The great news is that I finally have laid my hands on a XF-R - picked it up a couple of days ago after having the Pirelli Sottozero (sp) tires bolted on. We proceeded to do a snowy 450 km drive the next day. I'm happy to report that the XF is truly awesome in the snow, winter mode softens things up a lot and still allows you to get an immense amount of power down while passing. Very impressed with this and the car in general.

However, the bad news is the dealer was a bit sloppy and left summer washer fluid in the reservoir, so, I purchased some winter fluid in hopes of getting things melted and flowing properly.

Trouble is, you need to open the hood to do that! It's -20 deg C here and not particularily nice, but, I pulled the release and topped off the reservoir. Problem is the hood won't latch again. The hood release lever isn't retracting fully and seems sloppy/loose. Possibly a weak spring, or the cold causing the cable to pull tight. The latches under the hood appear to be in the right spot but they don't respond to a reasonable attempt to close the hood.

Any ideas? I'm pretty much on the surface of the moon so far as getting Jag service is concerned. Tomorrow I'll get the car into a heated garage to see if it loosens up...hoping for the best.

 

Sounds like water in the cable sleeve. If you take a car fom a warmer and damper environment to a colder climate you can get these issues.

Are you slam shutting the hood or trying to use the British method of just pressing on it?

Either way the hood should latch on the safety latch and can be driven this way into a heated parkade overnight.

 

I tried both methods of closing suspecting that there could be some idiosyncricy, no luck with either. There's no real reason to think the car was in a moist environment given where it came from, interior BC and Calgary.

But, hopefully warming things up will do the trick. Is a definite bummer...the first big drive wasn't though

 

Just running the engine should warm the cables up enough to get them moving again.

 

Tried that with no luck, she's warming up in a shop now...

 

Jaguar of Calgary is actually a pretty decent dealership. I have not yet tried the independents here.

One thing to check if the hood still won't latch is that the hood mounted latch hoops are secure and correctly adjusted. The passenger side one on my 09 worked loose and the hood wouldn't latch correctly. Adjustment is fairly simple, the threaded adjustment with a nut on each side of the hoop. Reason I mention this is the "bonnet open" fault message sometimes illuminates if the hood isn't adjusted correctly. A quick improper fix by a dealership anxious to sell might have been to over tighten the hoops to switch off the fault instead of fixing it properly. If so then the first time you opened the hood it wouldn't close again.

Be careful with the hood as it is aluminum and may bend or dent if you lean hard on it.

 

Thanks Jagular, knowing the hood was aluminum I was being a bit of a chicken with the whole issue.

After 6 hrs in a plus 6 deg C shop the latch worked as it should, dropped from 10 inches and all was fine.

Now, onto the issue of determining how ot have this happen again. I am damn lucky that I didn't open the hood on the drive, I would have had a problem on my hands then!

Jagular and others who live in cold weather - have you experienced this? I'm hoping for whatever reason that this was the accumulation of some water vapour in the cable and nothing more.

FYI, this occurred in the -20 to -28 deg C range.

 

Never had this on my Jag but have on other cars in our climate. If you can find the open end of the Bowden cable sleeve near the latches try squirting some cable lube up the sleeve. Bike shops and home hardware type places should sell this graphite in a solution product. Push comes to shove you could spray WD 40 in followed by silicone spray. Remember that WD 40 disperses water but also cleans off any lubricant. Powdered graphite sold as lock lube also works and can sometimes be found in a liquid carrier solution.

I have used this stuff for this issue with success, keep the lube away from the cable clamp area if possible. Also, work the cable by working the release with the hood unlatched a few times to help the lube work its way up the cable. Only one side will likely have the cable sleeved as the cable connecting the two latches should be naked wire. However, if that section of cable is also sleeved then try lubing that also.

 

-16 deg C and feeling like -36 deg C. Just opened my hood this morning and had no issues with it. Hopefully you can figure it out and get it fixed!