Hi guys, William here.
Recently picked up a STR that looks like it belongs in a junkyard.
I've done a couple of these 'restore a shitty car' mainly because I'm bored.
Several years ago picked up an e34 540i msport that was fallen apart and brought it back to great car, ended up really liking the car so I still have that.

Went from something like this


To this. I know few pictures don't say much,, but believe me, went through a lot.

Anyways, back to the STR.
This is my first Jaguar, it's funny how I even got this car.
I really like overpowered big sedans, had a few M5s, e55 AMG, A8 etc..
My friend who's really into hondas one day was just searching through craigslist, he looked up type R (like integra type r) then saw the jaguar for sale and he messaged me about it.
I was in Korea at that time for vacation, but got a hold of the owner and we talked few.
After 4 weeks when I came back, the car was still available lol. Guess no one wanted it.
I went to check it out, oh man, it was bad. Car had 110k miles, but somehow managed to look like it had 400k miles.

Here are the issues *I've found* (There might be more!)
-Hood, passenger fender, passenger doors, rear bumper, front bumper, front grill dented or damaged. Both skirts hugeeee scrapes)
-Bent front subframe (Bent spindle, bent strut driver side, bent wheel driver side)
-Driver side wheel bearing was missing a lug stud and had an inch of play left n right
-Just about entire front end shot (ball joints, bushings all toast)
-Car leaks water into the car! (Learned it hard way)
-Heater core leaks (moisture inside the whole car)
-Stereo, sat nav, heater control etc nothing worked
-ABS,TCS lights on
-Front tires chweed up, rear tires bald
There is ALOT more believe me.

I came back home, without a doubt car wasn't worth it. Maybe if I got it for free, but I knew it wasn't worth a dollar mainly because it needed so much work everywhere.
Judging from the damage, seems like he hit a curb hard on driver side front, then spun out somehow and damaged whole passenger side of the car (How? idk)
Next day, I conveniently found another same color 2004 jaguar s type for parts. I called the dude and he still had the full whole car for sale.
It had all the panels I needed, exact same color and same year. This parts car was in immaculate shape, it was Mr. Roush's wife's car. (Roush mustang)
Just had a hole in the block, but everything else I needed was there (except front bumper and grill were sold)

So I bought both those cars, towed to my shop and here we go!

Weirdly, first thing I wanted to fix was the interior functions. Radio, heater unit and satnav screen didn't work.
I tried swapping the whole unit from the parts car(which had everything working) but still it didn't work.
I put the bad sat nav unit to the parts car and it worked just fine!
Fiddling with it few more hours, checking all the wires etc, turned out it was MISSING a fuse.
????????????????????????????????????
Put the fuse back in, bam

Everything started working again.
Went through entire fuse box, was just missing one fuse.
Off to a good start.

Next day took the car to alignment shop to see exactly what was bent and needed to be replaced
Got a call back, they said the lips that holds the driver side camber adjustment washers were sheered off.
So you know on factory control arm to subframe mounting point, they have those offset washers between two ears to adjust camber.
Well, from the impact, those ears just broke off.
That's why car had positive camber on driver side front, and was all wobbly because it was constantly changing camber as I was driving. (yes.. I drove the car to alignment shop lol)

Well, the parts car had entire suspension in great shape. All the bushings, joints and arm looked fantastic.
Car also only had 50k miles so it made sense


Started tearing apart to get the subframe. I like how the balljoints have conic shape washers so they all come off easily.

Now engine is just sitting on a wood block XD
I decided to take off the lower control arms and upper control arms as well. They were same parts between base model and STR so I decided to swap over fresh lower mile arms.
I ordered a used spindle with the wheel bearing in it to put into the driver side. The only thing that wasn't interchangeable was the spindle due to brake mounting points.

Got the subframe out, what I found really interesting is that the front sway bar between regular s type 3.0 and STR were same part. Same part number, same diameter.

Now to find a engine hoist point on my STR, saw two threaded holes on top of the block next to valve cover.
This is a pro-tip, (not really) but bmw lug bolts fit great to those threaded holes, so hooked up few bungee clips onto bmw lug bolts and held the entire engine to the fender hoist tool.
One weird damage from the impact was that the ABS sensor completely got ripped out from the hub assembly, then chunk of the wire went missing.

I mounted the good control arm and ABS sensor to the used hub I bought.
Later I found the wheel bearing is shot on this thing Found out after I mounted all up to the car and took it out for a spin. It hums loudly.

Job is just so much faster and better when it's on a lift.
Everything looked very easy to replace without the subframe on there.
I've swapped over the motor mounts as well.

Under the car. The legs for driver side shock was bent and the thread was destroyed.
I realized these shocks are not available from my jaguar dealership nor any used parts near me, so had to just fix this one.
I bent the legs back with a press, straightened em out and rethreaded the thread.
This is all the pictures I took today, but I got the missing fender liner back in there, cleaned off the undercarriage and installed new rotors and pads on to the car (old pads were worn down to the pad housing)
Preloaded all the suspension and torqued em to factory spec (except for the shock bolts!)
Lowered it down, put the wheels back on and took it out for a drive.
Oh man, even with messed up alignment, car drove really really well. Took it up to high speed, and no wobble or vibration whatsoever.
Other than the loud humming from the bad wheel bearing, it was great.
Steering felt tight, went really smooth over bumps and didn't offset the whole car accelerating or decelerating.

Sorry for lack of pics, if this thread gets some interest I'll go take more detailed pics later on.

Excited to put this car back to road.
Seems like my Porsche won't get any love for a while

 

Caution: some of the suspension and related parts are not the same. (The STR ones are stronger or something.)

 

Sounds like the car was lucky to find you. :-)

+1 on checking the difference between STR and regular parts and yes to the pics.

 

A very brave man! Thanks for an entertaining read.
I think you will get this up and running and then you will become inseparable from your Jaguar.

 

So far I've found that the control arms are all identical between regular s type and STR.
Spindles are different, brake system is completely different also. Wheel bearing/abs sensors are interchangeable it seems like.
The shocks are different also.
Sway bars are also same part number.
Basically it's identical suspension except shocks and spindle.

 

My STR has specific suspension parts, some of which are stamped SC.

There are also strengthening & stiffening parts, as the Tech Guides etc state.

 

For front lower and upper control arm, they had same part number and weigh the same. They were also both aluminum with rubber bushing.
Pretty safe to say they are identical parts.
For rears, I am not sure as I haven't gotten that far.
I have never seen car manufacturers using different grade materials for parts that carries same part number.

Same deal with mercedes. For w210 regular e320 and e55amg have same control arms. One merely has 200 hp while other has 350+ hp.

 

Put some hours onto the car today. What it looks like from behind. The PDC sensor isn't funcitoning but the parts car has working pdc sensors so I think im just going to swap the rear bumpers.
This one has damage on the bottom of the bumper anyways.

This is the passenger fender, something hit it where the hood and fender meets and damaged both.
There is also a huge dent at the center of the hood too. These are gonna get replaced with ones from parts car.
The bottom of the fender and bottom of both doors and side skirt on passenger sides all damaged also.
Thinking about logistics I'm not sure when I should replace them. Probably better to replace all of them at once, skirt-fender-doors

So while I was gone for 3 weeks over the winter, I came back and somehow water got in (lots of water, talkin like a gallon or something) on the passenger side and grew mold.
I wiped them down a bit but still needs good cleaning and sanitizing after.
The carpet is very damp, I thought about drying em out, but I think I'm just going to swap the carpet also from the parts car.
What's the process of getting the carpet and headliner out on these cars?
The honda that was parked behind the jag for 3 weeks also got lots of water leaked into it only on passenger side also.
Makes me think something mysterious happened, because this car sat outside of my house for 4 months in the rain and not a single rain drop got in.
Then I park underneath a tree for 3 weeks and somehow inside is all wet..

I let it park in the shop and this is what leaked for 2 days. No oil, just coolant.
It's leaking from the hose that comes out of the expansion tank.
Does anyone have the part number for the hose? It's really weird looking, it connects to the bottom of the coolant expansion tank..

Had a chance to double check my front end work and just look at undercarriage. Surprisingly no oil leak.
Transmission pan is damp, and judging how clunky the torque converter feels, I think it's pretty low on tranny fluid.
I'll prob do a fluid flush and replace the pan/filter/connector.

Rear end looked pretty good, diff mounts, guibo, subframe bushings all looked good with no cracks or tear.
Only thing was the sway bar endlinks and the tie rods that got beat up. Bought new ones.

So, I took off all 4 wheels today to do brakes and the front wheel bearing that's humming..
It had all sorts of different weird lug nuts on all 4 wheels, was missing one lug nut each wheel haha
You can tell someone who had this car before really did some heckjobs working on the car... Probably got clumsy and lost all the lugs.

This is the driver side front, where the humming is coming from!!
Time to take the wheel bearing out.
Looks so much better with new rotor and fender liner in there.

I was able to reach all 4 bolts holding the wheel bearing without taking off anything, was easy.
Came off smooth too.

Now I just went and grabbed a wheel bearing from the parts car, and noticed they are different.
Looks like the wheel bearing/hub assembly is different between base model/ STR.
The stud length, abs sensor plug, overall offset of the hub assembly were all identical, but the STR hub def looks beefier.
I called oreily, no luck. Rock auto, no luck. Jagbits, no luck.
As last resort, I called the jaguar dealership, and found out these hub units are DISCONTINUED!
What!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Guy from dealership thought it was weird too. Only the ones for STR.
I managed to get a hold of the technician working there who knows some about s types.
He said it is OKAY to use regular hub, they are essentially the same, hence jaguar doesn't make em anymore.
So I went ahead and installed it to the STR.

Put the dented wheel back on... I bought a new wheel so this wheel is going to be tossed. or might keep it was a full size spare.


Did the rear pads. Surprised it had lots of life left, Judging how these rear rotors aren't even ventilated, the brake bias is probably all in the front.
There is probably not much brake force going to the back, weird how they still put huge 4 piston calipers at the back.
Even parking brake calipers say brembo on em haha.

Now to fix the christmas light dash on cluster, it said my FR turn signal wasn't working,
I bought new bulbs and took out the bulb and found out the bulb was actually okay.
Then looked at the socket and wooh, its burnt.
I cleaned it up and put new terminal into it.


Tada now it works.
It also said my boot was open even though my trunk was closed.
Found out it was missing a trunk trim piece so the trunk ajar sensor had nothing to be pressed in against.
I put the trim piece in there, and now car thinks trunk is closed.
Reset the ABS and Traction control, and all those lights went away also.
Added some missing coolants for now.
Now cluster has absolutely no warning light.

Took it out for another drive, no more humming noise.
Still gets foggy inside the car way too quick so had to come back.
Also my headlights are pointing straight down, so even with the high beams on I can't see much.
I thought these had self-leveling headlights?
Do these have manual adjustments? There is not much room behind headlights so I'm strugglin to see what's behind it.

Done for today, brake feels great now, doesn't sink to the floor anymore like it used to.

Next thing I'm going to do is probably the rear sway bar link and lateral link.
Then I'll take apart the carpet and headliner from the parts car.
Also I really like the folding rear seats on the parts car, Prefer that over the STR rear seats.
Wondering if I can just swap over and have folding rear seats?

 

Thanks for saving it, William. I knew what I was in for when I bought it and couldn't put in the time which you have. This is looking amazing -- way to go!

 

Oh man, its a bigger job than both of us had thought of haha.
U know what the source of clunk from front driver side was? Guy put in a wrong bolt on the strut, damaged the thread and ended up bending the strut legs apart, so he couldnt tighten it so it was just moving and hitting the control arms while we were driving. 0.o

 

Sheesh. I knew something was up with the control arm but I thought it had something to do with the dust shield.

Glad things are moving along for you! Let's do a drive when you're done

 

The headlights have electronic adjusters for level, but 2 small plastic rod component snap and the headlights just sit at the lowest setting.
I've got the same problem with one of my headlights, so Ive bought a set of plastic replacement parts to do the job myself however this means splitting the lenses from the light body using heat. Plenty of how-to video's on youtube. I have been told on the forum that you can get metal replacement parts so there's no chance of them ever snapping again.

The type of repair will also depend on whether your car has HID or normal lighting. My apologies but I do not know the STR vert well.

 

Probably easy solutions to your headlights and seats. A screw in each headlight is a band aid that works well and the rear seats do fold but the release buttons are hidden behind the trim in the trunk. Also, the STR has a metal plate that only has a center arm rest cutout that you can remove if you want a bigger hole to the trunk. It was added to stiffen the car and I think magazine reviews from when the car was originally released mention it.

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s-type-s-type-r-supercharged-v8-x200-15/how-headlight-repair-stype-faq-10745/


https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s-type-s-type-r-supercharged-v8-x200-15/s-type-r-folding-rear-seats-115032/

 

There is only one issue with the quick fix for the headlights and that is the electronic operation will not work on the headlights using that repair. That is why I decided to have a go at removing the one headlight and then splitting it. That means I can clean inside the lense.

 

 

Ahh interesting!
​​​​​I was talking about the manual electronic level control with 3 height settings for both head lights and operated from a push in/pop out knob to the lower dash area near the steering wheel. I was assuming the quick fix would fix the headlight level in one place ie, where the screw is set at?

There is a possibility this control is not fitted to the STR?

 

I don't think the facelift cars have this.

Maybe time for that sig line with your car details?

 

The STR has HID and self-levelling so I believe no it doesn't have the one above.

 

Upon further inspecting the headlights, that's what I have noticed. They are pointing all the way down, and turning the plastic adjusters kinda make them go up but not really.
Do you know where I can get the plastic housing or the gears?

 

Ah, then not gonna bother with rear seats. Thanks for the info.