What the hell have I bought?

[Rilot]

After posting up a thread last week asking for advice on cars for my mate for £7k, I decided that I too need a daily drive as my poor S2000 is doing too many miles at the moment.
So, the S2000 is now my weekend and trackday car and I've acquired a new vehicle to drive about as a daily.

She's a 2004 (53) Jaguar S-Type R Plus on 71k miles and with 2 owners.
Full Jag service history including receipts for absolutely everything, even replacement bulbs and tyres. It has had a recent service and has 4, new Conti SC2s on her.
She's in absolutely lovely condition inside and out.

Specs:
4.2L 32V V8 with supercharger
400bhp
CATS variable suspension
Touchscreen DVD nav
Premium hifi (Alpine)
Brembo brakes
Electric, memory everything (even pedals)

I paid £6300 which for the amount of car and the performance on offer is pretty impressive.

I'll post better pics up later tonight but for the mean time, here's the advert pics and a couple shot by my mate.

 

[Rilot]

Summer finally arrives and you stop driving the soft-top daily in favour of a Jag?

Hehe, it does seem a little silly aye. Unfortunately, I'm doing about 800 business miles a week at the moment and the S2000 will just die if I keep that up. Much better to just use it when the weather is good and when I can drive on fun roads rather than motorways. I love the car and I don't want to wear it out!

Nice car, I personally don't see the point in spending 6.3k on a car to reduce mileage on a 6 year old S2000, but nice car anyways.

There is no point. I'm not going to justify it economically. I just fancied a daily that's more comfortable for distance work.

 

[Rilot]

The stype r doesn't seem to have many weak spots for reliability. The early stypes were shocking though.

If it dies horribly I'll just get it fixed. I have a slush fund for unexpected repairs and having 2 cars it doesn't really matter if it's off the road for a bit.

 

[Rilot]

Very nice. Out of interest, why the S-type rather than e.g. the XJR?

X350s have a serous body rot problem as they used stainless rivets in the aluminium body. Bad Jaguar. I couldn't find one that wasn't rotten.
Earlier ones with the 4.0 engine have their own issues as the newest ones are 11 years old now and the 4.0 V8 was never very reliable.

 

[Rilot]

Looks nice, what's the auto box like on these?

ZF 6 speed. Very, very smooth. Same box is used in the E65, E60, X350 etc etc.
Not the most reliable box in the world but keep the oil changed after about 70k and it should last ok.

 

[Rilot]

That's what I call an impulse buy! Enjoy it!

Meh

 

[Rilot]

Beautiful motor car there!

Did you have to sift through much rubbish at that price range or have they stayed with decent owners etc?

I think the long term car Evo had encountered a few issues, but that may have been an early early one. Still want though.

I saw 4 total dogs and 2 lovely ones. One nice one was way over priced and the seller wouldn't budge. This one was the 2nd best I saw but £2k cheaper than the other one.

 

[Rilot]

Well, I just drove it home this evening.
I averaged 31mpg for the trip which involved about 40 miles of motorway at 90mph and a little bit of A road work.
Pressing the loud pedal to make the supercharger whine results in 4mpg

 

[Rilot]

Not bad!

Just a quick bump here as I think you missed it:



I'm just curious as the X350 XJR is currently on my possibles list for next car, and you've obviously researched them.

It doesn't seem to be structural no. Mainly cosmetic but it would annoy me immensely.

 

[Rilot]

OK, I've driven 300 miles in it so far this week. Things to report:

Goes like excrement off a shovel
Wasting young lads off the lights in a Jag doesn't get old (I think a trilby and a pipe might add to the effect)
26mpg average
Slight vibration at 70mph and a bit of wheel shake at 50mph. Had the wheels balanced but no joy. Jag specialist near me drove it and diagnosed that it was the banana arms and the big suspension bush on the lower wishbone. Going in to have these replaced on the 6th. Common problem apparently but cheap to fix
Headlamps had clouded up so I hit them with the rotary and the Menzerna 2500 and now they're lovely
Sorted out a few scratches with the rotary
Park radar not working. I've diagnosed it to be the speaker which has failed. New one off the bay for £14, sorted.
Brodit Pro-Clip and iPhone 4S cradle installed

To do:
Adjust throttle pedal for more height compared to brake
LED side lights to match colour temperature of the xenons
Ring +100% bulbs for the main beam
Fit park radar speaker
Replace transmission fluid
Replace supercharger fluid
Exhaust on order:

Possible to-do
Fit smaller top pulley for supercharger. This gives about %10 more power right across the rev range but can destroy the cooling system if it's not in good order. I will investigate.

 

[Rilot]

Exhaust fitted:

Sounds like a Spitfire! Love it.

 

[Rilot]

Better vid:

 

[Rilot]

Sounds ace!
Any chance of an in car clip? Any performance gains?

I'll grab an in-car clip on the way to work.
No performance gains I expect, those are to come when I swap the top pulley out for a smaller one. Should take it to 440bhp with big gains all across the rev range. I need to pull the charger and swap out all the cooling hoses first as the extra power puts a lot of strain on the cooling system and I don't trust 8-year-old hoses to cope with it.
I'll investigate a bigger intercooler too and a CAI which I expect I'll have to fabricate myself.

 

[Rilot]

As you can see, it's still very quiet inside.

 

[Rilot]

No it won't!

You might though

True. Or go deaf.

 

[Rilot]

Ugly, dated, expensive in every possible way (tax, fuel, insurance, maintenance) , poor image, crap interior,.. shall I continue?

Allow me:

Tax - 245 per year to tax. That's half what my S2000 costs.
Fuel - It's 400bhp..... And I'm averaging 22mpg at the moment with 32mpg on long runs. I'd say that's pretty good to be honest.
Insurance - Costs me 380 per year
Maintenance - A good indy will keep it running for me
Poor image - Yes, I'll give you that
Crap interior - On the pre 2002 ones yes, this one is superb. And yes, I know good interiors as I've had BMW E65s, Audi A8 D3s, Lexuses etc.

So, I'll concede one of your points.
I will concede the cost ones if either A) You're 19 years old or B) You are expecting to run a 400bhp car on the same budget as a Fiesta. The tax one is just plain silly.

 

[Rilot]

what are the interior differences made to the car after 2004? as I drove a 2002 R a few years back and the leather felt dry ( probably not conditioned ) and the doors had that crap sound when closing them. Real flimsy

From 2004 onward they changed the dials and the styling changed a little.
The big changes happened in 2002.
Odd, mine feel very solid to close.

 

[Rilot]

That didn't last long!
Today it blew it's valley hose. This hose is infamous as it causes all the coolant to leave the car, costs £1.90p for the part and takes 6 to 10 hours to replace due to having to pull the supercharger to get at it.
Too big a job for me so my local indie is going to do it on Wednesday. £400 ish.
They can have a rummage around under there and swap out anything else that looks worn/corroded/leaky etc while they have it out.

Stuff I've done to her recently:
Fixed park radar with a new speaker
Replaced main-beam lamps with Ring +100 items
Replaced side-lights with Cree 5W LEDs
Replaced front speakers with Focal 165A1 components
Wired in a speaker to line level converter from the subwoofer output
Machine polished her
Replaced driver's side front wheel with one that isn't egg-shaped

 

[Rilot]

That's an annoying amount of money for such an inexpensive part.

It's infamous on these engines. It's not a case of if it needs replacing, it's a case of "when" it needs replacing. Usually at around 60 - 80k. It's recommended that if ever one has the SC off for whatever reason, then it should be replaced no matter what.
It's the same on all of these engines. XJR, Rangie V8SC, XKR etc etc.

TBH, the cost doesn't annoy me. This is a 400bhp car that cost £50k when it was new. You don't run these on the same maintenance budget as a Fiesta. Eyes open and all that jazz.

 

[Rilot]

this thread has got me thinking about these. I know the brakes are scary money, and the tyres, and the suspension and and and and

but as a last hurrah, for 6 months before buying a house and a horrible box to tootle round in, how much can possibly go wrong?

Brakes are cheap. I did all discs and pads for under £500.
Tyres are cheaper than a lot of cars as they are only 18"
Suspension, yeah, dampers are the wrong side of £200 each and the bushings need replacing regularly.

The fluid leak I had fixed by a specialist last week. They replaced a bunch of other stuff in there while the charger was off including the EGR. The bill was £604 which was pretty reasonable.

It seems that if you have a good specialist near you and you can wield spanners yourself reasonably well, these can be kept running for not too much money. They are fairly simple cars with disparate electronic modules rather than a centralised system that's linked like many modern luxury cars. Most parts can be bought on Fleabay for not much cash and there doesn't seem to be anything that is prohibitively expensive to replace. Even gearboxes are £1500 ish fitted.
I've done 4000 miles in mine since I bought it last month and I've enjoyed every one of them. It's really quite a car and is effortlessly fast with it's diesel-like low-down torque but bonkers fast when you really want to push on.