Tornado's Unwanted British Harem: Financial Patricide

[wfooshee]

So many of your descriptions of issues in the Jag seemed... familiar, and then you went to bad solder joints in the Lotus!

I don't see where you've said what model year the XK is, but since it's not a facelift, it's the same era as my 2007 XJ8 L, which has had its share of issues, only one of which approached insurmountable. If you've ever looked in on my Walter's Jalopies thread, you've seen most of this.

X350 Jags were equipped with self-leveling air suspension, and after my experience troubleshooting this I will never have another car with air suspension, unless it has a separately serviceable dryer after the compressor, as opposed to a dryer inside the compressor. Any water that gets in the system is there FOREVER, with absolutely no way to remove it. Valves rust, fittings corrode, and the system simply fails to work. Mine worked for almost a week after I bought the car, then suddenly I see the car sitting low in the morning and have to wait for the system to raise it up, or I get "Air suspension fault" while driving, and eventually "Car too low." A set of steel-spring coilovers took care of that issue right away, and I've never looked back. Car rides great, and is absolutely the most comfortable highway car I've ever owned.

I had a cracked radiator tank, and replacing the radiator led to a daisy-chain of next-weak-link events with the recovery tank, the water pump, etc., so I eventually replaced EVERY hose and fitting in the cooling system. Again, haven't looked back since doing that, and no further issues.

I recently had the headliner replaced, along with getting the driver's seat re-upholstered in new leather. I'm checking on the sunroof drains over the next few days, as a significant portion of my headliner damage was water getting in through the sunroof during a biblical rainstorm. Three of the four drain hoses are free, but having trouble with the right front, can't get a wire all the way down it.

I had nothing wrong with the stereo in mine, it played fine, even had a working CD changer in the trunk, although it didn't take long for the factory door speakers to start failing. eBay was full of replacements, though. However, the stereo has no modern connectivity. It has Bluetooth, but only for calls, not music streaming. I did find an aftermarket box provided as a kit from jagaux.com which allows me to stream from my phone, now, although I had to take the head unit out and install some cables that came with the Jagaux box. It basically disables the built-in CD audio stream and inserts its own stream there, so you select CD on the head unit, and you have to have a disc loaded, but the audio comes from your phone, and the box responds to track controls on the phone (and my smartwatch) as well as the normal steering wheel buttons. The nice thing about the Jagaux was that it was pretty cheap. The guy that makes it is Russian, and I'm thinking he's kinda fallen out of business, but I'm not sure of that. Down side is the Jagaux is only for XJ, X-type, and S-type; the ones with the same head units I have.

My car did not have the tough-screen audio/HVAC system, it has real buttons and stuff, but it did suffer from some bad solder joint issues which caused the radio/CD display to be dimmer than the HVAC display above it. Fixed that while it was out for the Jagaux install. The forum I'm on showed the exact points that the solder fails, so all I had to do was touch a hot iron to them and POOF! good lighting.

 

[Tornado]

Luckily the X150, even the 5.0 like mine, is mechanically pretty straightforward (if not terribly electrically sound). Regular springs and just adaptive dampeners instead. The only actual issue I've had with mine since I bought it was the rear window on the roof the front bumper alignment being terrible and (still) chasing a phantom tire pressure monitor issue from the particularly terrible TPMS it is equipped with (worse than the one Ryoko had that was from the early 1990s).

 

[Tornado]

XKR-S springs are sitting in a box on the floor in my apartment right now; and I've got a saved eBay search for F-Type steering racks.

Holy 🤬. That's quite a difference.

 

[Tornado]

A little housekeeping for something I've wanted to do basically since I bought the car:

I'm assuming some guy was doing the 2006+ taillight swap on his because he was letting them go on eBay for insanely cheap.

Finally. Wish I could have done my original idea with them but this is cool too.
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But now for the main event:

Holy 🤬. That's quite a difference.

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So how did it turn out? Phenomenal. Significantly faster steering. Significantly heftier steering. It's still not quite as quick as Ryoko I's, but the feel exceeds it. The springs (20mm lower, 15% stiffer) give the car the stance it deserved, and did a lot of mitigate body roll. It really feels like you can hustle it as hard as you want and it will just squat down and go. Immensely impressed how much it transformed the car. I also think, from what I've driven of one, this makes it a match for an F-Type. There's not as much "rawness" to the feel of F-Type S I drove, but it's a significantly easier car to "place" I feel. The F-Type kind of bucked around on roads and (granted, with my limited seat time) seemed hard to tell where the corners of the car were even though the feedback was good. This is much easier to do that with even though it's a longer car. I that's because the F-Type is broader, you sit lower and it has stiffer springs (shared with the XKR-S) than the ones I put on this, since they are 90% the same car underneath. Would be interested to see how the XKR-S springs compare but not enough to pay to do it myself; but I might compromise by getting a set of the XKR-S shocks.

It hasn't all been gunfights and car chases, though. I've recently been made aware the annoyances of buying a used very high end luxury vehicle in terms of interior maintenance (I knew it was going to be broken mechanically all the time) vs buying another Corvette. Namely:

This panel getting damp on both sides when it poured out last week and instantly shriveling up like a raisin. I've not yet figured out what I want to do to fix it, as their are plenty of that interior panels available used but almost all of them are for the coupe version of it.



But you don't care about that. You care about the thread title. Well, me and my significant other went on vacation last in July, and part of that was going up to have him meet my parents for the first time. Either because it was the 4th time in 4 years I've gone to visit them and showed up with a different car, or because it is such an obvious "me" car, my dad instantly pegged it as being me when we arrived before we even got out. Eventually over the course of the week, me and him went out to have a go, and he really enjoyed the drive.

Well, Friday I got a text from my mother; quickly followed by a flurry of photos from my father. He had bought something.

 

[TheCracker]

Well, Friday I got a text from my mother; quickly followed by a flurry of photos from my father. He had bought something.

View attachment 1478433



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Those back seats look cozy. What a time to have legs!

 

[wfooshee]

Hey, I just noticed your links to the Jaguar forum. Are you Tornado there, too? I'm there, same name, obviously more active in the X350 forum.