As I said some time back, I bought a 99 Jaguar XJR on a bit of an impulse. I've always wanted a Jag, and finally had a bit of cash. Rather than buying an XJ8 with decent paint, I went with an ugly but mostly mechanically sound XJR. It had sat for a while so had the usual issues related to that, and had over 100,000 miles on it, so had the issues related to that. It had a recent transmission rebuild and the transmission is the weak part on that model, which is odd, because it is a Daimler transmission. In a rare reversal, it's one of the parts not designed by Jaguar that has the higher failure rate.
You don't buy Jaguars because of reliability. You buy it because of the grin it plasters on your face. Today, while driving home, I got an opportunity to chase an Infiniti G36 coupe. I was slowly reeling him in when my exit came up. Slowing down for the exit, my transmission started randomly shifting into second gear, which made things interesting at 60 MPH, as each downshift caused the car to jump a bit. I will have to figure out why it's doing that. It only did it in sport mode, so I've stayed out of sport mode since.
Anyway, the coolant leak it has also reared up, so I had 'transmission fault' and 'low coolant level' alternating on the display, and the ECM had decided shifting was no longer an option and seemed to have locked the car in third gear. I pulled over and topped off the coolant and restarted the engine to clear the transmission fault and drove the rest of the way home without any trouble.
Here's the amazing bit: before this happened, the transmission shifted hard. Not jarringly so, but enough that it was mildly irritating, because the car would sometimes lurch. I chalked it up to this car being a performance model and old besides, but, after the full-throttle freeway run chasing the Infiniti it has been buttery smooth since I haven't tried sport mode since. I have to watch the tach to notice a shift. It's not slipping; I did a few hard acceleration runs and there's been no loss of power. The engine is quieter as well.
There's an old Jaguar remedy called a 'Tony tune-up' where it is recommended you put the thing in a lower gear and go as fast on the highway as you dare because these things are race-bred and don't do well if you don't air them out every so often, so maybe this thing is just being true to Jaguar form. Maybe I'm in for an expensive transmission repair.
A funny thing is if you take my hourly rate and multiply that by the time I save commuting in this thing over my Expedition, it'll pay for itself in less than a year. So there's your justification to go out and buy whatever madness you want, so long as it is old and eccentric.
You don't buy Jaguars because of reliability. You buy it because of the grin it plasters on your face. Today, while driving home, I got an opportunity to chase an Infiniti G36 coupe. I was slowly reeling him in when my exit came up. Slowing down for the exit, my transmission started randomly shifting into second gear, which made things interesting at 60 MPH, as each downshift caused the car to jump a bit. I will have to figure out why it's doing that. It only did it in sport mode, so I've stayed out of sport mode since.
Anyway, the coolant leak it has also reared up, so I had 'transmission fault' and 'low coolant level' alternating on the display, and the ECM had decided shifting was no longer an option and seemed to have locked the car in third gear. I pulled over and topped off the coolant and restarted the engine to clear the transmission fault and drove the rest of the way home without any trouble.
Here's the amazing bit: before this happened, the transmission shifted hard. Not jarringly so, but enough that it was mildly irritating, because the car would sometimes lurch. I chalked it up to this car being a performance model and old besides, but, after the full-throttle freeway run chasing the Infiniti it has been buttery smooth since I haven't tried sport mode since. I have to watch the tach to notice a shift. It's not slipping; I did a few hard acceleration runs and there's been no loss of power. The engine is quieter as well.
There's an old Jaguar remedy called a 'Tony tune-up' where it is recommended you put the thing in a lower gear and go as fast on the highway as you dare because these things are race-bred and don't do well if you don't air them out every so often, so maybe this thing is just being true to Jaguar form. Maybe I'm in for an expensive transmission repair.
A funny thing is if you take my hourly rate and multiply that by the time I save commuting in this thing over my Expedition, it'll pay for itself in less than a year. So there's your justification to go out and buy whatever madness you want, so long as it is old and eccentric.
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