These seem to be pretty cheap these days, £12000 gets a reasonable mileage 98/99 model and the reviews on Parkers and Carsurvey seem to show them off as being pretty reliable. Anyone had one? The only thing that puts me off is the odd story of gearbox failure and being between £6k and £10k to fix

 

I've got an XJR6 - 96, before the V8s came in in 97/98. 320bhp, so not as fast as the 400 horse V8s but still fairly brisk.

XJR6 engine and box are tried and tested units... the box is pretty ancient in fact, but with all that torque it doesn't matter much.

The big one for V8s is the Nikasil cylinder liners, many of which failed. Lots of V8s, supercharged or otherwise, have had new engines under warranty... the blow-by test shows whether there's a problem here, but I don't know any more about it than that. Not an issue for mine.

Owning: parts aren't cheap but there's quite a lot of sub-dealer expertise if you want to cut costs. Fuel consumption is at the level that makes you check for holes in the tank. Quiet, fast/very fast and comfortable... quite agile for a heavy car too.

Not very practical - more room in the boot of a bugeye, and forget it if you're over say 6'2".

Lot of car for the money! On any vintange, watch for electric seat/steering column failure - many pounds to fix, better off without it IMO. Oh, and the digital clocks always fail - if it's working on a 6 yr old, it's been mended!

 

Nikasil - Its a killer. Any V8 Jag engine from 96 to 98 had Nikasil liners and due to the high sulphur fuel that we got in the UK, it ate away slowly at the liners until one day the car would just not start. No reason at all. You could park it up the night before running fine and it would be dead the next day.

Get the cars chassis number and Jag dealers and specialists can check to see if it had nikasil. I had a early 1999 XKR and that had nikasil, engine was replaced with steel liners.

Parts I found even from Jaguar were cheap. Plenty of specialists though. Eurojag etc. etc.

Lovely cars though and wouldn't sell it for a least a year

 

So can you:

Jaguar V8 cars built with a Nikasil engine can be identified by the VIN number.

If the last six characters begin with an '8' the car was fitted with a Nikasil engine.

If the last six characters begin with an 'F' the car was fitted with a Steel lined engine.

Might not tell you if it's a replacement engine though. Jag replaced nikasil failures free on cars <5 yrs/100k miles - most of them.

Pistonheads has chat about Nikasil, which affects BMW v8s too incidentally.

 

The V8 has cam chain jumping issues with obvious horrendous consequences.

 

Jonathan - Yes mate, but if you look at the engine number you can determine if it is a nikasil one or not.

No they have tensioner failure. Due to people not maintaining them properly and getting them checked reguarly.

 

That's what I was saying, or trying to...

It's fair to say the tensioner is as important an issue on, say, a 70-80k miles car, though.

 

Thanks for the info guys. Does anyone know whether the gearboxes tend to give up the ghost or not?

I'm a bit paranoid now

 

Er, no. Won't bore you with the details, however, having worked at an independant Jag specialists for 2 years, have some knowledge of them. It isn't due to lack of maintenance, but an inherent fault to do with not liking being started, moved a very short distance, and switched off again. The problem shows itself next time you start it.

 

Would that be somewhere worth recommending? Mine's too old for main dealers now, so I take it to an indy in NE london... they're ok but not all that convenient, so I'm always on the look out.