[mac_doctor]

Well - I've only had the XK8 for six and a half years, so I suppose that it is time to start my "show thread". I am about to reach 100,000 miles and I need a thread to post about it! For those expecting a wealth of technical detail, modifications, or even detailing detail, I advise you to look away now as I don't really do any of that - all I do is drive it around with a big grin on my face.


Context First:


To be honest my background doesn't lend itself to aspiring to Jaguar ownership. I was closing on 30 before I learned to drive, I grew up using buses if I had to go beyond foot/ pushbike range. When I first looked at cars, the car of my dreams was a Capri (Mark 1), but it was such an unrealistic dream that it never even counted as an aspiration (incidentally, I think it still is!).


When the XK8 came out I saw it on TV in the same way that one sees the McLaren F1, or Bugatti Veyron. In passing I thought that it was nicer looking than the E-type (at least in coupe version - the E-type is nice and all, but the coupe looks like someone just abandoned a shed on the back of a nice car), but again it never occurred to me that a car like that could ever come my way. I was pleased with myself for having successfully made the transition from an Escort to the heady heights of the Austin Montego, to be followed by a Cavalier and then (swoon) a Mondeo. Then, one day, I saw an XK8 convertible on a the local used car forecourt for the same price as I had paid for the family Mondeo.


This began the journey that led me to this forum. I bought an XK8 as a late-mid-life crisis car (fully expecting to have the biggest piece of poo known to man, that cost me fortune and I would have to dump it after six months having "scratched that itch") and much to my surprise I still have it, and it is still going strong (touch wood) after 6.5 years, and I still every morning look out of the window at it and pinch myself not quite believing that it is mine. SWMBO took over the Mondeo as her car, and flatly refused to even consider driving the XK, as it is too big, too powerful, too pretty and too scary.


Car Stuff:


Back in September 2012 I bought a 2000 (W Reg) "Spindrift Silver" (according to Arun's ad) 4.0 XK8 coupe with 20" BBS Montreal wheels and a Cashmere interior. 53,703 miles on the clock. It quickly transpired that it was originally Spindrift White, and started with 17" wheels, but in an effort to sell it a dealer had changed up the wheels and given it a respray to some shade of silver that is not - as far as I can tell - an official Jaguar colour (although MDZ Platinum is close).


Here she is :

Well. That is a start. Hopefully it will be less than 6.5 years before I add to the thread!

 

[JimC64]

Nice one Chris, a classic with those timeless lines

Not before time with the ownership thread, look forward to updates

Jim

 

[mac_doctor]

Edit: Moved the text to the appropriate place in the time space continuum (i.e page 4)

 

[mac_doctor]

Edit: Ditto

 

[mac_doctor]

I'm a bit of a tearaway for taking pictures of my Jags when parked next to other Jags:

 

[Ashanti]

Atta boy Chris, I for one am flabbergasted you didn't already have a showthread, probably explains why I never found one when I went looking once.

No matter, here it is now, the wait will have been worth it.

Cracking looking car and no matter what you might write and have us believe, 6.5 years ownership says otherwise.

Keep the updates coming and pics, pics are mandatory by the way.

I'd say we'll have you cleaning it like a pro soon enough, but I reckon you already do and just spin us a yarn on how you don't.

:-D

Rich

 

[mac_doctor]

OK - so going back in time a little, and posting what should have been here a while ago.

Year One (29/09/2012 - 28/09/2013).

As soon as I bought the car, I hunted around and found this forum. From here I found that the vendors (Arun of Pulborough) weren't held in too much disdain but that I should find myself a local independent Jaguar specialist if I wanted to avoid massive bills. I lucked into JagCare, a little organisation in the local area who were very nice to me and were gracious enough to point me in the right direction when I didn't understand what was going on with my new Jag. They immediately discovered that the tensioners needed replacement but as I had (rashly?) purchased a warranty from Arun I convinced myself that they would bear the cost if they failed. (Spoiler: My bottle went at the first service, and thanking my lucky stars that I had got that far I let JagCare replace them - £1100, but that is "next year"!)). I only got one (thankfully black) key with the car, so my first expense was a new key, and while I was there I also got a wheel kit (something to do with the valves, maybe? I didn't really understand what it was for when I bought it, and I am no nearer now, but I am sure it was necessary).

Then the local tealeaves decided that the bonnet badge was a collectible, so I became familiar with the Jag spares bit of eBay. (Now I can't stop myself - whenever I see a bargain second hand on eBay I buy it - when/ if I sell the car the next owner is going to get several of them in the glove compartment!).

The coolant header tank was also leaky - as I discovered when I got the dread "Engine Coolant Low" warning, so I got a new one of those; I got an ABS light which was to do with a module fault which was fixed (by magic, as near as I can tell) and a parking sensor started to make my day by going off when there was nothing behind me, but not making a sound before I hit someone's shed.

Total for the first year: £1645.26 (inc. tax and insurance) plus £2490.17 on fuel (8034 miles at 20.5 mpg - I was happy with that!)

 

[JimboV8]

You’d be hard pushed to find better than Jagcare in your region Chris. I used those guys for over 10 years whilst in Pompey and wouldn’t take my cars anywhere else.

 

[mac_doctor]

You'd be hard pushed to find better than Jagcare in your region Chris. I used those guys for over 10 years whilst in Pompey and wouldn't take my cars anywhere else.

I know - please don't be misled by this thread, as it is a catchup for my history - I have been using (and abusing!) JagCare for knocking-on seven years now!

 

[Super350]

Really nice, chatty thread, Chris. Thank you.

So many of your comments resonate with me as well.

I got my X350 in January 2012, took me about 6 years to get a thread up too.
Also generally spend my time driving & enjoying rather than taking apart and re-doing. My wife refuses to drive it for exactly the same reasons as you gave.

Will watch the thread with interest.

All the best
Simon

 

[mac_doctor]

The first year was an adventure, but having eventually got used to parking in ASDA car park without standing guard against rogue shoppers and their trolleys, and rid myself of the (US forum induced) phobia of getting "bore wash" if I drove it on short journeys, I was getting the hang of this Jag ownership thing. So having much against my expectation survived the first year, I found myself in the unexpected situation of considering how I would proceed: sell the XK and chalk "Jag ownership" off the bucket list, or buckle down for the long haul. SWMBO was unexpectedly supportive (I think she quite liked having the Mondeo to herself), so I went with my heart and decided that I would get a service and MoT, and I may as well get those tensioners sorted before it ended in tears. So off we set into:


Year Two (29/09/13 - 28/09/14)


JagCare took care of the business, but the combination of the service and the tensioners left my pocket 2 grand lighter. A small price to pay for another year, I thought! Some rear tyres were also required (£530 was more than I had ever dreamed of paying for tyres, let alone only two of them! Spoiler: they won't be the last.), but if that was all it took to keep growling on, it worked for me.

Edit: I just realised that this may be unfair to JagCare: the service also included a water pump, an aerial mast so the radio aerial would go up and down, a wishbone bush and bush damper, a roll bar link and some new windscreen wiper blades! And some of that I understood!


Holidays caused the first big adventure of the year. I went on holiday for three weeks over Christmas, and when we got home in January, I nipped out (in the pouring rain) to retrieve the car from the children's place where it had been parked while we were away, and when I got home (after a half mile drive) the window dropped as I opened the door, but didn't go up again as I closed the door. No problem, I thought, it just needs the windows resetting and then it will be OK. So I got back in the car and started the reset procedure. The windows fully wound down (remember the rain?) but wouldn't budge from there. An hour later the AA arrived, and pointed out that a battery is a requirement in a Jaguar and leaving an old battery in the car for three weeks without so much as a sniff of charging is not a recipe for success, so £150 went on a new battery. Everything was now working, but I was doomed to spend the next few months drying out the seats and carpets. Somehow I achieved this with no lasting damage (or smell), but that was a period of some misery, particularly as it was self-inflicted. Even after several months quite a lot of moisture is secreted away in the dark recesses of the seat foam, to release itself onto your backside on a long - previously comfortable - drive. Memo to self: think about consequences before starting on maintenance, even something as trivial as a window reset! As you can imagine SWMBO got - and is still getting - some mileage from this idiocy.


The only other expenditure for the year was some sort of JagCare magic fix to the ABS pump, as the ABS light had started coming on (To be honest I'm not sure that it was a pump. It was something to do with ABS, though). The fix worked, so I ploughed on regardless.


Total for year two: £3,301.73 (inc. tax and insurance) plus £2042.96 on fuel (7,039 miles at 20 mpg for the year, 15,073 at 20.26 overall. Still happy.)

 

[mac_doctor]

Year Three (29/09/14 - 28/09/15)

I was getting the hang of this Jag ownership thing now! I was beginning to get annoyed by the sound of something rattling in the boot - maybe the floor was loose? So I had JagCare look at it. The rear shocks were replaced and the noise amazingly went away! I had an airflow meter start to play up, so that had to be replaced too. Nothing too difficult/ expensive, but while JagCare had the car they had a quick look, and apparently there were six litres of oil missing. Mmm. No visible leaks, no warning lights, no temperature warnings (although I only have the OEM happy dials, not ones that give real readings) They topped it up, and no apparent issues resulted: odd, as there can only have been a couple of teaspoonfuls of oil left in the system! I'm supposed to remember to look at the oil-stick-thing every so often nowadays to see if it is wet. Sometimes I remember.

Total for year three: £1,458.97 (inc. tax and insurance) plus £1,957.88 on fuel (7,692 miles at 20.12 mpg for the year, 22,765 at 20.21 overall. Still happy.)

 

[JimC64]

Good info there Chris, filling out nicely and some nice little nuggets too lol

I especially like the "there can only have been a couple of teaspoonfuls of oil left in the system! I'm supposed to remember to look at the oil-stick-thing every so often nowadays to see if it is wet" part. You crack me up lol

Anyone else the engine would've gave up the ghost, but you casually top up with SIX litres and all is well.

Lucky white heather mate, be sure to put the lottery on this weekend

Cheers
Jim

 

[mac_doctor]

Lucky white heather mate, be sure to put the lottery on this weekend

I have to say I did feel lucky at the time, but that was five years ago, so the luck probably won't extend to the lottery this week!

I forgot to add a picture, so here is one of the undercarriage (I don't know why, but it is a bit different!):

... and one from our holiday in Wookey:

 

[mac_doctor]

Year Four (29/09/15 - 28/09/16)

This year is a freebie. I never really expected the car to last this long - I (foolishly) took out a three year warranty when I bought the car (I say foolishly, because I never really understood how to claim on the warranty, so it would likely been a disaster if anything happened for which I needed to claim) hoping that this would give me three years of mid-life crisis motoring, after which I could settle down with my Nissan Micra or Vauxhall Corsa, but that wasn't how things turned out. Particularly appropriate, as back on 15 September I had an incident that turned out to be significant.

On the way into work one morning, an idiot in an Espace reversed into me. Easily done, I guess, as he couldn't see me looking out of his rear window as it looks straight over the top of my car, particularly if you just start reversing for no apparent reason. Damage shown below:

In the normal run of events, I would have had a look, sucked my teeth, and let it go (as noted, I thought that the car had outlived expectations anyway, so a dent here or there wasn't going to ruin my day), but the guy was a ****. He looked at my pride and joy, and asked me why I hadn't reversed out of his way (there was an artic right behind me, so this wasn't a sensible question). So I exchanged details, and prepared to send his insurance the bill.

I sort of forgot about it, but in November (hence it falls in this year) the insurance got in touch, and told me to take my car to the bodyshop for an estimate. £4,057.09 (inc. VAT). Who knew that the front bumper cover would be £990 (+VAT)?. Now I really began to worry that the car was a write-off, and tried to console myself that I was going to get £4k back anyway, but no, they went ahead and repaired it! Now I'll have to keep it, shiny new nose and all.

The most amusing feature of the year was finding that there was something brushing my head as I was driving along. I had a quick look above my head, but all seemed in order: the furry roof carpet seemed a bit loose, but nothing out of the ordinary. A few days/ weeks later this was no longer the case, and the whole thing was, to be honest, a little saggy (I had to do something to hold it above my eye line!). Drawing pins turned out not to be the solution, so after consulting the fora (here and on the .com) and much Googling, I came across HeadlinerWorld in Kent: they shipped a (£150) headliner to JagCare, who fitted it for me. HeadlinerWorld now seems to operate pretty much exclusively out of eBay, but assuming that they are the same people, I heartily recommend their product. Perfect match, and came with matching A-pillar coverings. JagCare also did something to all of the brakes to make them work again while they had the car in (£670 brakes and headlining fitting).

An episode of Restricted Performance (restricted to 3000 rpm? I don't think I ever go above 3000 rpm anyway!) led to a new coil (I don't know what that is, but I now have a new one - £75). The coolant system, never really completely operational if I'm honest, had a bit of a glitch requiring a new header tank (£500 fitted), and a pair of front tyres to go with the rears from two years ago (another £350) were the only other significant outlays.

Total for year four: £2,605.18 (inc. tax and insurance) plus £1,891.76 on fuel (7,646 miles at 19.40 mpg for the year, 30,411 at 20.00 overall)

 

[#steve]

I love reading this it's hilarious. I get the impression your some sort of mad professor who wears a brown coat with 20 pens in the top pocket lol.

 

[JimC64]

I love reading this it's hilarious. I get the impression your some sort of mad professor who wears a brown coat with 20 pens in the top pocket lol.

Lol snap
Chris, the mad professor

Nice thread, good info though Chris, just a little light on the pics :???:

Jim

 

[mac_doctor]

Year Five (29/09/16 - 28/09/17)

... and on we go. Nothing really of note this year. I needed four tyres (well, I really really needed two, but I thought that a whole new set would look soooo much better, as I was about to go on a longish drive ...) £800. Pirelli P-Zeroes if you must know, because that's what it had, and copying is so much easier than thinking. I obviously would have bought Kumoho? Kuomo? Khumou? But if you can't spell it and can't pronounce it, I think it is best to avoid it.

I had a bit of an episode with the tide going out in the rear view mirror (Who knew there was liquid in there? Hands up at the back!). JagCare took to eBay (or somewhere) and found me a replacement - procured and fitted it for £85. This led to a nasty incident where the auto wipers wouldn't work, so it cost me another £60 to get the windshield repair man to come and replace and reglue the sensor. Works like a charm now.

I managed to knacker one of my key fobs (the original, I think) and changing the batteries didn't help: another £217.13p.

... but that was it for the year, really. A couple of events: I passed 90,000 (taking the picture is really hard whilst travelling at 60)

... and my brother turned up in an XF.

This latter event turned out to be a particular problem as it indirectly led to next year's expenditure, but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

Helped my fuel consumption enormously by taking the XK to a friend's wedding in Northumberland - added 1,000 miles in a week, getting 25 mpg out of the tank! I missed the photo opportunity unfortunately. - I couldn't persuade the bride and groom to go out and pose with it!

I did inadvertently get the XK into a couple of pictures, though:

... and another car that some of you may recognise (they are Harry Potter mad at Alnwick Castle):

Total for year four: £1,932.66 (inc. tax and insurance) plus £2,426.69 on fuel - bumped up by the trip up north (9,701 miles at 20.38 mpg for the year, 40,112 at 20.10 overall. Still keeping my head above 20!)

 

[#steve]

Ahh I see, the XK will go to Northumberland for a wedding but not to Langley for a Jag meet lol

Your brother obviously knows what he's doing as he drives an XF lol

 

[Ashanti]

Brilliant, utterly brilliant and very funny read.

Keep them coming Chris