Help! My car has 196,000 miles on it & recently starting loading up, stalling. May be heat related. How can I determine if it’s the ECM, crank or cam position sensors? The last time it quit on me it scrolled thru “ABS out”, “Trac out” & “Gear box failure”. Let it sit a minute, restarted it, not a single thing shows up. I’m afraid to drive it as it appears to be getting worse. Our code reader is not giving us anything definitive to go on.
Crank and cam sensors usually cause the engine to cut out. “Loading up” sounds like a fuel problem. At 196K you’ll need to budget at least $200/month to keep this car on the road. Cheaper than a new Jag, but it’ll take some shop time.
I’m not sure what you mean by “loading up”. Stalling I understand. I presume you mean the car begins to act like it hasn’t enough power to keep moving, then stalls. And it tends to happen when it is hot. My first guess is the crank sensor, as that is a common heat related problem due to where it is located, and will cause poor engine performance and eventual stalling. More often the way this symptom displays itself is you drive somewhere, everything is fine, you park the car, then 10 minutes later you try to drive away, only to discover the engine won’t start. After you let the car sit for an hour or two, then it will start with no indication of a problem.
ABS and Trac out are related to each other, but likely unrelated to the stalling problem. That’s probably a separate problem. Gear box failure, hard to say what that means. It could be related to either of the other two problems, or it could be yet a third problem. I presume this is an automatic, right? Have you or your shop checked the transmission fluid level? If not, that’s the place to start for that one.
Time to find a Jaguar mechanic and your checkbook.
By loading up I guess the best thing I can say there it’s like the mixture is too rich. Cam sensor is likely what we’ll replace first. The tranny is only a year old, so the other warnings made me wonder if the ECM is going nuts! Fortunately we have a fleet of junk (other the the Ram tough 2012 truck) so I have wheels & also a hangar to work in! After the last failure/stall, I only let it sit a minute, started right up, ran smoothly, no trouble lights. Drove it from the house to the airport the next day (7 miles) with no issue. As aggravating as an airplane! Will check tranny fluid level.
Cam sensor failures can cause heat related symptoms too, so your diy’er plan seems reasonable. A shop with a Jag specific scan tool could help you w/the diagnosis if you run into trouble.