I think I’ve mentioned before that a friend of mine has a '98 (?) XJ8 that she purchased cheap out of a salvage yard a few years ago. Supposedly it ended up there b/c the fuel pump went out on it, and the owner decided just to scrap it. So, the fuel tank got pulled out and sat in her boot for a long time, until my friend purchased it.

Anyway, last year my friend was finally able to find someone to work on Goldie (she has the gold body color) in their spare time at home (actually, turned out to be one of her neighbors), and for cheap $$. To his great credit, he actually managed to get her up and running again in less than a week Frankly, I never expected it to ever be in running shape again, esp as more and time went by and it sat in her driveway. And, this neighbor is even, despite being a retired tech, “not that familiar with Jaguars”.

After getting “Goldie” running again, the friend/neighbor detected a few days later she was having trouble with her V.V.T.S. He and my friend reached out to me to see if I could procure another one for them, being that new ones are $$$ and she is on a fixed income. I did find ONE for sale on Ebay, used, but supposedly tested. He put it in, and Goldie seemed to run fine for a few more days, then stopped. The tech has supposedly since developed some medical issues, and has therefore not been able to jump back on her again to find out what is wrong. He did opine though that he believes the VVTS we put in has also now gone awry (I don’t think he has put an OBD II to the car yet, though).

Question: if in fact the VVTS is bad, would that prevent the car from starting? My gut feeling is that it would still start, but probably run rather poorly, esp. at higher speeds/RPMs. If not, then I’m thinking something else has gone wrong with Goldie.

 

Get a scan off it...guessing isn't going to help.

 

Would, but the person who was working on her took her battery out, and apparently made off with it. Those H-8 batteries are not cheap, either - $140 is the cheapest I've found here. Tried to use a jump box to give her enough juice to test her, but no go. Ugh.

 

I’d highly recommend checking the secondary timing chain tensioners before going any further with the VVT. Getting the camshafts & crank timed to make absolutely sure that’s all good is vital.

 

Take the battery and put a steady full charge on it disconnected from the terminals. Do the terminal cables have any corrosion on them? If so, they need replaced, you won't get proper charging or output for starting. You need a minimum 11.5v to get these to start...13.5 is much better.

Btw, $140 is pretty good.