I have a 2004 VDP with 120,000 on the dash. Near mint inside and out. Rear vent shade doesn't work and in the process of tracking down the cause of the ' Air suspension fault ' code.

How many real miles can I get out of this V8 ? Who has the highest mileage and what have they done so far to get there?

 

I have an '04 xj8 with 68k miles on it. Love seeing these threads!

 

72K miles on my 2004 XJR, and it runs great, should I say like a "cat". I suspect with synthetic oil and not driving hard until its up to operating temperature, I would hope for a long life, even if its only one!
Rye Jag

 

Well, mine isn't an 04 but I have 67k on my 06. Love it. My only issue, knock on my dash, right now is my volume on my stereo likes to go slightly up and down at random times for some reason.

 

There are some owners in UK and Europe over 200k miles. The editor of 'Jaguar Enthusiast', the magazine for the Jaguar Enthusiasts Club has his well over 130k miles. (I am a member of this club). His car has been very reliable, but needed some corrosion dealing with last year. This was the familiar 'filiform' corrosion.

Obviously to get to very high mileages some parts will require replacement, such as suspension bushes and the air compressor. Other minor parts can fail in that time, but usually the engine and transmission goes almost for ever.

Oh, almost forgot - my car is on 69k miles.

 

I've got 146K on mine...

replaced 2 shocks and had the cracked transmission pan replaced about a month ago. I use the recomended Castrol GTX in mine. Runs nice and smooth and gets 27 mpg on the highway with the cruise set on 80.

 

I have an '04 VDP with 126k miles on it and she runs great. Everything works as designed.

 

2003 X350 with the 3.5 V8 over here in the UK, mine now has 190000 on the clock, it had 53000 approx when I got it just over 6 years ago. Drives really well and although I have had a couple of suspension issues and also the wishbones it has been really great. A bit of corrosion as mentioned by others but not enough to really worry me.

 

Whats is the "filiform corrosion" I had mine on a lift yesterday and there was a decent amount of rust and some corrosion for this car, everything is so nice in/out and up top.. Makes me wonder..

 

there are quite a few threads about it, maybe more in the uk than over there. Basically it is a reaction with the aluminium, so not rust !
The common places are at the base of the C pillar, along the edge of the boot/trunk lid, and also along the bottom corners of the doors. The worse one of mine is on the C pillar, it is less than an inch overall though.
Jaguar did offer to correct the problem if the car was less than 6 years old , some people did have the work done, sadly, I did not find out about this correction in time !

 

The people experiencing the corrosion - are they primarily storing their jags outside in the weather?

 

X350 cars exposed to salt tend to suffer more, (as do other steel Jaguars), and this means air-born salt from the sea, so even cars in warm climates near the sea can suffer.

Another word for it is crevice or filiform corrosion because a crevice is where it tends to start as the mechanism for aluminium requires low oxygen levels at the corrosion site.

It has been claimed that due to the use of steel rivets in the body shell, galvanic corrosion occurs. Well, I have never seen this and have looked at lots of X350s here in the UK. Jaguar took great care with this; the rivets may be steel, but are zinc-coated. The rivets are plainly visible in the boot aperture drain channel, and I have never seen anything here, but have seen filiform on the boot lid leading edge where there is a crevice between the lid and the rear screen seal lip. The wiping action here eventually wears enought paint away for filiform corrosion to start on the underside, and this eventually creeps round to the top when the owner sees it, (to his horror !!).

It is unsightly but not as serious as rusting with steel cars. My car is 10 years old and in pretty good shape, although I have had to cure this nuisance corrosion in about 4 places, one caused by a stone impact.

Read all about it here: -

aluMATTER | Aluminium | Forms of Corrosion | Forms of Corrosion: Introduction

 

Mine has 144000 miles, I consider this just run in! But it is not really how many miles but how these miles are done, my last two cars had over 200k and still ran perfectly, they both got there with very minimal repairs, neither used any quantities of oil worth mentioning, gave good mpg and performance, the last Jag I had weren't quite so impressive (X300 3.2) at 168000 the head had to come off due to large oil leak, once off inspection revealed worn tensioner guides, although i didn't replace, as it would have been a lot more work, other than that the internals looked really good, i sold it with 183000. I think an engine should last 300k without any major worries, frequent oil changes and keeping an eye for anything out of the ordinary, many engines are ruined by simple faults like coolant leaks, oil leaks, waterpump failures etc. Timing belts and chains are also ones to keep an eye on.

 

Really there is no reason for an X350 not to go on running for decades. What stops most people from doing this is (1) parts get too expensive in relation to car value and (2) some parts go NLA thus making it extremely difficult to keep the car on the road.

However, having been to classic car rallies over the years, those cars that were very attractive then and remained so, appear at the rallies. I saw a lovely Mark V Jaguar at a rally last Sunday, 1951, and few were built, yet owner seems to manage to keep it running OK. Obviously not a daily driver, and that is the key. Once cars pass into the "classic" bracket, the owners just run them for fun, not utility, and these owners are few. Most people move on to the next "in" thing in autos.