Hello fellow jag enthusiasts - i enjoy documenting the stuff i do on my cars for archival and overall google-trubleshooting purposes, and figured this would be a good place to make a thread kind of blog on the newest addition to my fleet - a nice low mileage 1995 XJR-6.


I decided to get a jag mostly on a whim earlier this summer, and went about test driving all the available cars i could find.

I originally wanted a x308 (i wanted to own a v8 just once in my life), but after driving a few i just couldn't shake the feeling that it just didn't feel as special as i had hoped.
Sure they looked great, had tons of comfort and a smooth engine, but they just lacked that final piece of magic to convince me to fork out the cash.

So just for the heck of it, i went to look at a xjr-6, and even though the car i went to look at was a bit rough and way above my original budget, i instantly knew that this was the model for me.
The x300 interior just suits the car so much better then the later 308 interior, and the supercharged six has lots of character and a great whine.
I also knew that i HAD TO HAVE the sports alloys, as they just looked amazing, and suit the car perfectly.

the only problem was finding the right car, with the correct wheels, color, interior, and in good condition (NO RUST!)
luckily i managed to find the seemingly perfect car in hamburg on autotrader, so i contacted the seller and hoped for the best (most international car sellers i tried contacting never wrote back)

The seller assured me the car was as nice as nice as it looked, so having no way of verifying it i just had to take the sellers word for it and agree to buy the car without having seen it first.
a deposit was paid, and the seller arranged all the paperwork and the 30 day export plates.

Germans still like cash, which was a big hassle, as norway is now pretty much totally card based, and everyone from my bank to the currency traders needed to see airplane tickets and correspondence between me and the seller before they believed i wasn't going to do something criminal with the money.

I booked my airplane ticket, and flew down a week later with a pocket full of euros, feeling mighty anxious.
The german toll station was also pretty stumped when i showed up with declaration forms to declare my entry into the country with a bunch of euros.
I guess most people just risk the fines by bringing the cash without declaration, since they had to go find and then dust off the old money counting machine, and was generally as confused with the process as i was.

I had left my options open and made lots of emergency plans, in case the car turned out to be in worse condition then promised, so i had mentally prepared myself to walk a way from the deal, loose my deposit and book a return flight the next day.

Luckily, the seller was waiting for me outside the airport as agreed, and the car was looking resplendent as we drove back to his dealership to sign the paperwork.

(some pictures i took right after setting off with the car)





Now, driving home was going to be pretty exciting, as Europe was in the process of locking down again due to the second wave of corona, and the car was a low milage example and an unknown entity.

My original plan was to enjoy a day in Hamburg before setting off the next morning, but seeing as Germany had compulsory face-masks and generally pretty anxious mood around town, i decided to drive straight to Denmark and spend the night there before driving through Sweden and onwards to Oslo the text morning.

Now, the same day as i flew to germany, most of Denmark turned "red" as far as corona cases went, meaning a 10 day quarantine on return if i had stayed the nigh there.
Luckily, Copenhagen was still a sole "green" zone in a sea of red, so i could spend the night there without being quarantined!

Sadly, i didn't dare test the top speed of the car on the autobahn, as i didn't really know the condition of the car, and was afraid of ruining something so far from home.
I did go up to 180km/h though, and it felt pretty strong and stable at that speed, though i could almost see the fuel gauge moving...

Entering Denmark, the speeds were lowered and i expected the drive to be uneventful, but the danes really surprised me by being the worst drivers i have ever seen.
in the few hours it took driving from the German border to Copenhagen over the great belt bridge, i witnessed so many close calls, and people were dodging back and forth between the lanes without indicating with only centimeters to spare between bumpers.

Twice the car right behind me almost got rear ended (which in turn would have rear ended me as well), as we had to slow down due to congestion.
The first time a volvo just came flying out on the grass median next to me, and the other car was an SUV that just barely missed us and swerved between the lanes as he stood on the horn.
quite shaken i arrived in my hotel in copenhagen and went to bed.

The next day i noticed some oil under the car, but it wasn't a big spill, so i started on my way to Sweden, praying for better drivers on the other side of the border.
The drive was largely uneventful, as Sweden was a red zone, and i couldn't stop for anything other then fuel to avoid the dreaded quarantine.
The swedes were mostly responsible drivers though, so after a couple of hours i arrived on the Norwegian border, where i had to go through customs to declare the car and pay the 25% VAT on the purchase price.
After safely arriving in oslo, the car was leaking pretty badly, but i had googled all the potential failure modes before buying the car, and was pretty sure i knew what it was.

All in all, i was pretty happy with the purchase, and i was pretty relieved such a low mileage car (65400km) had survived the long trip without breaking down completely, as i had expected some old rubber to cause problems.

In the next instalment of the saga, i will be tackling the various fixes and tweaks i did to the car before getting it registered, so stay tuned.

 

So as i mentioned, the car was leaking pretty badly when i arrived at the garage, but i had googled A LOT before buying it, so i immediately suspected the oil-cooler bypass.

oil stains

A quick look with a camera confirmed the suspicion, and a halfway empty servo reservoir told gave me a clue to the other culprit.


dripping bypass

high pressure servo-line

i cleaned off all the excess oil around the servo lines and went for a drive, and when i came back, i found the high pressure line had squirted fluid all over the place.

i ordered some fresh o-rings and a new hose, and set about finding a quiet parking spot where i could work in peace.
(wrenching is not allowed in my parking garage)

changing both the bypass o-rings and the high pressure hose was quite an easy job, though naturally a bit fiddly when you have to bring all the stuff with you and do it in a parking lot.








luckily, those two jobs fixed most of the leaks, though there is still a small leak from the seal on top of the rack, where it connects to the steering column.
i have added some power-steering stop leak, so hopefully it will soften the o-rings enough to seal it, or else i will need to buy a rebuild kit.

next up comes fixing the broken speakers.

 

Congratulations on getting the XJR

Years ago I bought a 1995 XJR/6 with exactly 30,000 miles showing and added another 140-150,0000. Magnificent car in many respects with lots of attributes in the "plus" column. I really liked driving it.

Owning it, though, was not entirely a pleasure cruise.

I can honestly say, however, that the car never once left me stranded by the side of the road. Never.

Cheers
DD

 

Hehe, yeah hopefully it wont leave me stranded anywhere.
The last 5 years my daily driver has been a 97 subaru domingo, and i also have an absolute heap of a 70s mini 1000, so i expect this to be a paragon of reliability compared to those two.
I also just sold my old 1989 Renault 5 GTE, so i guess just have a thing for old cars with a big potential for things going wrong and difficult to find parts

 

Great story, Bjarne. You did get the best colours, in my opinion. She looks fantastic.

 

Thanks, and naturally i totally agree!

It desperately needs a detailing though, as its covered in swirls and scratches from machine washing.
For some reason i keep buying cars with single stage paint, even though i know how hard it is to keep them looking good.

I think this car deserves a proper hard wearing ceramic coating once its properly polished, but it's going to be costly, so i have started saving my pennies for next spring when the car comes back on the road.
(they salt the roads here in winter, and since the car is totally rust-free(!) i'm not going to let it near even the smallest grain of salt)

 

As with most XJ this age, the speakers were completely shot - the previous owner had removed the cassette player and installed a modern head-unit, but obviously given up on music once he figured out the speakers needed changing too.

Having already ripped apart all my cars to fix broken stereos, i had no such intrepidation, and armed with a very good youtube instruction video i set about dismantling my door-cards.

Now before we continue, the hardest part of the entire speaker upgrade was of course trying to figure out what speakers would fit, and what to buy.
Crutchfield had an online guide that would tell you if the speakers would fit your vehicle or not, but there were people successfully fitting speakers listed as not fitting, plus i wanted to buy from a local store since the Norwegian Krone currently has a pretty low exchange value to foreign currencies, and most of the crutchfield speakers were not available.

So after some furious days of googling, i decided to go for some JBL GTO620 coax speakers, as they seemed pretty shallow compared to a lot of other similar speakers, and had a pretty good reputation.
i had previously used some Rockford fosgate's on my subaru, and though they sounded plenty punchy, the highs were pretty grating so i hoped the JBL's would beat them there.

Interior dismantling is always a pleasure, and its always fun to see what kind of ancient treasures you find in the crevices.
Showing off its japanese heritage, i found a couple of yen coins in the drivers side door card, and a seemingly unused maxell cassette under the rear seat.



in addition to the tag on the seatbelts, a piece of foam in the front door also revealed the cars birthday


but returning to the speaker install, the door card removal itself was pleasingly simple thanks to a pretty good guide video on youtube.
the speakers i had chosen is of the modern type that is not really made for bottom mount, so i had to make some spacers to mount them without interfering with the surrounds.
i decided to make the spacers out of some old cutting boards, as i figured they would hold up better then MDF, as that has a tendency to shred once you start screwing into it.

the surrounds extended about 6mm out in front of the speakers, and the spacers were 10mm thick.
the speakers themselves were 62mm deep, so 72mm in total with spacers.
the original speakers were 68mm deep, so 4mm less then the GTOs with the 10mm spacers.

there really wasnt a whole lot of material to mount the speakers to outside of the three original holes though, so i had to get a bit creative.
i decided to make first screw the spacer down using two screws in places with lots of material to assure that it would be secure, then screwing the speakers themselves into either the spacer itself, or through it and into the door-card using long screws.
the positioning took a bit of fiddling, but in the end i managed to fit all four speakers securely.

in the front, there were lots of room, so the speakers fit fine, but in the rear, they had a bit less space and were a tight fit.
The rear spacers should probably have been a millimeter or two shallower, but i managed to press the door cards in place in the end with a bit of force, so no big problem

 

Fascinating to read your story of buying and importing from Germany. A brave decision with the current pandemic. Good to hear it went well.

I had a normally aspirated 1996 X300 Sport for four years and put just over 65K miles on it in England and France. It was the most reliable Jaguar I've owned in fifty years. I replaced it with a 2000 X308 which was exactly the opposite in reliability!

Graham

 

Beautiful acquisition Bjarne! I concur that the colours go very well together. Nice job on the speakers!

 

Interesting read, fully reflecting what enthusiasts do. You did your research, took the risk of flying there and driving back, all done during the pandemic. So enjoy your new ride - or shall we say, a legendary Jaguar in BRG.

 

My adventures in buying an X300 in March were cut short by the pandemic. I located and bought a car in British Columbia (sight unseen) and had planned to fly there and drive it home. Overnight, all the flights were cancelled. Ok, so I'll rent a car for a one-way trip there and drive the Jag home...did that and was happily preparing for the journey when Manitoba closed it's borders to non-residents! So I reluctantly abandoned my plans for a 4200 km winter blast in the "new" XJR and hired a transport company. That car owes me a roadtrip.

 

Yeah, i was pretty lucky my story didnt end up the same way - had i waited just one more week the trip would have been impossible as everything closed down again.
Hope next year will be better, because i too want a nice carefree roadtrip like in the olden days of 2019

 

i was taking a look at XJR videos on youtube when i suddenly saw something familiar.
Hey, that looks a lot like my car - it even has the same unorignal mats that were in my car, and the same japanese oil change sticker under the bonnet...THATS MY CAR!

i guess now i know when exactly it came over from japan.
its also apparent that someone went on a roadtrip all over japan between march 2017 when the last japanese oil change was done and december 2018 when it came to the Netherlands, as the mileage jumped from 43399km to 62945km.
(i believe the japanese date is written as heisei 29, which should be 2017)


anyway - didnt expect to find my car on youtube - maybe i should send the dealer an email and ask them what they sold it for

 

Bjarne, you should down load that video and save it for posterity!

 

Good idea! i guess dealership videos dont usually last that long before being deleted.

edit: Its also apparent that it had cupholders in the armrest originally.
Guess they were broken or worn though, since it now has a non-cupholder armrest.

 

So continuing on - the car has been given some fresh supercharger oil, new rc9ycc plugs (though the previous Bosch plugs looked brand new) and a shiny new Andy bracket
I didn't really do a proper AB test when mounting the bracket to see how much acceleration has been improved, but the car feels a lot more peppy and responsive, so i'm pleased with it.

 

Your car looks great. I agree the x306 is so much nicer than the x308. I've had mine for 3 years now and intend to keep it for a very long time. You had better luck than me on your drive home after purchase! I lost all the coolant when the hose linking the water pump to the water rail (located under the supercharger) failed at 120kph. Fortunately I was able to stop quickly and no long term damage done. However, the escaping coolant caused problems with the throttle body and the throttle position sensor to fail so it was an expensive job to fix. If you don't know how old this hose is I'd replace it. The hose is cheap to buy but it's a difficult/expensive job so it gets neglected. While replacing it I'd also replace the complicated 'octopus' bottom hose.

 

Sounds rough!
The hoses i have looked at so far has looked pretty good, but yeah, i probably should take a proper look at them all to minimize the risk of a catastrophic failure out on the road.

 

like many old XJ's, mine suffered from serious rubber malnutrition in the radiator area.

The cure was fresh rubber in the radiator mounts and the lower condenser mounts.

Changing the rubbers were quite a simple job, but a bit fiddly to do on your own, as its quite hard to wiggle the radiator around when laying on the ground underneath the car, trying to get the rubber where it belongs.
it was also slightly frustrating to align the two upper condenser mounts at the same time as the radiator mounts when remounting the top-bar, as it kept popping off on one side when pushing it down on the other.
Having someone to help you wiggle the radiator from the top, and push down on the top-top bar from the other side would make this job a breeze.











(The shop was out of x300 specific condenser rubbers, but the ones that were listed for the xj40 seems to be the same)

 

Yes.

Changing the lower "octopus" hose is not something that could be done by the side of the road....and I suspect many ordinary/typical roadside auto repair shops would not want to take on the task. I recall spending 10 hours to change mine although, now that I've done the task once, I could probably pare it down to a mere 6 or 7 hours

Cheers
DD