Jaguar XJ (X351) - Damn Fine Car

[5chn3ll]

My pop's Bentley cost him about $20K a year in depreciation for the 5 years he owned it. He REALLY likes it when I remind him that my 996 is about worth what I paid for it a decade and 75K miles ago...

[FRUNKenstein]

Well, a long and tortured road has led me to replacing all of the cooling system on the XJ. It's really not the car's fault - it was a comedy (tragedy) of errors, beginning with lending the car out to an older gentleman friend of the family for a couple of weeks.

The parts weren't horribly expensive - a complete rebuild kit with water pump and replacement hoses and pipes was $166, but the intake manifold and supercharger have to come off. The gaskets for those two items was $53. Then, since you have the supercharger out, they recommend changing the snout ($138) and the oil ($25) for the supercharger.

Labor is going to be the biggest part. Thankfully, I have a mechanic friend that charges $75 per hour, and it's probably going to be a good 14 hours of labor. And of course there will be the inevitable "other stuff" that breaks or needs attention. All told, I expect it will be close to $2,000. Since I'm moving on to Macans, I plan to sell it once it's out of the shop. It sure would have been nice to have sold it before this issue arose, but I'm not sure there's much else I could have done to avoid it as it would have been impossible to predict the chain of events that led to the breakdown.

Here are a couple of pics: one of the plastic coolant pipe that split down the seam and a second of the water pump that someone, at some point, used JB Weld on to "fix" rather than replace. That water pump, by the way, is a whopping $61 part. Makes sense to JB Weld it instead of spending the money for a new part.

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[Dr_Strangelove]

Almost 1 year. It made it almost 1 year. Not bad for a Jag!

What is the selling market looking like for the car right now? If you beat, what is it $15k with the repair, you're technically making money?

[FRUNKenstein]

Almost 1 year. It made it almost 1 year. Not bad for a Jag!

What is the selling market looking like for the car right now? If you beat, what is it $15k with the repair, you're technically making money?

My cousin wanted to buy it from me before this happened (but the old guy was still using it). He's like my little brother, so I was going to sell it to him for $12,000. So, I was going to lose money on it anyway. What's a couple thousand more? It's just numbers in a bank account.

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[Dr_Strangelove]

Well family is hard to quantify with currency that's for certain. Good move Frunky! *thumbup*

[FRUNKenstein]

OK, I got the XJ back on Sunday. It's running great. The replacement cooling pipes are made of metal, so that Achilles heel has been permanently fixed. The parts total was $382 and the labor was $1,190, for a total of $1,572. Really pretty cheap to have the entire cooling system and the supercharger rebuilt. Of course, it would have been much more at the Jag dealer.

Since I haven't been driving it much since spring, I forgot how really nice it is. So, I may "half ass" try to sell it - since it isn't an expensive vehicle, it isn't a big deal to just keep it. I offered it to my cousin again, but now at $13,000 since I just did all of this work on it (plus the new alternator and brakes). He said he's "reassessing his finances," so it may be around for a while.

[FRUNKenstein]

Last Thursday, my cousin called and was ready to buy it at $13,000. So, Thursday night, I detailed it up and took it out to him on Friday. It looks and drives great.

I paid $13,180 for it (including auction fees) exactly one year ago.
The final tally on repairs:
-Replaced air conditioning compressor and had oil change last spring ($1,903 total)
-Replaced alternator ($400)
-Replaced front brake pads & rotors ($177 parts & $150 install)
-Unnecessarily replaced battery ($260) and paid $250 in labor to install (all thanks to the old guy I lent it to)
-Replaced cooling system & rebuilt the supercharger ($1,572)

Total repairs: $4,712. So, total cost of ownership (not including fuel) for one year was $4,892. Not great, but not horrible, either. And, considering that the battery ($510) and the cooling system rebuild ($1,572) weren't really the car's fault, the actual cost of ownership was more like $2,810. I'd have been very happy with that.

Would I buy another X351? Absolutely - I think they're great cars. I would make sure the cooling system plastic pipes have been changed, and I wouldn't lend it to the father of a friend who is in his 80s. The alternator going out on the car while he had it (and I was out of town) led to a lot of frustration and over $2,000 in repairs that wouldn't have been necessary otherwise.