I can understand the guys with snow & ice being reluctant to take their XK(R)s out, but rain? If I didn't drive mine in the rain, I'd only get to use it for two or three months a year! It can be a bit damp in the UK…

Over New Year, I took the 75 to Wales - there was a lot of very heavy rain, with standing water and flooding on minor roads. I certainly had to be careful with the power, make sure I braked in a straight line and tried to avoid the bigger puddles, but it was OK. I only aquaplaned once, when I encountered a river running out of a field right on a bend, and that wasn't too dramatic.

So it's certainly fine to drive an XKR even in torrential rain, as long as you're careful. Of course, if you avoid rain purely to keep the car as "never been driven in the wet", that's different. But these cars are not just dry-weather toys.

 

Our Jag engines are not made of unobtanium nor markedly different than more mainstream autos.

From a professional point of view, I have three decades of working for one the worlds largest aircraft engine OEM's and from a hobbyists angle, more than four decades of fooling around with car, truck, motorcycle, snowmobile, boat and tractor engines.

In all cases, the volume of oil remaining on inner surfaces after years of storage was not much different than after a few hours.

In the latter part of my career, I was responsible for a fleet of over one thousand engines that were scattered around the globe on short and long term lease. It was of utmost importance to monitor the condition of these assets from both an airworthiness and commercial sense. It was not rare to see the exterior engine surface suffer from corrosion or contamination in extreme climates, but again NO issues were encountered with interior oil-wetted surfaces. As the best example, I witnessed the teardown of three particular engine that by virtue of a bankruptcy, sat untouched outdoors in a humid climate for three full years. The only protection was a tarp. Again- no corrosion due to a lovely film of oil everywhere.

 

Best off removing the battery and keeping it on a tender somewhere.

 

You are right, Jaguars are not different from mainstream autos, in a sense of the way they are engineered. Times change and so does everything else. Cars a built 100 times better than they used to be 20 years ago.

Things that used to be "concerns" aren't any more. Wait few more years, the oil change intervals will change to twice every 10 years.

 

Couple of points I know from working on performance car engines:

1. Engine oil gets contaminated with moisture, rust, etc. Moisture is one of the primary concern, but it evaporates when oil gets hot, real hot. Just idling the engine wont get oil fully warmed up, that's why the driving requirement

2. In the engines I worked on (mostly Mitsubishi), oil does not flow through oil filter unless it's hot. That is a valve that's closed when oil is bellow certain temperature. It's done to avoid high pressure loss across the filter. If you idle an engine like that in the winter for a short period of time, oil might not go through the filter element at all.

Thus, if you run the engine but cannot drive the car, rev it up for 5-10 minutes around 2K. It'll get the oil hot and it'll go through the filter. Do not run A/C at the same time because it will engage A/C condenser fan upfront and that will bring the engine/oil temperature down.

3. It takes relatively long time for oil to get hot, even in the summer. I installed oil temp gauge in my other performance car and it took 10-15 minutes of idling to get oil up to 180F. Did not go any higher until I started driving. That's not enough to get the moisture out, need at least 210F

 

When I had Jaguar V12 cars (Series III XJ V12 Vanden Plas) it was very easy to tell when the engine/transmission/exhaust system were properly warmed up (that is, to a temperature that burns off the corrosive materials produced by combustion). Those cars had real oil pressure gauges! I could tell by a drop in the oil pressure at idle that the engine was ready for hard work, and it took about 15 kms at highway speed for this change to be noted (all of the readings well within factory specifications), despite the fact that the engine temperature gauge read the normal 90 degrees within one km or so of city use. So those who think that running the engine at idle and near idle for 10 minutes is good for the engine are mistaken, I think. Engine use like this produces quantities of corrosive material that has no chance of burning off. Our XKs don't even have a temperature gauge, let alone an oil pressure gauge so we have no way of knowing when the engine is even at normal operating temperature: treat the car gently for the first 10 minutes!

 

There is no reason at all to remove the battery! Just get a proper battery maintainer (CTEK is my preferred brand) and keep it permanently installed; just plug it in when the car is not in use, even for months at a time. Removing the battery requires subsequent resetting of various memory systems; keeping the car on a battery maintainer avoids all of this fuss; it takes about 45 seconds to plug in or unplug the unit.
Look at the photo.

 

Here's who I was quoting:

 

This is what I observed as well. After 10min of idle in the summer water temp ~180F, oil temp < 150F, never gets above 180F. To go higher, you either have to drive the car of rev it up. Driving obviously gets the job done much better. It's all the about the oil temp (and pressure) when pushing the car. You do not want it to get too hot either, that's why a proper oil cooler is a must if you track your car.