Hi everyone!

I very recently got my hands on a 2003 X-type 2.5 XA premium with park sense and heated/folding seats, the car was a 1 owner/family with an extremely good history including the infamous oil pan being already replaced and constant brake fluid changes and any/all issues addressed on time. The car didn't even hit 30k miles until 2017 if that's any indication of how often it was used.....when it passed to the daughter of the 1st owner she drove it in town only up to 94k miles where it then passed to me. Overall the car is in fantastic shape, it's Jag Racing Green over Sand with almost zero wear anywhere inside or out and has been exceptionally easy to clean up. There is no rust anywhere underneath, a miracle if you ask me considering the area.....

I got a great deal on the car due to the fact it has the "minor" issue of a rod knock, I am planning to attempt a cheaters fix by just doing an in car rod bearing replacement ala E60 M5/S85 style. If not then cradle drop it is since engines for this car are shockingly/abnormally cheap from everything I am seeing, I am trying to avoid it though since I don't really want to have to mess with it since it has never been apart before plus it would require 3 or so days holding up a lift from customer cars.

Anyway, here are the obligatory pictures. I do not yet have interior pictures since I have not had a chance to clean it up inside/polish everything since the weather had oddly, decided to change from a week+ of perfect weather to constant rain....I'm certain the fact I now own a British car has nothing to do with that though. Usually I need to take out one of the flagships to summon rain but I think the curse might have been finally broken by the X-type.

 

Freshly washed, I also tried to clean up the dust staining on the rims. I was somewhat successful, at least they aren't curbed or corroded. Since I intend to make this my winter/back and forth from the shop car so I'm debating if it's worth my time to clay/polish/ceramic it like my other cars.

I'm unsure since I would likely start caring too much if I do but the wife and friends all think I should since it's a nice cars. In any case these should allow to me to finally replace my old WJ Jeep as my work car.

 

Welcome aboard. She certainly looks a nice one..
Trust me here in the UK we don't have to wait too long for rain ,although we have just had one of the hottest and driest summers on record with temps up to 40 degrees.

 

Thank you! I figured based on all the tropes you guys have a lot of rain lol! At least that means I should be able to trust the car not to have water intrusion issues since it was designed over there.

40 is impressive. It's rare we ever get that high here, how is it for you over there where it's basically unheard of?

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to manually release the trunk in the event the electronic opener doesn't work/breaks? The manual didn't have any info past the internal pull for the event someone is trapped but since I have the folding seats I have no pass through to reach it.

Is there a way I'm not aware of to get the seats to drop or to otherwise open the trunk? Nothing is wrong with my release but I'm just trying to plan for a "what if" situation since I have had to replace many of this style actuator before.

Thanks!

 

No but there is a thread by a member of how he installed a preemptive "emergency" hack.

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...e-only-107951/

 

Thank you much!

 

Very uncomfortable

 

I meant the hot weather was very uncomfortable,not the X type obviously

 

@ Striker223:
> Does anyone know if there is a way to manually release the trunk in the event the electronic opener doesn't work/breaks?
Exactly that happened to me once - and once only. To make sure, this would not happen to me again, I came up with a very simple solution:
There are TWO pull-release-knobs in the trunk. I simply rerouted one of them and ONE of them now lurks out from the side of the rear-seat-bench-back-piece in the passenger compartment.
It's very simple - this "modification" takes about 1-2 minutes...

 

PS: Nice car. That green is my fav colour and 3 of my Jags have exactly that colour. Looking at your picture, the only improvement I can think of to make the car look like new is "plastic polish" for the bottom rear black plastic bit (where the reversing sensors are mounted into). ...and another improvement would be chrome bezels for headlighs, tail-lights and side indicators, plus stainless steel (looks like Chrome) decoration for the B- pillar and C-pillar.

 

Picked up a replacement engine today, it was so cheap ($300) I decided against attempting to throw bearings at the original one since it's just not worth the time.

I should have time next week to put it in

 

The replacement engine on stand

The one I bought is very complete

Full intact harness and all, I used all the cars original electronics and harness though since I know those work correctly vs this stuff who has been sitting god knows how long.....


Much dirtier than I hoped inside......


Same deal here, this engine seems to have sat for at least a few years.

Oil pan had a film on the entire bottom and the pickup was filmed with gunk, the oil was allowed to sit in the engine for years it looks like.

Prank by my mentor, he hasn’t stopped making fun of the car since I bought it

Here is my update thread with pictures from the process with commentary, I only had two issues in total but one was somewhat expected......the other was me being lazy and I got bit because of it.

 

Drove itself in......barely.

The next morning got the car in the air for the first time to look around, I'm quite surprised how nice it is.

Nearly no rust at all, none of the typical rot these can get

Not even any real leaks





The wetness around the transfer case will come into play later.....



Oh great. Exactly what I wanted to see on a unknown car I just decided to commit my time to an engine replacement.

 

Oh I'm SURE all normal and recommended maintenance was done......

Face off

Actually surprisingly easy to access everything, the Jag forums make this car sound like a nightmare

If you take it's face off you can easily service anything that would be considered a "normal" repair extremely quickly.




Easy to prep for removal


Engine/trans/driveline ready to drop out

Shockingly the car has coolers for EVERYTHING. Power steering, trans, oil even all have dedicated coolers for some reason. I do not exactly see need for this on a low output car of this nature but I guess it's a big plus since you will never have to worry about anything having any chance of shearing from heat.

he entire cooler assembly comes out as a unit, again shockingly smart and easy. Also allows access to the compressor and alternator for less than 1.5 hours of overall work....and I've never pulled a front end off one of these before. I'm certain that I could get it to this state in 35-45 min now.

 

Converter bolts all look untouched.....thankfully.

This mid pipe is one of two things that suck about this car, it is hard to remove and extremely tight to access. I wasted a decent amount of time on this stupid part since it decided to burn the studs out and drill it for bolts.


"Special tool" for trans support, this car is extremely weird in that the engine and trans only have two mounts total at each end of the power unit and a torque limiting dogbone at the TC. This means you need to somehow support the engine/trans package and have a way to reference their locations for reinstall. Wood works very well since it deforms and can be "locked" back to where you originally had everything on initial removal.

Engine side "special tool", yea I know they made a jig for this but I'm not wasting $2000? on one for just this style of strange subframe/engine trans relationship.

AND HERE COMES THE FORD DNA. Freaking body to subframe bolts thread into the typical idiotic ford "oblong slotted nut" nonsense that ALWAYS fails to remain in the slot due to metal distortion or rust. I even let this sit for hours using a killer penetrating oil to try and avoid this. NOPE! I have to suffer though working in the small gap from door to lift pillar to pull all this out and cut the body.

OH I LOVE HAVING TO PULL MY INTERIOR APART.

OH LOOK AT THAT! They FREAKING KNEW. Easy access. You can't tell me they didn't know this would be an issue.

Please excuse the scan lines, my flashlight is PWM and it plays havoc with sensors in cameras. I can't really solve this unless I use another light but I'm cheap and don't want to use a high end one for shop duty.

I had to end up with the 3 ft snap on ratcheting breaker bar instead of the shown config due to the fact I needed to hold it from outside the car and run my impact with the other hand. Same basic concept though.

 

Now that the idiocy of the body nuts is done with.....up we go, or down? Depends on how you look at it I guess.

This car may have a ford engine platform and some chassis influence as well but honestly it's mostly Jag.

Nice clean body shell. It got to wait up there for longer than I hoped since I didn't realize most of my time would be consumed by working on prep and service of the new engine and replacing ALL of its seals.

The major parts I reused, I also transferred the valve covers over among other parts. Basically whatever engine had the best parts I transferred to the new one.

Engineless powertrain. This is insanely unstable without the engine present, was somewhat hard to get everything back exactly where it was when I lowered it but I got it.



Here is the carnage, there is literally no bearing remaining on the rod that had the failure. Bare steel to steel.

Trans Fluid drain.........so far it seems to have no issues, it cranks off all shifts quickly and smoothly at part throttle and nice and frim at WOT out to 100+, I still plan to do at least two more drain and refills.

Powertrain pod.

 

The following text below is two posts that I wrote and cut from my main forum and copied here as well, it has some relevant impressions I have of the car.

I did drive it around my neighborhood a little before I loaded it up since I was very curious and knew at that point I was replacing the engine.

Honestly I was not exactly blown away, it for sure handles better than an ES but ride noise and quality is not on the same level. I'll give it a better shake down before really forming an opinion but right now that's where it sits. I do greatly perfer how it drives though, feels RWD and reacts well to my inputs. It has a not too old set of nice Perelli allseasons so good quality I think.

I have also enough experience with XJ and XK cars that while nice I would rate them totally below the LS or S class.

Well I screwed up. I transferred everything over electronics wise EXCEPT the knock sensor........take a guess what code I have.

The sensor is under the fuel rail/lower intake and main coolant crossover tube I just so carefully cleaned and resealed. Stupid mistake on my part.

*slams head into table*

However, I did get to drive it around the shop and back home. It drives VERY nicely, sorta like a 3-series crossed with an ES, it is quite and has very light inputs like the latter but has initial responses like a 3 series as well as the same light on its feet feel. Actual handling and traction is far below my LSs, it was breaking the rears loose at only 35-40 mph in areas the 430 even can do 52-55 and this extends to all aspects.

It feels quite good and athletic but actual grip levels, braking power, and overall control are all lower. The lack of body roll invites you to play but just don't push it too hard since it will fall apart vs the type of stuff I normally drive.

That said it's a hell of a lot nicer than my Jeep and more enjoyable to actually drive than the 07 ES I had for a while. Not as refined of a car as the latter but very much more a drivers car.


*sigh* I feel like I just did this.

Idiotic design. I couldn't even use a crows foot, I had to use a janky setup with a flex head ratcheting wrench to get to the obscured bolt. Be extremely careful when doing this since the tool can bind on top of the screw and you will in trouble. Occasionally stop and see if you can still remove it since the one way mechanism will not allow you to put it back in enough to get out. This is likely the best way since everything else I have seen on the jag forums doesn't allow proper access

Pic with the tool assembly on the bolt head.

Everything pulled

Resealed and new KS installed, coolant drained just enough to get the neck back on a dry surface for my RTV to set properly. I always back up O-ring type seals with RTV if they have a flange wider than the ring since it's a failure proof way to seal it. You can also see this on the other coolant neck near the bottom of frame, takes more time and prep but I've literally never had a failure

Finally fully back together.


Here's from today when I fixed the limp mode issue from the knock sensor. Not a hard job just extremely annoying since I just did this and it's entirely my fault for not doing it the first time. Below are the first start and fixed KS videos as promised

 

Now here is an issue.....the transfer case was nearly empty and full of forbidden glitter.

Kill me.


So this is the only thing I am worried about, everything else on the car is good to go with no issues anymore but the TC is scaring me since it was nearly empty and had an extremely concerning amount of metal in it. You can see above that was all the fluid I could get out of it, I refilled it from the top fill port and it appears to be working for the last 125 miles I have driven the car on the new engine and out to 105 mph but I am not sure it will last.

Anyhow, that's the engine replacement project. Sorry that took longer than I said it would, I had too many customer cars in the way and it took me a long time to get a 3 day window to be able to do this properly.

 

This is a fantastic write-up on your work. Thanks for this and the great photos. After 17 years with our manual shift 2.5 I can say that it remains a joy to drive and has presented no mechanical problems at all.