It didn’t come like this. I wish I had before photos. Years of crud layered with power steering fluid. Thanks for the kind words and sorry for the off topic post.

 

Its ok John, photos of Jaguar engines are always welcome on the forums, no matter the topic. Especially the V12 kind. I threw one in to start off the thread!

I try to keep things clean under the hood but it's not quite as pretty as yours. And you haven't seen the underside of MY engine, and you probably don't want to. Remnants from the oil hose burst still cling in dark places underneath.

 

I am taking apart the frond end of my car in search for a aircon gas leak and to clean the right hand side in front of the powersteering reservoir. It seems that quite some time ago there was an oil leak on the front right which has made a very sticky black mess of everything down there.
So why not change the belts while I have everything apart and excessible.
Before consulting this thread I had found a supplier in the UK, British Parts UK that offered the three belts for around £6 each and an idler for around £28. Trouble with ordering parts in the UK from Europe mainland is that import taxes need to be paid and a somewhat heftier shippingfee.

Once I got the parts it turned out that they were all Dayco belts, one of which was the NNA4705AA. That was what was indicated on the wrapping but the original belt is 146cm and this one was only 115cm.




That was the moment that I consulted this forum. I happened to be in the States that weekend so I ordered the Continental belt fron RockAuto as described above. This belt is indeed 1cm shorter than the original Jaguar/LandRover belt which is also made by Dayco by the way.
Meanwhile I consulted British Parts UK and they consulted their suppliers with all the information I supplied to them. Much to my surprise they sent me, free of charge, an original Jaguar belt which is around €55 from the dealer. Great service!



left the belt that came off, right the new one.

Right now I am still in the process of cleaning the black goo off so I cannot tell you if the Continental belt fits equally good as the original one. I will update as soon as I have put the belts on.

 

I'm a bit baffled: I cleaned up the front of my engine after removing fan and shroud, removed belts and cleaned off a ton of oily dirt. I have two NOS Jaguar belts for the alternator and the main drive belt NNA4705AA. I thought it would be a five minute job putting the belts back on but the alternator doesn't want to move enough the get that belt on (I even took the tensioner bracket bolt out which did allow me to get the belt on but then I couldn't get the bolt back into the bracket to tighten) and the main drive belt seems a bit slack, the now very clean and shiny tensioner apparatus doesn't seem to want to tighten enough. The old belt was tight and seems identical to the new one.
Anyone got any insights on this?

 

G'day Oliver,

Here is a pic of my alternator and belt adjuster for info. As you can see I have plenty of adjustment left.

The numbers on the belt are BANDO RIB ACE 5PK825. I think that means it is a 5 ribbed belt 825mm total length which by the look of my pic I could probably use a shorter belt.

Cheers,
Jeff.

 

Thanks I put the old belt back on for now, which is a napa jd-2 1114mx. I got the other new belts on ok. I'll prob be doing the harmonic balancer pretty soon