Oil leak cause found...break out the JB Weld!

It seems that my oil leak was caused by a crack in the oil pan right where the drain plug threads in. I'm always cautious about over-tightening drain plugs as I once made this mistake when I was 16, and stripped the threads of the oil pan in my first car. I'm not sure if this crack was present when I did the first oil change on this car, but I can surely say that it didn't leak like a sieve after that service, so I must have damaged it when I did the most recent service, although if using normal hand pressure with a wrench can crack a Jag oil pan, I'd hate to see how easily a rock or other object could put a massive hole in it! Anyhow, I'll be 'wielding the 'Weld' today to see if I can [hopefully] patch her up.

The 64 Calorie Patch

Let me preface this post by saying that I'm not proud. Nor am I cheap. However, in the case of being faced with spending $1000.00 on an exhaust system for a car that cost me $400.00, I had to explore some other alternatives.

The car will be making its second trip to Cleveland tomorrow, so we'll see how well my swill-fest patch holds up, as I've never had any luck with those stupid exhaust patch kits from Auto Zone. Maybe I should sell them my own kit and get rich off of it. It'd be simple; one beer can, two hose clamps and a small tube of exhaust cement. Viola! Not to mention, I could leave the beer can full so it would be even more appealing to the purchaser, and furthermore, a little dose of relaxation before the job begins. And hey, if I wanted to go upmarket, I could always sub in a Guinness can...

Last but not least, the car did receive a new left front caliper yesterday. I had replaced the right front caliper about a month ago due to leaking piston seals. I know it'd have been a lot cheaper to have rebuilt the caliper myself, but I've never been comfortable messing with them, and brakes are one thing I don't scrimp on. After the new caliper, the car had a hard pull to the right, so a new left one was ordered and when it finally arrived, was duly fitted. I gravity bled then power bled the front brakes, but will do a final 'manual' bleed on them today, which should sort everything properly.

I ask you though, dear readers, does the phrase "Champagne taste on a beer budget." apply here?

The Problem With Cheap Cars...

...Is that when something bad and expensive happens to them, they don't look like such great investments. And particularly when that bad thing was the fault of an architect.

We were on our way to a Christmas party the other night in downtown Cincinnati. When we got to the building, I of course observed that parking was tight everywhere (why, I do not know, as this wasn't exactly The Magnificent Mile). Anyhow, I spotted an entrance to what seemed to be a below-ground parking deck, so as I nosed the Jag in, I heard the most awful noise from underneath the car. I stopped dead in my tracks only to find that the garage door at the bottom of this slope was closed and that my car seemed a hell of a lot louder. As I carefully reversed out, trying to do so at an angle to avoid any more exhaust torture, I must have hit it exactly wrong somewhere because all it took was one last "graaaauuunchhhh" and my car now sounded like Andrew Jeffrey's Lister XJ6 race car.

So here is my dilemma, dear friends...

I haven't the heart to take even a $400.00 XJ6 to Midas to have them butcher it to hell and back.

My cost on a new system, with hardware, and fitting it myself will be around $900.00.

** I should note that I haven't yet had a look underneath the car to see how bad the damage actually is. I've parked it for the last few days and will hopefully report on the reality of it later today when I get it up onto the lift.

***However, in the event that the system isn't salvageable, I'm pretty much stuck with buying all new components, as I'm not even going to try to "cut and paste" new with old stuff. But, let's take a quick moment to analyze the finances of it all:

-Car $400.00
-Initial service (all fluids, filters, etc...) $200.00
-Two new front brake calipers $200.00
-Two new rear tires, mounted and balanced $200.00

Total thus far: $1,000.00 (ok, still not bad money for a decent Series III)

-New exhaust $800.00

New total: $1,800.00 (that's probably teetering on the brink of what this car's worth)

* My point is that I just sold a Mercedes 300E on which the owner had spent over $20K in maintenance over the last seven years. And I sold it for $2K because that's, unfortunately, all the market will bear for those old W124 Mercs. Now that I'm getting close to the $2K point in the Jag, I'm wondering if I should cut loose while I still can, or keep plugging along with the old girl..

..I guess I'll still plug along. I love that car.

The Solitary Motorist

Well, the stars have aligned (or perhaps MIS-aligned) themselves. I am without a Mercedes-Benz and have only a 24 year old Jaguar to rely on for daily conveyance. In the event that it goes wrong, I can fall back on....oh wait.....my 1974 Citroen DS. Hmmm, I think I'd better keep the XJ in top fettle!

It's absolutely amazing how well this car runs and drives. I've no idea why the PO stopped driving it, as it's been a perfectly usable automobile, at least for the past 3,200 or so miles. And the kicker is that the more I drive it, the better and better it seems to get. And never have I had so much 'fun' out of driving an old saloon car, which is precisely why I love the Series III XJ; they're modern yet classic, the best of both worlds. They have all the charm of traditional Jag saloons because, well, they are traditional Jag saloons, yet they have climate control, fuel injection, and all the other niceties that these days really are sort of 'must haves' in whatever you find yourself driving every day.

The Jag made her first venture to thoroughbred horse country this past weekend. That's Lexington, Kentucky, to those of you not in the know. Needless to say, she took the 150 or so mile round trip in stride and was comfortable as ever. Oh, and we even got some good action shots of her on the ride home...

Oil leaks....go figure

Well, not much to report on the XJ6 except that on really cold mornings, she is a bit reluctant to fire first time. I've managed to abate that by 'tricking' the cold start system, which I think is defective, by putting the car in Drive and holding the key in the start position for a few seconds, which powers up the fuel pumps and gets the fuel rail pressurized which usually leads to a quick start.

I also did the second oil change (the first one, I did when I bought it so I'd have my baseline). I switched the oil from German Lubro Moly 15W-40 to Castrol GTX 10W-40 and it has proceeded to leak like a sieve from the drain plug seal, which is quite odd, so that will need to be attended to shortly.

Otherwise, the car is still running well, 3K miles later, and barring any sub zero no-start circumstances, I think we're good to go for winter. If it becomes desperate, I'll pop one of those Hitachi gear reduction starters on the car, which should make for easier winter firing.

1,000 miles later....

No issues to report. The car seems to just run better and better the more I drive it. I noted that when I initially changed the fuel filter, what came out of the old one was a cloudy mess of old gas, and quite frankly, I was shocked that the car even ran at all on what was in the tanks! It definitely had a cold start issue where it would crank for a while before firing after it sat overnight, but that has seemed to abate itself with regular use. This weekend I'll be driving the car to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, about three hours away, so we'll see how she does on her first road excursion!

500 miles later.....

....and she's still running sweetly. Had to replace the right front brake caliper as it was leaking. Fuel gauge is playing up a bit, but I'm not sure whether it's due to the gauge itself or faulty sending units in the tanks. It's a known issue that the floats can fill up with fuel or get snagged on baffles inside the tanks, so some investigation is needed still.

First "long" trip planned to the Ft. Wayne Pipe and Tobacco show on November 7th. Can't wait to see how she handles it!

A $400.00 daily driver Jaguar. Can it be done?

Those of you who know me might just call me a masochist. After all, I've owned some of the most fearsomely complex-to-maintain automobiles on the planet. Yet something always draws me back to them. Perhaps it's that old school sense of those cars being 'purely mechanical' rather than computer-laden like today's automobiles, and some oddly found comfort in knowing that I can most probably fix anything that might go wrong on an old car versus being at the mercy of a dealership's service department, eagerly waiting to ravage my American Express card for all it's worth. Whatever it may be, I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll always drive old cars. Sure, old luxury cars don't have quite the level of 'what we perceive' to be creature comforts today such as sat-nav, heated and massaging seats, a sound system that would rival George Lucas' own home theatre, but what they do have is charm. Pure, unadulterated, old-school charm. And in the case of my newly acquired $400.00 1985 Jaguar XJ6, character. Bags of it.

Ok, I never really intended to buy this car, after less than pleasant experiences with old Jaguars in the past. But damn it, this car spoke to me the first time I laid eyes on it, and I knew that I'd inevitably have it in my possession at some point. The seller's original asking price of $1,200.00 was rather rich for a car on which both front and rear windscreens would surely cave in if a strong enough blast from a high pressure hose hit them. But that aside, it was fundamentally "all there". It ran and drove amazingly well and just about everything on the car, barring the sunroof (which is a frivolous option anyways) and the aircon (which, hopefully, may just require a re-gassing of freon) worked. The brakes felt strong and the gearbox went through all ratios with a firm, positive action. Good enough for me. So after some haggling, I got him down to $700.00, which was still a bit on the high side, considering what a nice Series III XJ6 sells for (sadly). I left a princely offer of $400.00 on the table and told him to call me when he was ready to deal. Sure enough, two months later, the phone rang....

"Aaron. It's John. If you want the Jag at your offer of $400.00, come get it, I need it off the street as the neighbors are complaining." And with that, I was off to Westwood, check in-hand and a buddy to drive my other car home. Half an hour later, I was the owner of s/n 426288, a British Racing Green 1985 XJ6.

My initial plan with this car, honestly, was to put together a nice auction on eBay and punt it for maybe a grand or so. But after that initial drive home, I realized that this car was worth investing just a little moolah into to make a winter driver out of. Actually, that realization came when I discovered that the heat did in fact work!

The next day, I got the car up to my workshop, and, armed with a box full of service goodies from my boys at Worldpac, set out on the patented "Aaron Greenberg Fluid Fetish Service", which consisted of changing every fluid and filter in the car, along with the requisite spark plugs, wiper blades and any other minor service 'bits and bobs'. So far, so good.......