My relationship with modern Jaguars is over, the XF - battery issues constantly, the XJ - exactly the same but worse - I am sick and tired of these modern electrical vampires, yet again my POS XJL has killed a battery - 2 batteries in a year both drained to below 4 volts - the electrical systems in these cars is a joke, I only had it on charge last week and today dead - my Range Rover wasn't this much hassle - at least you could still get at the damn battery when it was dead.

Not seeking advice the car is going I have wasted enough time and money on it, it has let me down too often.

To anyone thinking about these cars that won't use them every day or at least every other - DON'T ....

 

All modern luxury cars are loaded with technology that requires a fully charged battery to operate properly. A weak battery will cause all sorts of electrical gremlins. Just ask any Mercedes, Audi, BMW, or other luxury car owner. That's not a secret on this Forum.

Blame yourself for not buying a CTEK battery maintainer and using it every day if you don't drive it far enough daily to keep the battery fully charged.

Blame yourself if you leave the Smartkey in or near the car. The car will remain in Convenience Mode and take a long time to shut down.

Blame yourself if you don't lock the doors whenever you park the car, even in your garage. That prolongs the time it takes to shut down.

Treat it right, and your XJ will be a great car. Just like my 2013 XJ 5.0LSC has been.

 

Bite me - this battery was charged every two weeks, always locked - my charger cost way more than any cheap *** CTEK- told you I wasn't after advice

 

If you weren't after advice, and you surely don't expect an X351 forum to be full of people that feel the same way you do - what were you after?

Enjoy your olde worlde cars: I for one will be sticking with the convenience of modernity.

 

Hard to say?
My 2014 XJR battery lasted 10+ years and I just recently changed it. I have left the car at the airport for over 6 weeks and it started just fine and has never had any electrical or battery problems. Now I did have the small SS battery fail so that is an electrical failure. I don't use a battery tender either.

I think it's always better to get the latest version of the current model you can because the car manufacturer has had some time time to work the bugs out. That's why I waited and got a 2005 S Type R. Several years after they were first released.
Same with my 2014 XJR. Many problems had already been fixed on the XJ by 2014.
Mainly the popping sunroof problems.

I also read the car forums prior to purchase. That way I know what to expect and even more importantly see all the great repair threads we have on this forum. I have said it before but I would be long gone from the Jaguar world without the help and information available on this forum!
.
.
.

 

It might be late, since you have already desided to let go, but normally an working XJ or XF do not drain the battery. There must be something wrong on or some device connected to the vehicle prevent systems to go sleep mode. By my experiense this the case on most of the cases. Specially chinese HUD projector or telematics devices connected to the OBDII port.
One problematic Porsche been found 2 trackkers from previous owners what previous owner did not remove when sold. Instead he/she just cut antenna cables hiding them out of sight. This caused 3G/4G radios yelling max trying to find network. Together they consumed bit over 1A plus telematics dongle on OBDII port kept instrument systems awake, so owner could read temp, gas, etc values from his mobile anytime. Needles to say, poor Porsche battery was empty on 4 days.

If battery drain exeeds these values there are something wrong and vehicle should be repaired.

The XF drain are bit higher (under 30/25mA) than XJ (under 20mA) on sleep.
Notable are that the older vehicles actually have higher drain in sleep mode than newer.

 

Seems like maybe more of a user issue than a product issue. A variation of PEBCAK comes to mind.

My XJL rarely gets used every day of any given week. Sometimes it stays in the garage for weeks. No issues with battery drainage. But I do double lock it, etc. Never seen the need to trickle charge it either.

Hopefully the OP feels better after throwing stones here. I won't lose any sleep over his opinions - or his poor manners.
Best of luck to him and his pursuit of the perfect car.

 

Sorry to hear that you're leaving Obiwan, and about the gremlins in your XJL.
I imagine that you would want to be rid of any vehicle that gives you the problems your XF & XJL have given you; it could have been any vehicle and you'd be looking for another.
Bad luck with the 2 you've had.
I am a little fuzzy on how "modern" your 2 specimens were though - correct me if I'm wrong, but are you talking about a 2008 XF (15+ years old) and a 2010 XJL (13+ years old)?

If you were local, I might be interested in taking it off of your hands for a reasonable price, although I don't favor the LWB as I prefer the XJ and at least a 2012 at that.
My wife's 2012 XJ has been great in the nearly 6 years we've had it except for a HP fuel pump failure that made me retrieve it from a few hundred miles from home.
It does give the annoying "low battery, start car" once in a while. But that's much more rare since I got my wife in the habit of bringing the key into the house when she parks it in the garage.
It only happens if we leave the door open for a while (10+ minutes or so) or leave it powered-on with the engine off.
She doesn't lock it though - that doesn't make a difference with ours.
And I've never had to consider putting it on a trickle charger often or ever for that matter. If it did need that, I'd be looking for the problem or to get rid of it too.

But assuming you operate both your (older) XF & XJL like any other car, or otherwise reasonably, it sounds like you've been cursed with a couple of lemons that have gremlins that can't be exercised.

There are many more great vehicles out there that you can choose from & hopefully find a better fit that serves you well.
So farewell and happy motoring!

 

Well, if you ever want to feel better about owning a Jag again, do what I did and buy a Tesla Model S. That had me flying back into a XJL. I am such a happy camper now that POS Tesla is no longer in my garage and that I never have to deal with another Tesla representative again.

 

Tesla is more of a software company than a car company, trying to get support from them is like trying to talk to Microsoft when your email doesn't work

 

The funny thing about that, is Tesla absolutely sucks at software. They have all these cool features but the truth is everything is half baked and buggy. And that's the software in the cars. The software they use for ordering cars, service and support is completely f'd up, which is why any Tesla representative you manage to get live will tell you they will call you right back with an answer and then you never hear from them again. They have no way to solve your problem with their crap software systems, so even if they genuinely want to help, they have to tell you that and then run away.

And you would think they have a better way of diagnosing their iPad on wheels. But when my 8 month old $100K Tesla with only 5K miles lost all power while driving and I coasted to a stop on the side of the road at midnight, they took 3 weeks of head scratching to figure out how to fix it. It may be a new kind of car company, but it's really not any better.

 

I didn't say they were a good software company, I meant they built their support system from the point of view of a software company not a car manufacturer. A decent car manufacturer has things like roadside assist which, while they're usually outsourced to the lowest bidder, are at least an attempt to get you back up and running quickly... Tesla treats you like a software user, "Try a reset then good luck from there."

 

Someone will hopefully buy the unwanted car(s) and have the wit to look for the power drain & fix it - result, a happy owner.

The fix is the thing, rather than a charger.

(No harm having the charger as well, of course.)

 

I didn't say you said they were a good software company. I am just letting everyone know that while the Tesla apologists use that excuse for their issues as a car company, they are not even good at software. I can give many examples.

But I am guessing you have never owned a Tesla, much less had to deal with their service, otherwise you would realize that their service is more akin to a prison run by corrupt warden and prison guards than anything a software company would do.

 

Do you often argue with people who are agreeing with you? 🤦🤦

 

Don’t be a snowflake. 🤣🤣🤣

 

LOL I'm trying to agree with you and you're flapping on about "I guess you don't own a tesla" like you're offended at being agreed with.. just the kind of reaction a prissy little snowflake would have

With that attitude it's no wonder tesla support doesn't call you back, I wouldn't either

Bye

 

Vasara's post reminded me of a couple of news stories I saw on television probably ten to fifteen years ago. Some car dealers were installing aftermarket covert tracking/disablement devices so that if the buyer failed to keep up with the payments, they could remotely disable the starter and then repossess the vehicle. The TV news interviewed some guy who discovered such a device under the dash of his late model Dodge truck. Apparently it was causing some sort of problem and his mechanic finally figured it out and removed it. That's when he called the TV news station and they did a story about it, warning buyers to beware that some car dealers were doing this. In a second story, there is an electrical substation nearby in North Richland Hills that sometimes when people drove by, their cars would shut off. Turns out it was putting out some kind of very powerful radio interference that was playing havoc with security system immobilizers. The utility company fixed something and it doesn't happen anymore.

I've also wondered about some of these engine "tunes" that seem so popular in certain of our subforums (particularly all of the supercharged variants). I've read on here a couple of stories about people unknowingly buying cars that had been "tuned" and subsequently the stock tune reapplied before turning it in at the end of the lease or trading it in. If you didn't buy your vehicle brand new, its possible that a previous owner, lessee, used car dealer or even a new car dealer in its past could have installed some stealth device or made some modification that's wreaking havoc. And some ill effects could be continuing even if it'd been removed.

Plus I just posted in another thread about how a mouse once upon a time wreaked havoc with my X308's electrical system. Years ago, I bought a Toyota Supra at a charity auction. It had been donated because it wouldn't start and somebody had given up on it. They had installed a new battery, new terminals, new starter, etc., etc. but I cut the insulation on the battery cable and found that about three inches in, it was totally green. The previous owner or their mechanic cleaned what they could see but failed to think that the corrosion continued further inside the sheath. I installed a new battery cable and made a tidy profit. I hope its something simple that's just been overlooked. Please make one last ditch effort and hopefully you'll find it before its too late.

 

I just want to say a couple things - first, 2011/12MY is when they really fixed the bugs with first gen modern XJ - so if you ever go back try to get 14MY++ you'll notice it's night and day.

Second - sorry to see you go, the electrical is really a monster that they expect us to figure out, it takes too much time - that's for sure.

 

I'm about to make your ****ing day.

TO THE OP WITH ELECTRICAL VAMPIRE DRAIN, and ANYONE ELSE WITH DRAINING BATTERIES.

buy a multimeter.

Remove the positive cable (technically you could do ground as well, doesn't matter)

connect one probe of multimeter to the empty battery post, and the other connector to the positive cable you removed.

Turn your multimeter to AMPS. It'll display how many amps the car is using, even while it's off.

it should be very low, I'm not sure what normal XJ's run, but it should NOT be high. If someone wants to check there's and post, that would be awesome.

start in a corner of the fuse box, and pull one fuse, check to see if the amperage drops dramatically, and replace the fuse.

do this for EVERY fuse until you find the one that drops the amperage, therefor showing you exactly which circuit is at fault.

check the wiring and components on that circuit.

Youve just saved MONEY AND TIME like no other.

hope this helps, I can clarify further if needed