gaddafi

It's an injector. Easy enough but a bit of a pain having to replace all 12 seals as the entire rail will have to be lifted.

arsie

Why is it never what we suspect?
One plug/coil pack would have been less time consuming to rectify though not much in it cost wise I guess or is it the whole rail?

gaddafi

it looks to me as if the entire rail will have to be lifted to extract the one duff injector - that will mean lifting all of the injectors

as you may know, it's not safe to re-use the injector seals and who would want to above six litres of very hot engine and exhausts!

I might get away with between one and six seals as the failed injector is the front one on the nearside, meaning there might be a bit of flex, but I won't take any chances

it's not an expensive job and everything is easily accessible on top of the engine, just a bit fiddly

I'd anticipate two or three hours unless there's something hidden I haven't identified

it'll keep me out of mischief anyway

it was interesting watching a pro try to identify it and I felt quite smug (seeing him follow the same steps as me to try and find the source) that he had to resort to the software to be sure

I did stick some injector cleaner in the tank and gave the car a run but it was just a cheap throw of the dice that didn't sort it

I've ordered a new injector and seals now

gaddafi

seems that my late 6.0 version has a much better design than the old 5.3

for one thing all of the plugs are accessible and secondly the injectors go directly into the manifold rather than via short lengths of hose (which go brittle, leak and cause fires!!!)

effing supplier failed to deliver the bits today claiming one out of stock - nice to have told me eh? - so new order placed with SNG Barratt and should come tomorrow

got a proper workshop manual and it looks simple but the whole rail will have to be lifted

Nottm_S2

something i've never had to fiddle with.. do you have to drop pressure from the fuel lines or does it not hold it?

do you have to lube the seals? that SC S2000 of mine had buggered injector seals, not very old and not installed correctly apparently. They were all sorts of shapes and sizes

gaddafi

I did two on W8s so nothing to faze me
pressure is taken care off by cranking with the rail unplugged
a little silicone may be needed but access is very good so I don't antipate any probs with seating them correctly

gaddafi

This is what you face when the cover is off (not much of an engine cover compared to moderns). Depressurisation was a two minute job - disconnect the tank multi pin and crank a couple of times.



The faulty injector is circled top right - cylinder 1A. It only took me about half an hour to replace the injector but I was lucky. The manual states that the entire rail needs to be lifted. This isn't difficult in itself, at least on late cars like mine without the little hoses between injector and manifolds, but it does mean 12 O rings need to be replaced and therefore the potential for 12 leaks. I thought that if I undid every bolt but VERY gently lifted the corner of the rail I might be able to prise the corner up just enough to get the faulty injector out. The risk is that the next one would pop then the next etc but it was worth a try. In fact there was just enough clearance and you can see why in the following picture taken from the other side. The 'cup' that holds the top of the injector is quite shallow - there's an O ring in there as well - with only about 1cm of the top of the injector retained and a similar amount going into the manifold. Had it being any cylinder bar 1A, 6A, 1B or 6B the whole rail would have had to come off.



That wasn't quite the end of it though because it was quite difficult to seat the new injector in the cup. New seals tend to be a bit fatter than the old and the new injector came with new seals top and bottom. I had another bag of seals to hand in case my plan didn't work. In the end a combination of a little lube, some rotating of the injector and downward pressure meant it all fell into place and then it was just a question of tightening everything up, reconnecting hoses, tank and finally battery and then testing for leaks.

I then had that sinking feeling when the misfire was still there, albeit not quite as bad!!! I wondered if I had made a bad assumption - that I had changed the injector on 1A but it was actually 1B but a quick removal of the harness on 1B showed that was firing ok. Whipped out the plug working with the new injector and saw a hairline crack in the ceramic insulation. I changed the plug and V12 smoothness was restored. I know that plug wasn't cracked 48 hrs ago so it must have cracked when being replaced after its inspection then. Given the other cracked plug I'm thinking they have been weakened by the engine heat so I will replace them all now. They aren't expensive and I will probably do the leads at the same time - a bargain £30. The other possibility is that they have been overtightened - just like alloys. They only need 8lb ft.

Decided after that the old girl should be allowed to stretch her legs so took her on a 30 mile DC run. She's running really nicely again. 75mph is 2500rpm so super refined. Here she is resting. 21 years old and 92500 miles. Note the bigger plutocrat rear doors in the LWB version.



Decision time looming on whether to keep her. Heart says yes and head says no so the answer will probably be storage for six months. What would I get for her anyway?

Nick Graves

Scrap money, practically.

Since it's the Devil you know and you've now done a lot of the basic Jaguar age-corrections, it'd probably be more sensible to push it into a quiet corner for the duration.

Unless your Irritable Car Syndrome flares up...

gaddafi

You're probably right Nick.

It's three times the car of a series 3 and five times that of a 2, both of which I have owned and which have five figure asking prices now, so I know it'll be recognised in due course. Rarity is in its favour too but it has almost certainly reached that interesting point where it's possibly worth more in bits. That 6.0 engine for example, might fit very nicely in a potentially £20K XJS and it also has a better gearbox...

Would I have the heart? Not sure, although I harbour dark, dark thoughts of building (having built for me) something like this:


PS where can I get the music...

arsie

Nice work. I do like the combination of fixing what is broke/consequentially broken as well as forward thinking preventative maintenance i.e plugs and leads.