Hi all. I'm new to the forum. I hope you all can help me.

I finally bought my dream Jaguar today and on the way home from buying it from a private individual, it lost power and broke down!!! This was not 20 miles away from the seller's home. I had the car towed back to his home, but he now has my cash, I have the title and he has the car.

This is what happened: I lost power about 20 miles from home. It was a gradual loss, in that it sputtered and drove about 100 yards on the side of the
road until it totally lost power. I tried to restart it, but it wouldn't kick over.
When I looked under the hood, there was oil coming out of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th spark plug. I unplugged the plug wires and looked down into the holes and the oil contained therein was bubbling.

Can anyone give me any info as to what in the heck happened?? The car only has 83,000 miles on it!!! I'm almost in tears!!!

 

Hi unforgiven,

Sorry to hear about your car drama, it's never good when your new toy breaks down just minutes after handing over your hard earned cash... I had a similar experience when I bought my cat. It broke down on the way home having just picked it up but difference being I knew about the problem (transmission) but took the risk anyway. I almost made it home!!!

Oil bubbling out of the spark plugs doesn't sound good and I'm sure others will offer more advice than I can... did you check the oil level on the dipstick before driving it? I'm thinking someone has put way too much oil in it probably to try and cover up a known issue?

Did you ask for your money back?

 

Wow, what a bad day. I'm going to guess that this wasn't a sudden, new issue. If the seller hasn't offered a full refund, I'd be camped on his doorstep till he offers me one.

 

Hi:
Welcome and sorry to hear about your problems! Did you extensively drive this car and inspect the engine bay etc. before purchase? Or did you have an independent mechanic take a look? I mean, either it's a total fluke and the used car you bought gave up the ghost at just the wrong time, or this seller is a shyster. You may have a law suit on your hands if he won't give you your money back. He should feel horrible about this. I would give you your money back if you bought one of my cars and this happened. It sounds like either a complete head gasket failure, something cracked, or bad rings (really bad!) on several cylinders. Either way, I can't imagine there weren't clues to the impending disaster - i.e. a good time to "unload" the car on an innocent. Perhaps I'm being overly suspicious...

Crap.
Scott

 

Wow, Welcome!!

You know, I was going to go through a whole bunch of things you should check and I decided the only thing you should check out is your legal rights with the state's attorney general office. Call the Police Dept in the morning and ask on how to make a complaint so you have something on record.

He should have handed your money back. He knows somethings up with the car.

 

Ask the seller if he recently changed the cam cover gasket, and, if he did, did he install the 6 spark plug well seals? If the seals are missing (or badly deteriorated) the spark plug wells will fill up with engine oil.

If this is all that's wrong (and I'm not necessarily saying it is) it's an easy fix.

Cheers
DD

 

^+1 Doug.

Also did he tighten the plugs correctly.

They could just have worked loose from a very poor installation.

 

Unforgiven,

To Doug's point, that would be the cause of oil induction to the spark plug cylinder, loose, cracked, pinched or missing boss plug seals.

I've had boss seals crack and let oil in, but it didn't stop running, it didn't run well, but it didn't stop running, and certainly oil wasn't streaming out of the plug cylinder.

Still, you would think the guy would have said "oh, I did work on it recently, maybe I didn't tighten things down..."

Where are you at with this deal???

 

A lot of cars haves oil in plug cylinderes & still in driving. Of course it's not normal, but...

You must to clean up & to dry plugs. Then look for spark at every plugs. Then look for fuel comming.
If you have spark & fuel running, your next step to measure the compression...

Anyway i sorry about this case...But don't panic!

 

Sorry to hear about this.

In your 'new member' post you say you purchased this from eBay. I don't know what the wording was in the ad but if it broke down that quickly then I wonder if you can open a dispute with PayPal/eBay regarding the car not being as advertised, and hopefully they agree and have seller refund purchase price.

 

Any updates on this?

 

My check on unforgiven's profile shows joined, last post and last login all on February 23 2013.

Perhaps we'll never know.

Graham

 

Was the check engine light on or flashing. If flashing the engine was missing and may be why stopped running. Spark going through oil to ground instead of jumping spark plug gap and firing the fuel. Oil in spark plug holes is usually spark plug seals. Part of the valve cover gasket set. Some valve cover gasket sets due not come with new spark plug seals. Who knows why. If they reused the old seals they will leak. Did the engine temp. gauge shw hot? How clean was the engine bay area? How long did he own the car ? How the guy handles this will tell you how he treated the car. If he works with you and is fair, he most likely to care of the car. If he is unfair, he knew something was up. Good luck.