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keltiks' 2006 XJR shouldn't be a daily but is


keltik

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2 hours ago, keltik said:

All the gubbins is glued and bead rolled / crimped together like a coke can.  There is a crowd who do rebuilt ones for $1500 each but their reputation is shithouse in the Jag community - lots of early failures and dead ones out of the box.

Ah, ok. That’s a pity.

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  • 3 months later...

What direction have you/are you going in? I'd stick with OEM, at least then you'll know those corners are unlikely to give any issues for another 15 years or so. Air suspension (and early timing chains) really do seem like the only weaknesses on these cars.

 

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Ended up deciding to bankrupt myself and get OEM Bilsteins.  Should be about 4 grand landed.  They finally came back into stock at the start of February but In the meantime I spent all my savings on bits for the yacht.

So now I'm just patiently waiting for the jet boat to sell.

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  • 4 months later...

Mr postman brought me a present today.

QrSLa54.jpeg

He also seems to have decimated the poor old credit card.

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But after a couple hours work, I've got the new struts in.  Was interesting to find the drivers side one is slightly different to all the others I've seen, not sure why the lower bellows extends all the way to the mounting fork.

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Not the most thrilling update.  I did replace the rear tyres while I was at it.  Had the new ones sitting on the rack at work since January so nice to fit them up. Was a good learning experience trying to get 35 profile tires with stiff sidewalls mounted.

Next up, do the oil service it's well overdue for, replace the leaky transmission cooler pipe and get some new engine mounts.

On the bright side, the ride quality is much improved compared to the dubious second hand shocks before they exploded.

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  • 5 months later...

Lesson learned. Don't wash the car and put it away without a quick drive to dry off the brakes. 

On the bright side, dealing with the electronic park brake was easy.  Just hold the switch down as you turn off the key and it stays disengaged.  Then pump the brakes and pull the switch a couple times to adjust it for the new pads.  

Way easier than the triangle circle square L2 R2 up down sequence needed on some other vehicles I won't name.  And if you get it wrong the calipers grenade themselves internally the first time you use the handbrake.

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  • 9 months later...

The windscreen squirts stopped working, so I've been driving by braille the last few months and praying for sufficient rain to clean the screen.

The windscreen washer tank on the early X350 was originally in the driver's side guard in front of the wheel.  I don't know why, but on my model year it got moved to the passengers side guard behind the wheel, jammed between the wheelarch and the door pillar.

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Really needed a banana for scale but that tank holds about 5 litres and is perfectly sculpted to fit in the gap around the chassis rail.  i.e it was a bit of a prick to remove and even harder to clean. 

All that effort just to unblock the little filter thing. 

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I've seen windscreen washer fluid turn to a kind of gel before, this time I just had a little bit of goop in the bottom of the tank. 

Spent hours googling what causes the gel condition (to prevent it happening again) but the collective idiots of the internet seemed to have no idea other than "non compatible washer fluids react with each other, always use brand X because I say it's the best". 

I did find one place that claimed the gel is actually a bacterial growth similar to diesel bug which eats the ethanol found in winter formulation washer fluid.

Cleaned the tank with some mild bleach just in case and reassembled.

Checked my favorite stash of Wurth screen wash additive and yup sure enough, contains 10% ethanol. The rest of that can go in the Toyota which has a much easier to access sensibly designed reservoir and probably won't give a shit.

WOF time this week, can't wait to see what horrors await.

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5 hours ago, keltik said:

I did find one place that claimed the gel is actually a bacterial growth similar to diesel bug which eats the ethanol

Biofilm is certainly a thing in washer bottles and it doesn’t take much snot to block everything.  It has a bad habit of coming back, though hopefully the bleach has done the job.

Bloody awkward spot for the bottle.

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