jets. [] Nearside headlight appeared to be pointing at the ground about two feet in front of the car. [] One of the rear fog lights was out - though came back to life when I thumped it. Sorting the windscreen washers was by far the most work, but we got there in the end.  All it was was some gunge in the lines - most likely mainly because the car has been used so little over the last year. However sorting it proper required me to blow all the lines through with compressed air. However getting to them requires the whole wiper assembly to be lifted out of the scuttle as there is no other access to it.  Getting that out is simple enough but a right faff. You have to lift/slide/pull/swear at it just right, at which point it will just lift right out...when you don't seem to have done anything different to the last 23 attempts you tried and failed to get it to budge. Of course I then dropped one of the rubber washers it sits on down the back of the engine, so we'll never see that again. Sorting the headlight aim really wasn't a problem, the adjuster had just managed to completely unscrew itself. Just took a few minutes to reassemble it and do a rough adjustment based on the beam on the fence across the road. If it needs a bit of a tweak at the testing station in the morning it's no big deal. Fog lights were exactly as I expected, just dirty lamp holder contacts. Took the lamps out, cleaned everything up with a carbide sponge, greased it up to keep the damp off and reassembled them. Now they both seem to work reliably again.  I've done a quick sanity check and made sure nothing is obviously hanging off, but beyond that it's in the hands of the tester in the morning. Cross as many fingers for me as you can! |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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The other ridiculously complicated thing on them is the control of the ignition timing, they have a conventional distributer with a vacuum pod but the feed to this is via a series of thermo switches solnoids, regulators and restrictions such that as the engine warms up the ignition timing changes.  |
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Nov 29, 2021 10:17:42 GMT
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The other ridiculously complicated thing on them is the control of the ignition timing, they have a conventional distributer with a vacuum pod but the feed to this is via a series of thermo switches solnoids, regulators and restrictions such that as the engine warms up the ignition timing changes. Ah yes, including the thing which regards the timing for the first few minutes to make the engine even *more* fuel hungry. Oh, and also on the subject of the ignition system...The early cars apparently had issues with fuel vapour getting into the distributor and blowing caps up. Jag's solution? Hook a vacuum feed up to it to continually draw air through the distributor body to prevent it building up. Took me a while to figure out what that line was for. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Nov 29, 2021 17:57:21 GMT
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Well...the day could have started better. I generally try to keep the Jag clear of wet roads and especially salty ones... it's not much fun on a cold day either as the heater control logic is hopelessly senile so it's a lottery as to whether you get heat or not. It's also *quite* squirrelly in the wet. Not ideal conditions then...  The Jag agreed with me. Turning the key produced naught but a click, starter didn't even try. Battery flat again. Fair enough, it's been weak for a while (demise probably hastened by having gone flat a couple of times during lockdown and when the alternator was failing). Out with the jump leads, will jump it from the Merc. Well I would if I could get in to it... however the driver's door lock was frozen and the passenger one doesn't work. Cue me clambering in through the boot. Which doesn't stay open so slammed shut on me when the stick I prop it open with fell out. After far too much messing around which probably looked like something from a Laurel & Hardy sketch at several points we got the leads hooked up.  Didn't never hesitate then, spinning over much faster than any time in the last year at least, pretty much confirming my guess that the battery is past it's best. This is also a good example of why I don't bother messing around with horrible skinny jump leads. If these hooked up to a decent battery won't start it, it won't start.  The heater decided to play ball today so at least I was able to demist and defrost the windows normally. An hour later the results were in.  Given I'd barely even looked at the car prior to the test I'll take that result. That could have been a lot of stress if I'd just given myself 15 minutes to get there (test station is less than a ten minute drive away), but because I gave myself half an hour and always do for anything time sensitive, was no bother to sort things out with time to spare. Will make a run over to Costco later in the week and pick up a new battery. Just ran out of time today. Collection has now been arranged for the 10th/11th of December, so will be all change here around then! |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Nov 29, 2021 21:19:06 GMT
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Well done, great news. All your hard work is paying off. Time to enjoy it now!
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Nov 30, 2021 12:55:36 GMT
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Great result, and a very interesting garage name!  |
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It was obvious that the battery in the Jag wasn't happy...my guess is that we've got a shorted cell. It hadn't come good despite a good long charge so time for a new one. Being rather less oddball than a lot of my cars, the XJ-S actually shows up on a lot of the cross reference tools on websites...and most, including Tanya Batteries own website say that it should be a 096.  No point in looking at the one in the car as I knew it wasn't the right battery - undersized to the point that I had to be slightly creative making a spacer to get the securing frame to actually hold the battery in place.  This turned out to be complete nonsense...a 096 is a good 3/4" too wide to fit in the battery tray. I considered my options a bit...then chose to grab the battery I fitted to the BX earlier in the year. It's still a bit undersized, but far closer than what came out.  ...Which is interesting given that I later spotted that they're both 027s according to the labels. The 096 I'd just picked up I just stuck in the BX. The battery tray in that is huge on account of the diesel variants so there was plenty of room for it - even if it does look a little comically oversized.  The engine span over with the new battery with far more enthusiasm, so the old one may have been weak for a long time. Over the next few days I used the car as much as possible to try to get a handle on how well or not the charging system was behaving...the answer seemed to be "absolutely fine." With that problem ticked off I was finally able to give my friend the all clear to come down to collect it. Last things I did were to give the interior and windscreen a quick clean and to load up my Jag specific spares into the boot.   I had planned to give the outside a quick wash and wax...but knowing the car had a 400+ mile motorway run on a rainy December day coming up I quickly realised it was pretty pointless! I'm glad to report that the car made its run up to its new home in Aberdeenshire without incident, and returned 20.8MPG on the run. That's not bad going for a mid 80s 5.3 litre V12 I reckon. I will definitely miss this car. It's one I decided to move on because it was sensible. I could just see the bodywork degrading with it living on the drive, it just needed to live in a garage...which it now does. If I'm made aware of any major news on how this car is doing I'll still add them here, or the new owner can. Not sure if they're on here. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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eurogranada
Europe
To tinker or not to tinker, that is the question...
Posts: 2,556
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I will miss this beauty as well. Loved following your adventures with it! Thank you for sharing.
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logicaluk
Posted a lot
Every days a school day round here
Posts: 1,373
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Dec 15, 2021 10:48:23 GMT
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I'm amazed that lion battery lasted so long, we call them showroom battery's, they tick the new battery box and last just long enough to get passed the warranty period.
Ill not fit one again.
Dan
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Dec 15, 2021 14:41:45 GMT
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Same here they are the cheapest on ebay for a reason, better off with a secondhand one from one of the well known brands than one of them.
Sad to see the Jag go but I can understand why, mine was garaged but use it in the rain regularly and it would visibly begin to deteriorate and everything seemed damp inside despite no obvious major leaks.
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