Hello Everyone,

Relatively new member here to the community.

3 weeks ago I purchased a 2011 Jaguar XJL from the Jaguar San Diego dealership. 35k miles on the clock, all service records, and always serviced by the dealer by previous owner who leased the car.

It's has been a great car until today.

Admittedly I was late for an Easter lunch across town so I popped it into sport mode and drove in a "spirited" manner for 30 minutes. Caught myself going 90 occasionally. But drove at 75mph most of the time which is my normal highway speed.

Anyways, to get to the point here and my inevitable question.... I park the car... Turn it off... Enjoy a 2 hour lunch with family... Return to my car in the driveway... Turn it on... And out of the rear exhaust pours out THICK WHITE SMOKE. And when I say thick white smoke I mean it looked like a fog machine was strapped to the car and the outpouring of white smoke was equivalent to a cumulus nimbus cloud. For those unknowing of what that is just imagine a dense white continual stream of thick thick white smoke.

I know my way around a car with what I will call weekend garage maintenace experience (oil changes, pads, calipers, etc). My knowledge mostly stems from MB and Porsche from having owned them in the past and currently. So Jaguar is new to me so still getting used to learning this new brand to me.

So I'm aware that white smoke = water, blue = coolant, and gray/black = oil (generally speaking).

After waiting for the car to cool down I raised the hood and found the following:
-NO white residue under the oil cap. IE oil cap looked just fine.
-Coolant tank was 1 inch BELOW the low line. Please note that yesterday the coolant was at the TOP line in the coolant tank. The owners manually actually says to check coolant level once a week which I thought was interesting but ok.
-the coolant liquid itself looked brown/tan-ish.

At the end of the day the car is still under warranty. So that's good.

But what in the heck could be a cause of this???

Blown head gasket? Cracked engine block? Fuel or water pump? Brake fluid leak? (Side note: I have heard that brake fluid can cause white smoke).

I have not turned on the car, haven't touched it, left it in the driveway and Uber'd myself home. Will deal with the towing and all that crap tomorrow.

But essentially my 2011 Jaguar XJL with naturally aspirated v8 left me stranded and is producing a smoke that in other vehicles would be demonstrative of something very very serious.

So I am very concerned and more so very disappointed that this could happen at 35k miles.

Any ideas or suggestion on possible causes?

Is this common?

Other owners ever experience this in the 5.0 v8?

It is a used car so obviously I will experience used car problems from time to time and I get that. But giant white think plumes of dense smoke and coolant level drop at 35k miles?!?!? That does not seem right to me at all.

Any thoughts, brain farts, suggestions, questions, recommendations, ideas are whole heartedly welcomed and please do not filter your responses! Let me have the honest to gods truth.

If this is common, design defect, or whatever that's too bad as I will have to dump this car and ergo my first experience with Jaguar will have left a poor poor taste in my mouth. One that I will not allow myself to relive (read: will buy something else instead and never come back ).

Sincerely,
Worried Puzzled and Confused

 

I know its not what you want to hear but from your description.... if I was a betting man I would go "all in" on it being a head / head gasket issue. I guess a compression test is the only way to know for sure but I would be shocked if it was anything else.

As for why? Well it could be that you are just really unlucky. These things do happens sometimes but its certainly not a common on the 351 that I am aware of.

Thankfully you are under warranty and I doubt this issue is anything they can worm their way out of so hopefully you will get a full repair and a little something to compensate you for your exprerience.

Good luck and remember to give them hell. We DO NOT accept failings such as this on a premium marque such as Jaguar!

 

I agree on the head gasket diagnosis. I don't think driving the car quickly should cause that failure. It probably had already failed and the extra heat you generated revealed the existing fsilure.

I would insist on inspectin the block and head before slapping it back together,

 

Just do not try and start the engine. You could experience hydro-lock (engine sucks in water on the intake stroke and tries to compress it on the compression stroke; not being being compressible you can cause serious internal damage to connecting rods, etc.). Good luck!

 

Thank you everyone for the comments!

I too have a very strong suspicion that its a head / head gasket issue.

Its already at the dealer and I met the service department foreman and walked him through the whole situation.

Got myself a loaner for what will probably be a week (or longer) of repair work.

No word just yet from the dealer on this smoke problem but I will report back on what happens!

Thankfully my god brother works at the dealership so I kinda got a little friends and family treatment from the service staff so I'm confident that the dealership isn't going to wiggle out of the warranty (famous last words...).

Fingers crossed!

 

Agree with all of the aforementioned.......hoping to hear and that all is resolved soon to your satisfaction

 

Back in the olden days....there were two major reasons for white smoke: head gasket or transmission modulator.
The difference was that the head gasket was very vaporous and would dissipate quickly after exiting the exhaust. The modulator failure would suck transmission fluid through the vacuum port and be ingested into the engine. This caused a very heavy white cloud.

I have *no* idea if a vacuum modulator exists on the XF...

I am looking forward to what they find.

 

I agree on the possible transmission modulator issue if the car has one. I don't know either way but it is certainly worth mentioning to the mechanic. Sometimes you almost have to tell them what to fix these days.

 

The low coolant level points to a HGF in my opinion. Judging by this forum, this is not a common problem at all with these engines, but with all used cars, one never knows what the previous owners got up to, (or maybe didn't !!)

 

No vacuum modulator on any car for years and years.

Very old and out of date way to control the transmission. So no worries about transmission fluid being sucked into the engine that way.
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Thank you everyone for the great feedback on my original post at the top about the HUGE white plume of smoke coming out of my 2011 XJL.

I'm very thankful that this forum exists and I'm so glad I joined when I did.

So I finally have something to report back on my 2011 XJL that had the white smoke problem from this past Sunday.

I received a call from the service technician 1 hour ago and.... Are you sitting down???

Because as I write this I need to sit down, have a stiff drink, and smoke a cigarette (which I quit years ago)...

THE CAR NEEDS A NEW ENGINE.

Yup! You read that right!

Service consultant called and said:

"We have ordered a new engine from the U.K. It will take some time to get here. We don't know all the problems with the car just yet. The service manager and the technician working on your car will call you later on when they have more info. But as it stands you are getting a new engine so please hang on to the loaner for as long as you need it.."

I didn't know whether to cry or laugh at first. But I think I ended up laughing on the phone.

I of course had to break the news to the mrs. and I am happy to report I was able to walk away from that phone call with my ***** still attached. (Sidenote: I was the one who pushed for the purchase of the Jag XJL while the mrs. wanted to get a Hyundai Equus or something like that).

So before I go back to the original San Diego dealership who sold the car to me I would appreciate any and all comments from other owners out there on what I should now be concerned with.

Some questions that come to mind (which no doubt the mrs. will be banging on my head tonight) are:

-How will this affect resale value?
-Am I just asking for huge headache if we keep it?
-Are other components of the power/drive train now adversely affected? If yes which ones and why?
-Other general thoughts?

The car is still under warranty for another year THANK GOD. Apparently the cost of the new engine is $30,000.00 (read this on another forum from an owner who also had an XJL 2011 and had the engine replaced under warranty).

Should I go back to the SD dealership and ask for a free extended warranty? Should I ask for them to buy it back?

We have only had the car for 3 weeks! Not even a month. For those just seeing this thread we purchased a 2011 XJL used with 35,000 miles on the clock for $41,000 ($45,000 out the door). Easter Sunday rolls around, we visit family here in Los Angeles, when we leave white smoke pours out of the exhaust, and 3 days later I get a call that the car needs a BRAND NEW ENGINE. That's the gist of it.

On the positive side of things...:

-Is this an anomaly and we were just unlucky?
-Would a new engine be actually a good thing in terms of reliability and resale value?
-Or am I living in a dreamworld and should dump the car ASAP and run for the hills as fast as my legs will allow?

Before we purchased this car I spent weeks researching this vehicle online, read as much as I could possible google, watched every review that exists on YouTube, and I only read good things about this generation (and a whole lot of bad things about earlier generations). So this news and experience is so defeating and saddening and deflating that one of my all time favorite brands and models (the XJ-L) has basically died after only 3 weeks of receivership.

Again thanks so much for all your feedback thus far. I hope this experience is helpful to others and I look forward to everyone's comments, advice, guidance, and thoughts.

Regards,
Worried and Distraught

 

Wow. personally it depends on how long you intend to hold on to the car in terms of resale. If it were me I would probably be happy . However I think you should be covered under the terms of the warranty as the car should drive as intended without compromise. I would probably seek advice though and certainty that if you accept car with the new engine and it doesn't drive to your satisfaction you can return car for a full refund. Hope that helps. I'm sure other more mechanically minded and more experienced members will advise shortly.Its a pain in the *** though....

 

If I were you, which I'm obviously not, I would be happy Jaguar is standing behind their product 100%, and providing you with a loaner. I don't see any downsides to this, but maybe others will. No need to worry about the wife: "Hey dear, we paid for a used car and ended up with one with a brand new factory engine. See, I was right!"

 

As others have said, I'd be over the moon that Jaguar are standing 110% behind their product, really really positive stuff, especially after hearing so many negatives lately.
It's brand new engine, brand new, not with 35k miles on the clock......personally I think its a good thing

 

Quartz, if you are intending to hang on to the car, I think what you are getting is in your best interest. You now have a new engine and any possible "depreciation" is going to be minimal when you go to sell the car. If you are not intending to keep the car, then it really depends on the person. I would be somewhat happy that the motor is newer than the rest of the car.

As for why the engine failed, too many possibilities. It could have been something as simple as a gasket wasn't cut right and there was a flow restriction through the head leading to the head getting too hot (and therefore the head gasket failing or the head warping). It could have been the water pump failed and it lead to decreased flow through parts of the engine. Hard to say. This is just 2 possibilities I can think of.

Like was mentioned, get the car back, drive it easy for the first 500 miles and make sure that the car is what you bought. If there are any other issues, take it back and make them known.

 

I thought the vacuum modulator only operates at WOT as a supplemental to a kick down switch as a way to signal full throttle downshift so wasn't sure if it was still I use or not. I had one on a Ford that failed which wasn't ancient. I suppose that must have been years and years ago. I must be getting old (In fact I know I am).

Then again a shifter and clutch are obsolete ways to control a transmission and we all still clamor for them so who knows what is still on there. I am not going to crawl under there to look.

They do smoke like crazy when they fail though.

It will be interesting to see what died in order to cause Jaguar to replace the poster's engine! Hope they tell what it was...

 

Tough luck when purchasing a car. Sorry to hear about it.

All I can point to is my own experiences for owning 5 Jaguars of late. I owned a '05 XK and an '08 XK with the 4.2 L engine and presently have 3 Jags, '10 XKR, a '12 XF and a '12 XJL with the 5 liter engines. They have been for all practical purposes trouble free, the biggest issue being a condensed water leak into the footwell of my '08XK.

So, according to my experiences the Jaguar engines are VERY reliable and I would not have any problem trusting the reliability of a new engine.

 

My first question is, why didn't the dealer give you the Select Edition extended warranty? I've never heard a dealer not offering the additional warranty on a car they have sold as used. As for the reason for the engine failure it most probably a result of the water pump having a slow leak that was an issue on some engines and was replaced under warranty. The reason they are just replacing the engine is so they can get it back and perform a forensic examination, IMHO. But I would ask the dealer to give you the extended warranty.

 

Keep the car ! OK, you got a load of white smoke but the car was still driveable, and no horrid noises, no conrod through the side of the block or anything. What has likely happened is the previous owner ignored some symptom hoping it would just go away and you are presented with the result down the line.

What they could have done is strip the engine down and rebuild with new parts, but this is a hostage to fortune as far as they are concerned, and costs almost the same as a new engine. $30k is the spares price of an engine, it is not the cost to Jaguar. Better for them and for you to just fit a new and unused engine, as you still have the warranty on the car.

I don't think you should let this event put you off. Warranties are for exactly this kind of event with used cars, (and new ones for that matter !!).

 

Hello Everyone,

A minor update is that the manufacturer wants a series of tests to be performed on the car before they will issue a new engine. And these tests will take a minimum of 1 month to perform.

So the the timeline of this whole situation could be as long as 4 months.

Spoke to a guy yesterday on the phone who had the same exact problem. His 2011 XJL had a coolant leak, a warning light went on in the dash, and according to him 10 seconds later the engine seized. He luckily had an extended warranty. Initially the extended warranty said they would not pay for the repairs. He got a lawyer who did some arm twisting and he got his new engine which was a 4 month process. He got the car back 2 weeks ago and is now selling the car on autotrader.com even though it was warranty till 2019.

Thanks for all of the comments above so far. It is very much appreciated and has helped me sleep better at night!

But I t does look like there is no resolution to this anytime soon. Yes they will fix it under warranty but it might be a brand new engine OR it might be a rebuilt engine. Are there pros and cons to either way?

Personally I hope to have 1 of 2 things happen which are:

A) ask the dealer to buy the car back (if we can't get an extended warranty)
Or
B) ask the dealer to give us an extended warranty for 6yrs/100k which I think is called "Special Edition Warranty" or Special Select or some fancy marketing play on words for an extended warranty.

At this point all I want is peace of mind should this happen again IF the engine blows up again at 35,000 miles in the new engine (and yes I know this is unlikely... But it did happen).