Nemesis slain.

 

 

Just fyi, the car should be totally fine to use the J Gate at any condition.
I use it all the time to engine-brake (living in a mountainous country) without any issue.

 

Took a nice jaunt through the countryside, these cars' are such a treat when they are properly sorted & running like they were designed to.

 

I've had problems after fast changing manually, and once stuck it's involved a tow truck which has been very expensive. I know what the J gate should do, but components wear as mileage increases (as had the brass cable cover the first time), and I'm going to be careful from here on, since I want to avoid costs

 

This has been driving me nuts.
Also the same thing on the little umbrella holder on the passenger door too.
I applied a little thin layer of goop.





Then pressed the liner back into place.

 

Whilst getting an alignment, I noticed a few of the third brake light bulbs were out . That was a bit more of a struggle than I had expected. Getting the covers off requires some dexterity

One of the bulbs had welded itself in, so it required a bit of dental extraction type work. The leds that I had to hand seem to be too wide for the fitting too. Think I'll repeat this once the smaller leds arrive in the post

 

So I started to get a P0456 code, a small leak detected in the Evaporative Emissions (EVAP) system, indicating there was a minor fuel vapor leak to atmosphere.

A smoke test at my local Indy soon found the culprit, the short flexible hose from the tank access evaporative unit to the vent pipe. So a simple fix.......but the cost for this 3" rubber hose (part # NND6070AB) is outrageous! The cheapest i can find is $75 plus tax and shipping from Terry's Jag, and have seen it as high as $121....!!!!!!

This hose, for whatever reason, is a dual-sized item, larger on one end than the other, so difficult to use a one-size substitute replacement, but this has to be the most exorbitantly-priced Jag part I have run across!

 

Headed to Las Vegas for an associates MMA event I made a deal w/ one of my teen son's buddies so he can clean my carpets in the X308 while I'm gone. He's been detailing cars' for a couple of years & is really a stickler for details. He's even got a high dollar carpet extractor & shampooer. I'm usually very strict about no hands' but mine on my vehicles when it comes to cleaning. But he's trying to raise some Christmas $, so I figured what the heck, help a kid out & get clean carpet, win/win lol.

 

Got a new job with a long commute, taking my weekly commuting miles from 45ish to 700... Makes the pending issues with my car (pulling to one side, vibrations) much more pressing, while also losing most of the free time when I'd be able to work on the car.

Had a somewhat bad vibration at 60-65, tried to shim my front wheel hub bores on the off chance that the wheels were sitting slightly off center. A strip of .007" steel shim stock fit in there quite snugly all around... and did nothing to solve the vibration. Kind of a good thing, since it means I won't have to find a way to glue or retain the shims, and add them to the rear, but means I need to have a shop probably road force balance the fronts to try and solve the vibration. Or it's possibly the tires being bad. Which brings me to the next issue...

Trying to really solve this pulling to one side thing that's been going forever. Really hoping it's a radial pull, but want to be absolutely sure before buying new tires. Swapped the front 2 wheels left/right, and instead of pulling noticeably left, it pulls very gently right. I really wanted to spend the day properly isolating tires for radial pull (swapping fronts left/right, then resetting and swapping rears left/right, then reset and swap lefts front/rear, reset swap rights front/rear). However I found with my new wheels the socket mars the lugnut bore pretty bad, so I reset and stopped before doing more damage (no time to test rear tires at all). Got a nonmarring socket that will work now, I was sick this weekend so I get to wait another week and hope it doesn't rain on my one free day.

Could try to warranty the tires again, but last time I tried that the shop that sold them charged me a $45 "misc inspection" and I got the car back with 2 tires at 15psi. It was on old corroded wheels which caused the slow leaks, that wasn't the shop's fault, but the shop didn't even bother to check PSI when I mentioned a pulling issue, so they won't be getting any more business from me.

 

Tried to open the transmission filling bolt but did broke the hex key bought 6 liter of mag1 low viscosity atf fluid which meets lt71141 specs its slightly different at some temperature but i wouldn't spend more on the transmission because its not in great condition

 

Hope you didn't drain the transmission 1st.

 

Changed the engine oil. The AJ26/27 motor has to be one of the easiest to do an oil change on, the pan drain plug is easy to get to, it has a rubber "o" ring to prevent any leakage, and the oil filter is easy to get to with plenty of space to get a good grip to unscrew. I use Castrol GTX 10-40 dino oil and Napa Gold oil filters every 3,500 miles

 

used some help from some good ppl on this forum and changed my front shocks and mounts for less than a $100 for all 4 parts. results were great and it only took me like 3 hours! im gonna take a swing at the back ones.

 

Just a heads up that replacing the front shocks and replacing the rear shocks is a completely different story.

Here's a forum link on the subject.......
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...-video-201680/

 

thanks hadn't seen that good video yet, but I'd been doing some research. Rear looks much harder than the front. Also whereas I felt pretty safe doing the front , the rear looks potentially dangerous because you are actually removing a spring. I'll figure this out and hunt for parts slowly.

Regarding the front replacement I did a great job finding cheap parts, $13 each for the front shocks (sensen cheap chinese brand) and $30 for the 2 (meyle) mounts. Rockauto.com and partsgeek.com

 

Hello Vegas Jag,
You can have that vent. What's your address?

 

my hitch/ bike rack is complete. I did not want the bike on the roof or on the trunk. So I had an idea, and it worked out good.

 

Threw some new front tires on my car. Maybe a bit soon to say but the pull to the left seems to be greatly reduced. Will know for sure tomorrow on my drive to work. Still getting a pretty bad vibration up front from 55-65mph that can be felt in the steering and pedals... kind of frustrated there, figured that would be resolved with the new tires.

Not as frustrating as trying to get IDS working though. Got a clone davina and been going through the rabbit hole of trying to get the SDD/IDS software setup right and working.

Randy those are some interesting project one color choices... think you meant to post in the x351 forum though. Is that a custom made hitch for the x351? I was thinking of possibly getting one in the distant future and the ability to take a hitch would be a big selling point.

 

oops wrong group. Used my cell phone lol. Yes a custom hitch.