Good Morning. I'm in North Jersey and recently got some bad news regarding my 2005 XJ8 L - Vanden Plass. The engine is
shot and i don't want to spend the money to replace it. Wanted to see if anyone has luck selling a car AS-IS or selling it out for
parts. The body and interior all in good shape. Thanks

 

Welcome to the forums Moralij,

Sorry to hear about the engine. Sadly a regular cause of the demise of an XJ and usually due to overheating. As a consequence of this, members who have tried selling their vehicle in this condition have usually hit a brick wall. Some have tried breaking for parts but it always takes a very long time and they usually run out of patience long before making much out of it.

Graham

 

Welcome aboard.

 

Hello,
I'm sorry to read about your dead engine.
Usually people who break cars do it all the time, have quite a lot of cars to break and make a good living at it because they know how it comes apart and what this or that part is worth. Breaking up only one car isn't usually worth the trouble of even taking it apart.

Welcome to the forums from ElinorB.
(';')

 

Welcome to the Forums.

Oops.

As said, could be brick wall stuff, especially with anything electronic that is "matched" to that Vin number.
OK, programming can be done, but $$ again.

Good luck.

 

I appreciate the feedback. Thank you

 

Welcome to the forums.

 

welcome to the forum - sorry to hear about the dead engine

 

Welcome to the forum Moralij,

Good to have you with us.
Enjoy the forum.

If you haven't done so already you should add your car details to your signature to help others to help you.

 

Lnrb is right. It is seriously a lot of work. Parts have to be ready to ship, not still on the car waiting till you have time to remove them, plus your neighbors may not like having a car carcass in your driveway being slowly picked apart as if by vultures. You have to strip it all down, catalog all the parts, organize your storage, clean them up a bit, take four or five well-lit photos of each, write a description, look up part numbers, research values, post to an online classified, monitor your email, promptly reply with answers to questions or more photos and negotiate a price. Then once you agree to sell a part, you always have to find an oblong or weird shaped box for it, pack it with fifty dollars worth of styrofoam peanuts (because you couldn't find a box the ideal size), weigh it, get shipping estimates, communicate with the buyer, set up multiple ways to pay, watch for the deposit, promptly take the package to drop off at the shipping center, communicate with the buyer again, track down that package when it doesn't arrive on time, communicate with the buyer again and so forth. And you have to repeat that for dozens or even hundreds of parts over a long period of time.

I used to do that with Toyota Supras, buying wrecked ones to either fix up or part out. Tho I consumed most of the parts in rebuilding the other cars. I was never very diligent about "marketing" parts individually. Mostly I would just reply to "wanted" ads if I had extras (and time to mess with it). I had accumulated quite an inventory over 25 years, to the point that I was having to rent an extra storage unit. And nobody buys used alternators, starters, or anything that they can still purchase brand new or remanufactured with a warranty. Its mostly interior, exterior trim, body panels and miscellaneous electrical parts that people buy off online classified ads. I was too busy with my day job to sell stuff fast enough to make it worth the rent so last summer I decided to get out. I posted almost my entire inventory as a "package deal" to the first person to show up with a U-haul box truck and its now safely stored elsewhere with another enthusiast.

Now that I have pointed out the bad side of parting it out yourself, I want to explain why I use to do it. While some people on here view their cars as goods to be consumed, others like me feel that we are merely temporary caretakers of these fine machines and have a duty to preserve them. If we can't then we should sign their organ donor card so that other cars can be preserved. Unfortunately, the commercial salvage industry has no interest in saving "holy grail" parts for people to use in restoration work in 25 years from now. You can pretty much kiss goodby the seats, the carpet, the door panels, etc. because maybe the first part they sell is a passenger side door to a body shop. Then its going to sit in the yard with the interior exposed to the elements. Or they let people come in and remove parts themselves. Consumers will destroy a bunch of good parts in the ham-fisted process of extracting the one buried part that they need. There is no effort to cautiously dismantle the car with intent to preserve every delicate part as WE would do it ourselves The salvage business model counts on selling a few dozen "popular" parts to make a certain percentage return and then the remainder gets crushed, often fairly quickly to make way for another even more popular car from which they can quickly sell a few dozen parts. For this reason, I would hate to see it go to a salvage yard, but I know that may be what needs to happen.

If you've got the extra storage and care to part it yourself just to help out the community by saving holy grail parts for the future, then I'd say go for it. But otherwise, it's probably not worth it from the perspective of personal cost/benefit.

 

Sorry to hear of your dilemma. I'm in Australia and that car would be still worth quite a bit here! Maybe you can find a replacement motor for it.

 

I got alot of good advice here regarding my 2005 XJ8L. The engine was toast and I ended up contacting CARVIO.com.
I got $1,500 for it which I thought very fair considering my options.

 

Thanks for coming back with the outcome. Too often on the forum a question is asked, advice is given but we never hear what happened in the end. I hope you didn't take too big a hit between the purchase price and the CarVIO offer but finding a way out - any way out - of the engine disaster was the most important factor.

Don't let it put you off Jaguar. One of our XJ40 owning members has a wonderful line in his forum signature:

Because its a Jaguar. And ----- even if your pushing it down the street --- Everyone feels better in a Jaguar

Always makes me smile.

Graham

 

I had my Jag for 3 years and only paid $3,800 for it. Although I had to sell as is due to engine failure I still am not down on JAGUAR.
I wanted to let others in my situation know that if your car won't run or has some problems CARVIO gave me a fair offer. One of there competitors told me I would need to have it towed myself and they would only pay $275 for it.

I am on the lookout for a XJL Supercharged (2012 - 2014).
Happy Motoring

John