Hi Guys an Guyesses,
I live in the North-West of England with a wife and a 1995 XJ6 3.2 Auto (X300). Here's a recent picture if it helps identify my car.




It's a fabulous car to drive and more comfortable that my own armchair in the house. Is it really sad to say that I often go and sit in it with a laptop connected by wi-fi to the house network?
It drives like a dream with no rattles and the auto box is really smooth. Every electric gizmo and gadget works and the air-con is nice and cool.
So what's the problem, Steve? I hear you ask.
It's something that stops me from having 100% faith in the car starting whether it be outside the house or when we have driven 30 miles to a special country pub for Sunday lunch and are setting off to drive home. There is no rhyme or reason as to why it happens but the electrics just seem to die on me.
Here is what happens.
I use the alarm fob to switch off the alarm and unlock the doors.
I get in the car and put the key in the ignition, give it a slight twist and the warning / Advice lights light up around the speedo / tacho area. When the majority of them go out I turn the key further and nothing happens. The starter doesn't turn over at all and the lights go out.
I have found by experimenting on the 3 or 4 times that this has happened that at this point, the alarm fob will not set the alarm or lock/unlock the doors. Trying the key in the ignition again does not light up any of the normal lights round the speedo.
What I HAVE found, purely by chance, is that opening and closing the boot will solve the problem. I discovered this one day when I gave up on the car and went to the boot / trunk to get my walking frame out (I'm disabled) to go and phone for a taxi to take me home for the spare keys and also to get all the info about my breakdown service. It's normally in the car but I had been adding some insurance documents to the file and forgot to replace the whole pack in the car. So I closed the boot lid and purely by force of habit I pressed the "Lock" button on the fob and it worked. I got in the car and put the key in the ignition and the lights lit and the engine fired up sweet as a nut just like nothing had happened. I left the engine running and got out (propping the door open so it couldn't lock itself) and put my walking frame on the back seat on top of a jacket so as not to mark the cream leather (sod the jacket, lol) and the car drove home with no further issues.
I suppose I could take the car to my nearest Jaguar dealership but that's about 30 miles away. There used to be one less than half a mile from me but wouldn't you know that it closed down within 3 days of me buying this Jaguar privately. The snag with the dealership is that they take a week to answer e-mails and you can never get through on the phone so Gawd knows how long they would keep my car for if I took it in. If it just HAS to go in then so be it but if there are known fixes for this type of problem I'd much rather get my hands dirty trying to fix it myself from advice gleaned on this forum than hand over my car and very thin wallet.
Any advice very much appreciated.

ps ..... I know it may sound a bit silly but, because the boot lid seems to have some significance, I thought of trying to loosen any and all cabling or wiring looms that may be affected when the boot lid is opened or closed and then wrapping them all in some kind of protective covering to stop them from being twisted during boot operation. Only snag is that it has been raining every day since I thought of that idea and our house doesn't have a garage, just a driveway.
Cheers,
Steve

 

Opening/closing the boot is the key fact from what I can see. The security system detects open/close conditions incl boot, doors, and bonnet. I believe there have been problems with damaged wires in the loom section in the flexible tube between bootlid and body.

 

check your battery cables, and connections. Opening and clsing the trunk is jarring the main electrical connections. Since the vehicle relies on the alternator during the driving cycle you wont see this problem once it is started. I have seen this many different times on different model vehicles. Usually it is the ground wire(earth wire) is either corroded, or loose at the main points.

 

Thanks for the replies, guys.
Sorry it took so long to reply but I couldn't get back on the PC again last night.
I have a wife and she has a Facebook account. 'Nuff said??

Fraser Mitchell .... I also heard that which is why I got the idea of loosening the electric string in that area and protecting it from chaffing, twisting or losing the connection if possible.

phd12volt ..... Good thinking, Batman. It may also be a good idea to protect the rear seats with a blanket or something and keep my walking frame in the back seat for a while. Doing that will allow me to drive the car without actually using the boot lid at all. If the problem doesn't occur, we would seem to have found the cause of the problem. All that's needed then is to isolate which bit of electric string is at fault.
Are you talking about the cable that runs from the battery's Negative terminal to wherever it goes to ground?

Thanks guys,
Steve

 

Here is an easy way to check, goto the battery connections, ( i understand your are physically disabled) and the next time it doesnt start, turn your highbeams on, and try to crank the vehicle. If your lights go out, (i assume the high beams normally stay on during crank) then you have a very high resistance issue. First thing is to examine the ground cable (from the battery to the point in the car it attaches too). Check to make sure they are tight and corrosion free. I have also seen where corrosion gets into the main cable and corrodes inside of it. You can visually see it sometimes as bumps under the rubber coating.

If all looks well with that cable, then check the main battery cable terminal (+) and do the same.

I would be willing to bet this is the issue with your vehicle. And i am NOT a betting man.

 

Thanks for clearing that up.
Nothing much to report except that I replaced the battery which had been on an external charger and emptied the boot so that I would have no need to open it again. I drove the car all day today knowing that I just needed to do local stuff so a breakdown wouldn't be to much of a problem. All I can say is that after 8 stops and starts with the ignition turned off each time and the car left locked for about 20 minutes she never even looked like not firing up first go. If she stayed like this I would be delighted to use the rear seats for storage instead of the boot, lol

 

My last post was on the 19th of May and it is now the 30th. I have driven the car most days and with several stop/starts on every trip.
The car has not missed a beat and started first time either hot or cold.
Also, the boot/trunk has not been opened.
My thinking is that I may need to somehow loosen the wiring loom in the area where it leaves the boot/trunk so that it isn't pulled or stretched every time the boot is opened or closed.
But there's no rush.

 

That motor of yours Stevie is exactly like the one I had, same color, same year. And I had exactly the same problem. Just now and again it wouldn't crank for starting.
Turned out to be the inhibitor switch in the gear stick for "park". I found all that was necessary was to push the lever well and hard into park when I stopped and switched off. No further probs!
Leedsman.