What I found to be interesting about the Paramount system was it would have noticeable exhaust note at all speeds, but if I set the cruise control at exactly 70mph it would be silent. Coincidence or deliberate it was a useful thing for long journeys, not sure if it was because the 3.2 didn’t have enough in it to make a noise either! 😂

Not sure what my long term plans are for this car, but I would like the exhaust to be a bit more prominent. I still don’t understand why Jaguar went to so much trouble to make their V8 sound like a 4 cylinder!

 

I can certainly agree with the Paramount exhaust, compared to the standard equipped XJRs I've owned. It gives the car a hint of sportiness a deeper note that even Harley bikers appreciate.

The only complaint was from a Karen I startled on a morning walk with her husband, I stopped at the local store to pick up milk and the paper, she storms in and tells me my car was too loud and frightened her, I respectfully suggested that she might be guilty of the same thing, as I left husband is outside looking embarrassed, I did a rather loud startup, mixed it with some revs then let it rip in first. It isn't that loud.

I wonder if you could get your old system back Stu?

 

Interesting about the Paramount system. I might have to look into it as the powerflo one I got fitted the other year is bloody horrible. Still sounds like a 4 pot & drones like a chav mobile. The supplier have been that useless I've given up going back to them.

 

@Sean B I doubt I’d be able to get the system back as he seemed quite taken with it when he bought the car. But given how he’s allowed the rest of the car to deteriorate I doubt the system is in good shape. 😔

@Hooli I hope you’ve got deep pockets then! A new system from Paramount is £1,500+ 😧

 

I paid £1600 for a crap system the other year. Sounds like a stupid little 4 cylinder & drones like mad at low speeds. it annoys me every time I drive the car & the place I got it have been utterly useless about it.

 

Last week, I bolted everything back together and started up the Daimler. As a reminder I had:

• Replaced the plastic secondary chain tensioners
• Replaced the bearing in the Supercharger belt idler pulley after a "Doh" moment when I tried to push out the old bearing from the wrong direction
• Replaced the auxiliary and supercharger belts. I'm not actually sure that this needed doing but the mechanic had said they were worn

I decided to film the first start up to see how it went. This resulted in the a truly boring piece of video but since I'm using this thread as my record of ownership and maintenance I felt bound to link to it. Don't feel obliged to watch it. I'm deciding whether it's worthy of an upload to the Facebook "Dull Men" group. Having said that, I'm pleased to report that the chains are silent and even the squeak from the supercharger belt when cold has gone.


In other news, a week ago after one drink too many we had an auction accident. My wife misses her Green BMW Convertible a lot, and we spotted this on an auction site - it's green but so much more beautiful than the BMW. With 30 minutes to go in the auction, we upped the current winning bid by £100 with zero expectation of winning. Two Gin and Tonics later, it was ours and we picked it up yesterday from the Trough of Bowland - one of the most beautiful places in England. Tomorrow I'll start a thread in the XK8 forum to talk a little bit about the car and the list of maintenance items I've found on Day 1.

The question now is can I hang onto my three cars or does one have to go?

 

I own five cars and two coaches, I’m sure you’ll manage with only having three 😂

XK is a nice thing, I’ve always had a thing for them. I haven’t been to the trough of bowland since I was a kid though, should try and get there again as it’s not far away.

 

I’ve had three cars for most of the last decade and finally sold the Camry to a neighbour last fall. At least you have two drivers in your household - I’m sure you’ll manage.

 

Three cars is too many for me, but I do have four motorbikes instead.

Always liked the XK, gorgeous looking cars.

 

First thing to get a look at on a ramp is the lower front subframe on the X100 (rust)

 

The subframe was fine but the chassis rails were another story... I'm going to update my XK8 ownership thread later with the fun!

 

I can’t believe it’s five months since I last updated progress, but I do have excuses – the new twins; 6 weeks in Spain chasing the sun; and, of course, the XK8 which has been much more demanding than the Daimler.

While in Spain I updated my Daimler “to do” list which still includes a couple of items from Chris’s original list. The item most on my mind was the rear suspension: It’s rides soft and low and when I measured against spec, it was about 50mm low on the driver’s side and 30mm on the passenger’s. I’d also started to get a nasty clunk on the driver’s side rear, so I set off to investigate.Using the instructions posted so many times by @motorcarman and with a bit of advice from him and @M. Stojanovic I removed the rear springs and shocks. I’d had no hint that the CATS dampers were in any way faulty so on investigation decided that I needed to replace the springs, spring and damper isolation bushes (they weren’t terrible but had begun to crumble), and the lower damper bushes.


Jag original isolation bushes and lower damper bushes were going to cost me around £160 per side from Jaguar Classic. Even using aftermarket, it was going to cost about £75 plus the cost of pushing out the old lower bushes (I’ve tried doing that myself before and wasn’t going to try it again). I was able to get a pair of new Bilstein CATS dampers with all the bushes for a little under £400 and guessed I may be able to sell the originals to recover a little more cash, so I took the plunge and ordered new ones. Added to the list were all new bolts and nuts, a pair of bump stops (they’ve long been on the to do list) and new rear brake pads. Not a cheap exercise but she’s worth it. There’s no labour cost, and it’s hopefully not a job I’ll have to do again. I also ordered a new fuel filter as I had no evidence it had ever been replaced and it was going to be easier to replace it with the springs and shocks out of the way.

I cleaned everything up while waiting for the parts but was on a deadline. We had friends arriving from Malaysia for a special birthday trip last Friday and I’d promised to chauffeur them round in a lovely limo. That gave me a day to get them all back in and another half day to test and clean the car. The first problem was that I managed to create a tiny fracture in the fuel pipe about 300mm downstream of the filter when I replaced it. Obviously, I couldn’t source and replace the whole fuel line in the time available, so I replaced a small section with some top-quality, high-pressure fuel line and similar quality hose clips that I had left over from the Series 3 under-bonnet replumbing. That’s a temporary fix and I have a new fuel line on back order.

It took about 3 hours to get everything back in and by Thursday evening everything was back in place, torqued up and the car the car was back on the ground. A nervous 50 mile shake down drive proved very positive. The suspension was quiet, and the ride was even smoother than before. I got home and measured the ride height; it was within 5mm of standard, so I appear to have fixed the issues.

Another 200 miles of driving our guests round over the weekend has created no issues and we’ve sent them off on their way so now I move onto the other items on my list. First, it’s maintenance items…. Especially maintenance of “sealed for life” units – what exactly is “life” in the context of an old Jag, I wonder?

I’m doing that today so will post this evening.

 

I've always assumed it's the life of the unit. never touch it & then replace it when it fails.

 

The statements “Lifetime, Lifetime Fill, Fill for Life, or Sealed for Life” used by vehicle
and transmission manufacturers, is typically understood to indicate the transmission
fluid and transmission filter will last the lifetime of the vehicle while under warranty.

Certainly not the lifetime of the owner or the car, however that would have been nice.

 

See the photos in my post below. It would be interested to see what colour the fluids would be with another 23 years of hard work!

 

Yesterday, I got my planned maintenance out of the way. Having greased the two nipples on the rear axle UJ’s, I removed the filler plug on the differential. I’d decided to replace the diff oil on the Daimler after doing the same on the XK8, prompted by feedback from other members. Fortunately, the plug is much more accessible on the X308 than the XK8, where you must drill an access hole through the boot and essentially work blind. I removed about 1.5 litres of foul-smelling, dark caramel coloured oil and put about 1.6 litres back in before it started dribbling out of the filler hole.

See if you can guess which of the samples below is the old oil and which is the new (and, yes, those are Laphroaig tasting glasses :-)).



I then moved onto the transmission pan where things got a little more interesting. I had my concerns about the autobox – the pan had a nice coating of ATF and the car struggled when reversing up an incline. Upshifts were fine but downshifts on a trailing throttle could be a little lumpy so I was hoping that maybe a bit of a service might improve matters.

The sump plug came out easily and I drained what I could through the drain hole. The pan itself came off easily too and I was careful to make sure I caught the remaining ATF. The pan itself is in great condition with only a small patch of rust by the drain hole – easily treated. What was a concern was that little more than 3.5 litres of fluid came out in total after a couple of hours – the capacity without torque convertor should be substantially more than that. I replaced the in-line connector with the one in my service kit – that appeared to be the source of a leak and the O-Rings looked pretty shot – installed the new filter and put the pan back on with its new gasket.

At the point, with only 3.5 litres of fluid having come out of the transmission, I was a bit reluctant to put in the 4 litres that the manual dictates so went through a gradual process of adding fluid, getting the temperature up to 80c then measuring. At a little short of 5 litres, it was halfway between min and max so good to go. After running for a few miles the shifts smoothed out and the car reversed without hesitation up a steep incline. Hopefully, this is good news for the future of the gearbox but I got a good deal on 10 litres of Mercedes ATF so I’ll probably do another drain and refil in a thousand miles or so to make up for the fact that I didn’t drain the torque convertor. Here's the before and after again:



I also did an engine oil and filter change to complete the triple!

I’m now on a roll so, this morning, I fitted new gas struts in the boot – now it opens and closes smoothly but it’s cost me a fair bit of skin off my knuckles – and also used the auxiliary connector in the boot to install a couple of USB and power sockets. One is attached to the permanent live and has its own switch, the other is attached to the switched live to I can power my DAB receiver through its USB connection without fear that it will drain the battery.

 

I've owned this car for 16 months now and love it. At some point I'll add up what I've spent in working through the list I took over from Chris and to which I have added my own findings. For my own records, here's what's left this morning in order of priority

• A P1647 code appeared when I took the car out after the fluid change. It seems a bit of a coincidence that it happens when I've been messing around filling the ATF so I'll do a bit of troubleshooting before replacing the sensor. I won't look forward to that job if it turns out to be faulty
• The brake pedal has been a bit soft since I had the brake line repaired - I don't think the mechanic bled the system properly. I'll get a mate round and spend a few hours getting them right.
• Creaking driver's door stay. This worries me everytime I hear it so I need to deal with it before it becomes a big problem
• J-Gate and Sports button lights - my next job as I also want to install a proper USB socket in the glovebox, running it from the front auxiliary connector
• Lights in the switches between the two rear seats - I'll do this when the centre console is out for me to do the J-Gate
• The headlining - one day I'll do this but not anytime soon and probably not til it starts dropping at the front. I've decided not to go with the Myrtle option
• Supercharger service - I'd like to get this done but checking out options

I do love this car and it's a pleasure to drive it almost every day. Yesterday, during my test run, I gave a PITA boy-racer the shock of his life when I left him for dead from traffic lights on the Chester High Road - even with over 100k under its wheels, the old girl can still move and all in complete comfort.

 

I think I recall reading the diff & supercharger oils should be done every 60k. I got them done on my XJR when I got it as I doubted they ever had been done before.

 

I should probably add the supercharger oil change to the list pending a proper service.

Thanks