Are Jaguar XK8’s known to have continual electrical problems:
Here’s the story:
My car is a 2007 XK8 convertible, with a little over 100,000 miles on it. I got it used from Carmax, about five years ago.
I got an extended warranty, which is about to run out.
It’s been remarkably reliable, in that Jags for awhile didn’t have a very good reputation.
The problems I’ve been having lately seem to be electrical, seem to be related to the battery. I never had the problem the first few years I had the car. It seemed to start maybe a year ago, when the old battery stopped holding a charge, and the Jag dealer replaced it with a new battery. Since then, I’ve had a series of problems.
What happens is this:
1. Occasionally, after starting up I punch the button for the radio, and it doesn’t come on. Instead the antenna keeps cycling up and down part way. Then, it won’t turn off. Whether I punch the on/off button or not, it keeps cycling, about halfway up, then down, and so on…Sometime that happens after I’ve been driving for awhile, and later try to turn on the radio.
I found that if i pull over, turn the car off, and re-start, it almost always works properly thereafter.
Until the next time, maybe days later.
2. On other occasions, the screen in the panel in the dash that shows ‘backup cautions’, radio listings, or maps won’t come on. Again, I found that if I re-start the engine, more often than not that ‘fixes’ the problem…for the time being.
3. Last week I got in and the really weird thing happened: I pressed the button to crank it up—it sort of started, then died, BUT, all the above started happening and more — the dimmer lights started cycling on off, the antenna was going up and down, odd whirring heard under the hood, and in the display on the dash an orange warning triangle kept cycling on and off, displaying a different warning each time, so fast I couldn’t read them.
I couldn’t get it to stop, no matter what.
I called AAA. By the time the guy got there — maybe 20-30 minutes later — the odd stuff had stopped, the car was “dead”.
The young man decided it was the battery; hooked up his portable charger, and it cranked right up—with none of the funny problems!
I called the Jag place on Midlothian, spoke to Brian, the service guy, arranged to take it in.
He kept it for 4 days, wanted the battery to get low — see if they could duplicate the problems.
They couldn’t. Or so he said.
He got it last Monday, gave it back Friday — said there was nothing they could do, that the XKE years and model like mine were KNOWN to have such problems, that there was no fix, that maybe I could consider getting a ‘trickle charger’. About the only good news was he didn’t change me, at least not right then. He said he’d leave the ticket ‘open’, whatever that means.
When I cranked up the car, the radio wouldn’t come on, nor would the dash display screen. I went back in talked to Brian; he just shrugged, that’s ‘a known’ problem he repeated. I asked, since they’d had it almost a week, why they hadn’t re-charged the battery. It’ll charge itself, he said, just drive it for half hour or so.
I was most annoyed- with Jaguar. If there is/has been a known problem, you’d think by now they’d have come up with a ‘fix’! And annoyed with the service, or lack thereof.
Jag user forums on the web do shows similar complaints.
I love the car, and hate to get rid of it … but, if it’s going to be unreliable, I may have no choice.
I’m told my a friend in the local British Auto Club that the Jag diagnostics are proprietary, and that I may have no choice but to got to Jag dealer.
What’s your advice?
Thank,
Haly2k1
