DavidRey;

As Brutal said you will need to pull some rod bearing caps off and take a look. If your really worried I would change them. But if you are undecided then at least use Plastigauge on the old bearings to get an idea of what your bearing clearances are.

Here is a picture of the rod bearings I changed in one of my SHO's. These had 195K miles on them. Notice the wear pattern is as Brutal mentioned. The bearing shells showing copper are under the removable rod cap. These will ALWAYS show the most wear. The wear shown is just normal wear. I changed them because on high mileage SHO engines spinning a rod bearing is one of the few ways the engine destroys itself. They were easy to change and cheap ($50) on the SHO. I don't know what a set of rod bearings cost for the Jaguar or if they are a dealer only item?
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I wouldnt change unless there is a DEFINITE issue on the bearings. reason: factories do not buy precision machined blocks, cracnks or rods. theyre close but theyre mass produced and use differant sized bearings and pistons. The assembler mikes everything and pops in the correct over/undersized bearings, pistons and then stamps the block with correspondong numbers to the pieces used. You have to get these number and locations, go to a dealer (or a place that sells engine parts) and buy the correct sized replacements. in other words you have stamping like 00012111 which might correlate to stk,stk,stk, .0001over, .0002 over etc.... some bearings are stamped with size too or color and you have to use a chart. but many colored bearing are on the edge and the color is no longer then after use.
now if you pull and rebuild an engine the machine shop will do precise work and you buy all the same sized bearings and pistons...so just be aware of this. If you decide to drop each cap you really only need look at the cap bearings and if okay reassemble and retorque to spec

 

Thanks Brutal.
I did not know Jaguar had that kind of precision. I came from the used Ford world before I got an S Type and never had any concern changing rod bearings. I just checked with Plastigauge to make sure nothing was way out of line. If the engine had a lot of miles then I would change them. The only reason I took pictures of the SHO was I thought they looked great for the number of miles on them.
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Brutal can you tell me real quick why the check oil pressure light didn't come on when the car was 4 qrts low on oil? Or is 3 qrts enough to keep up oil pressure? If the light came on this could have been avoided, that is if I really do have a bearing problem. When I bought the car it was just traded in and who knows how long they drove it with low oil. I'm assuming the last time they had the oil serviced they ran conventional motor oil in it because when I did the oil change I notice only a very small leak. than pan wasn't very dirty so all that oil could not have just leaked out. When I drained and put in moble 1 thats when the leak got alot worse and the pan became filthy. Iv'e read that switching from conventional to synthetic caused leaks in older cars due to the sythetic clearing up all the stuff that conventional oil leaves behind and covers up all the seals. Would switching from conventional to synthetic cause my engine to knock? I don't see why it would but just wanted to ask.

 

as long as there is oil in the pan while running and you dont pull hard on corners youre not gonna get a oil pressure light. You have to suck air to loose pressure, even a qt in the pan while running is goona keep pressure up. Jaguar uses large cap. pans for increased oil cooling and for those that dont keep up wth oil levels. If it was a 5qt cap.. you would have only been a 1qt down not 4!

 

Guys, how do you know if you need a new oil pan gasket? Mine was leaking about 6-10 drops of oil a day and I re-torqued the bolts. They were not that tight. The spec calls for 25 NM on each bolt. That didn't seem like enough to me. I applied about 1/8 turn past 27 NM. I'm hoping that will fix the leak, but still even 27 NM isn't a lot of pressure. Thoughts on adding more before the heavy gasket replacement job? Mine 2003 only has 35k miles on it.

 

Get back under the vehicle spray lots of Gunk cleaner, hose off and check in a couple of days if and where the oil is coming from.

BTW I used el-cheapo carb. cleaner (lots of it) was faster on the clean up. I just put down a large piece of painters plastic to catch all the drippings. Oh besure that you are in a well ventilated area!

 

Don't go crazy over-torquing those bolts. You'll squish out the gasket and/or bend the pan or snap off a bolt. Just making things worse.

Carb cleaner works, like Rick said, well ventilated and make sure nothing is hot (like the exhaust) or any ignition sources around as that stuff is flammable as it gets. Since I care about the environment more than Rick ( ha!) I use Simple Green, 100% concentration, and let it soak. The idea of a painters plastic/drop cloth is a good idea, nice call Rick. Greased Lightening is also pretty good, the guy I know who rebuilds Rover V-8's swears by the stuff and those engines are gunk makers of the first degree.

So yeah, clean it all up real good and find the source of the leak. And have you inspected your drain plug for proper torque as well? I replace mine annually.

 

Tree hugger!

When I did Joels vehicle back in the winter last year, I was skyping with George and a couple of others. I wasn't in a well vented garage to cold outside.......

I think I killed more brain cells than the enviroment! Man did I catch a buzz, they were all laughing at me!