Hi all. This is my first posting so I hope some of these questions are helpful to other new owners.

I'll be picking up a used 2013 XJL 5.0 NA (with 69k miles on it) this weekend.

A dealer in Houston inspected the vehicle and recommended some high cost maintenance/replacement items:

All Season Pirelli Zero Nero tires ($1,300 with alignment), front brake replacement kit ($1,200 includes front rotors, sensors and pad), eco battery replacement ($400 includes a module reset and some programming effort), and second key FOB replacement ($400 requires programming labor).

I'd really appreciate any guidance from the forum to a few questions I have.

1. Is there any advantage to having these items completed by a dealer?
2. Are there alternative all season tire suggestions (looking for moderate wear, quiet ride, general daily driving, any price/good value)?
3. Are there alternative brake packages (no squeal, low brake dust)?
4. Is there a way to permanently bi-pass the eco-start stop feature, dis-connect the error/warning notifications, and avoid this feature altogether?
5. Can I find another aftermarket key FOB that will suffice as a backup key?
6. Any suggestions on aftermarket all weather floor mats?

Thanks in advance, I'll look forward to participating and providing some value in the forum ongoing.

 

I have been a fan of the Continental Extreme Contact DWS over the years. I also had a set of the updated DWS 06 on my previous XFR about 1.5 years ago and loved them. They are going to be a few hundred less total I think. See if you have a Discount Tire near you, they're great.

 

rice0120, as for having the factory do things over an independent shop (aka, indy shop), there are only a few things that would require a dealership stop. The big question comes to what sort of computers the indy shop has. For example, the indy shop will probably have something that would allow programming of keys, but may not have something for the programming following the battery replacement. The indy shop will be more than capable of doing a brake job on your car for much less. So, what you will want to do is find a few indy shops and see what they can and cannot do for you. Granted, a lot of this stuff if you have a friend with some basic mechanical ability, they can do this for you too and save you tons of money (for example, you can get a cross drilled/slotted rotor setup for your XJ including new ceramic pads for all 4 wheels for around $400, vice the $1200 the dealership wanted just for 1 end of your car).

As for tires, do a little bit of searching here. The Pirellis are a recommended tire by the members here along with the DSW-06 tires. I have the Pirellis on my car and I have been happy with them. I am going to get about 30K miles out of them. The only "negative" that I can say about them is that they seemed to wear kinda fast initially, but the wear has slowed down with time. Granted, part of that may be because I was probably a bit harder on the gas than I am now since the car was new and I was loving the new power.

As for brakes, there are lots of options. Also keep in mind that what the dealership is offering is their "top of the line" package that is replacing a lot of stuff that probably doesn't need to be replaced (ie, pad sensors and rotors). If the steering wheel does not shake when you brake, then your rotors are more than likely fine as long as they meet the minimum thickness requirements. Keep in mind that Jaguar wants around $250 a wheel just for rotors (no labor, just the part). The pad sensors are another $55 a wheel (if the light is not on, then the sensor is just fine and does not need replaced). If you do some looking, a set of good ceramic brake pads can be had for around $50 up front and $30 for the rear. I just picked up a set of rear ceramic pads delivered to my house for $21. But, this is where a good indy will say you tons of money by only replacing what is truely needed to be replaced. Wish you lived closer as I would tell you to come over and we would do it at my place.

As for the Eco-start feature, on your year car, there is no approved "disabling" of that feature. The problem comes in that the EPA measured the MPG of the car with that and therefore, most places will not disable it. If you do some looking, there are a few things that you can do to either minimize the amount of time the motor turns off or possibly completely defeat the system. But, if you have any type of warrantee on the car, this can also possibly void the warrantee (depends on how much trouble the dealerships wants to create).

Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do about the spare key. Now, you can possibly find and indy shop that will program the key for you once you buy one off of say E-bay. They can be had for much less than what the dealership wants and the programming will probably be another $100 (minimum shop time). If you ask around, there may be a member with what is called an SDD program which is essentially a dealership level diagnostic tool. With that, you could program your own key. Some may even recommend getting your own SDD computer (can be had for around $300 or so) so that you can do a lot of the diagnostics and code checking without having to rely on someone else. After say 3 trips to the indy, the computer would pay for itself for simple items like this.

When it comes to floor mats, I will leave that to others. I cannot give a recommendation since the factory ones do what I need from the floor mats.

 

rice0120,

Initially, I hated the stop-start feature. But that was before I figured out how to use it, and now I really like it. The key is the amount of pressure you apply to the brake pedal. If you keep an imaginary raw egg between your shoe and the brake pedal, stop-start won't engage. This is useful when I know that I'll be stopped for a very short time. But if I just stopped at a red light and know that I'll be there for a while, I'll press harder on the brake pedal to cut off the engine. Stop-start really works - I've gotten over 17 mpg in city driving, which is impressive for 470HP.

You can disable stop-start by pressing the ECO button on the dash every time you start the engine. By default, stop-start is on whenever you start the engine, but you can manually turn it off - until the next time you start the engine. I know that may be inconvenient, but it's a small price to pay for not constantly getting warning lights that I suspect will happen if you try to disable stop-start. But I may be wrong, so you can try removing the small auxiliary battery and let us know if that works.

Also, +1 on the Continental Extreme Contact DWS 06. I'm very pleased with mine.

If the XJ smartkey works like my XKR smartkey, then buying a used smartkey might not work. When a smartkey is separated from the car to which it was programmed, that smartkey becomes an "orphan" and can't be reprogrammed to work with a different car unless that smartkey was previously deprogrammed from its parent. If you decide to buy a used XJ smartkey, be sure to pay for it with a credit card and get a written, money-back guarantee that it can be reprogrammed. If it doesn't work, you can dispute that charge.

Stuart

 

Thank you on the tire recommendation Wcoy and Stuart. I did find reasonable price on the Pirelli Zero Nero from Amazon prime of all places. So the free shipment made the choice easy. After driving the car in the snow, I'm sure these all pirelli season tires aren't going help me until the winter is over. I'm also in pursuit of a separate set of Pirelli snow tires and wheels.

Thermo, I see what you mean about the fuel savings with eco boost. I will move ahead with restoring the feature and eco battery replacement.

I also had the dealer configure an new key fob/remote. It's was a ridiculous $700 price, but I couldn't imaging having only one remote without backup.

As for the brakes, I ordered ceramic brake pads from the Auto Parts Warehouse ad my local mechanic is confident they'll work great.

Finally, i've placed and order for four Lloyd's all weather rubber floormats. The product is custom fitted for the XJL and is called Lloyd RubberTite (comes in twelve colors).

Thank you again for your replies. I hope to provide my own contributions to this forum ongoing. -rice0120

 

No need to remove the small battery. Just unhook one terminal and no ECO anymore.
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