Jaguar XK-8 Road Report

I have now had my latest indulgence, a ’99 Jaguar XK-8 for two months now so here’s what I’ve learned.

1. The Jaguar XK-8 is a luxury car. Prior to 2004 it isn’t really a sports car. Sure it has 2 seats and a convertible top, but a sports car shouldn’t weigh 2 tons, or if it does, it should have enough horsepower to move itself at a respectable rate.. The ’96-99 series has all the quirks a brand new vehicle is prone to, plus low horsepower and high weight. For ’00 to ’03 the aluminum engine got iron sleeves and a big boost in reliability. ’04 and up the car got a slightly larger engine with 100 extra horsepower, and an all aluminum body which shaved 500 pounds off the weight. Now we’re talking.

2. Everything in the car works with a small electric motor to drive it. This includes the door locks. There’s something under the hood that hums into position when I put the key in, and hums back to a rest position when I take the key out. I haven’t found out what it is yet.

3. The heater is fairly conventional except that it has its own motor to circulate the hot water. The pump on the motor evidently can’t handle this.

4. The convertible top is hydraulically actuated, including the latch above the windscreen. The hoses are plastic and move slightly when the pump is running. This causes some wear between the hoses which, over time, can rub a hole in the lines. The cure is a separator to hold the tubes apart. The lines are connected to the cylinders with QD connectors and O-rings. The O-rings are good for 50-70K miles before they begin to weep. Mine are due.

5. The electronics in the car are sensitive to fluctuations in battery voltage. The clever module that runs the windows down about ½” when you open a door, and runs them back up when you close it begins to fail when the battery voltage gets down to 11.5 volts. The windows go down, but don’t go back up. This is a nuisance when parking the car. The window needs to go down because it normally seats into a recess in the convertible top. This makes for a nice quiet ride, but in winter, ice can form on the drivers side window which prevents the window from going down. This makes getting the door open very difficult, so remember to scrape the ice from the side window before trying to get in.

6. The headlights can be set to come on when the car judges it necessary. Likewise dimming on the rear view mirror.

7. Owing to what was described as a “software glitch”, if you start the car from cold, and run it for less than about 2 minutes, say to move it up the drive after washing it, then shut it off, the “cold start” mode remains engaged and the fuel injectors remain open, draining the contents of the upper fuel line into the engine, effectively flooding it. For the first couple of days after you’ve committed this sin, the engine will not start. Period. When it does start, if there is any excess fuel in the engine, the engine will knock a bit, causing the knock sensor to send an error code to the engine. To correct this, all the spark plugs must be removed and the engine cranked with the gas pedal to the floor (which shuts off the fuel flow while you’re cranking!) until the engine is dried out. Alternatively you can let the car sit for 5 days and the excess fuel will drain/dry on its own. Mostly.

8. When you get certain error codes, like the knock sensor one mentioned above, you also get a “performance restricted” notification. What this means is that the ECU has limited the engine to 3000 rpm and floorboarding the throttle will not speed the car up past about 30 mph no matter how fast the traffic is bearing down on you from behind since at full throttle the tranny won’t shift until you get to 4000 rpm. OTOH, if you let off the gas, the tranny will complete the up shifts and allow you to reach freeway speeds. Just not right away.

9. The 17” low profile tires need to be inflated to 45 psi to get them to fully seat on the rims. It says so on the tires. What it does not say is that they should be run at 32 psi and unless you tell the tire monkeys this, you’ll drive off with your tires at 45. Great gas mileage, lousy traction. The folks I bought the car from were unaware of this.

10. The big items on this one are the rocker cover gaskets and timing chain tensioners. The gaskets are O-rings carefully selected to shrink slightly with age allowing a very small bit of oil to seep down onto the exhaust manifold. When you stop, the odor of burning oil permeates the car. The replacements, I’m told, are slightly larger and don’t have this problem. The chain tensioners turned out to be made of a plastic that degrades in the presence of hot oil such as you might fine inside an engine. Jaguar (Ford) has known about this for a while, but still sells the original plastic tensioners as replacements at the dealerships. Independent shops have metal replacements which they assure me will last indefinitely.

11. The car does fine on snow and ice, even better if the tires are at 32 PSI. The Automatic Stability Control kicks in if you begin to lose traction, reducing the engine output significantly. This usually happens when the steering wheel is turned slightly which blocks your view of the warning display, which helps keep you calm.

12. The car gets 20-22 mpg in town and 25-27 on the highway. That’s enough better than the pickup to make it slightly cheaper to drive, even with premium gas.

13. Parts and repair work are expensive. I presume that most Jaguar owners die of ulcers or heart failure from wondering WHAT WAS THAT NOI$E!

All cars come with quirks, some more significant than others. So far I’m liking the car even while not looking forward to doing the mechanical maintenance this summer. This is not my first British sports car by a long stretch, and while it is an order of magnitude better than any I've had before, my position that they are the most fun you can have driving when they work is unchanged.  

Economics: Cooking The Books

The government has "unexpectedly" revised its numbers for Q4 2013 growth from 3.2% to 2.4%, a 25% reduction. This is not an adjustment. When you're off by this much is't evidence of fraud at fairly high levels.

The upshot of this is that 2013 growth is now 1.9%. Folks, this isn't growth, this is wheezing on life support. This also goes along with increasingly rosy unemployment numbers, steadily declining as a result of people simply dropping out of the market. If you've given up looking, you're not unemployed.

Amusingly, the anemic performance is being blamed on the weather. For those of you old enough to remember, or who had a good history teacher, the Soviet Union used to consistently fail to meet its quotas for agricultural production beginning with the collectivization of agriculture and continuing through the ultimate collapse of the system. This was always blamed on "bad weather" to the point that wags in the west began extrapolating that the Soviet scientists were successfully experimenting with weather modification to be used as a weapon against the west. The problem seemed to be that the tests were conducted inside the Soviet Union to maintain secrecy and as a result only damaged farms there.

In the 50's we didn't have the internet. It's place was taken by publications like the Weekly World News, the National Enquirer, and pamphlets distributed by the John Birch Society. Look at the improvements we've made in 60 years: Today economic failure is still blamed on bad weather, but the bad weather is now blamed on capitalists instead of Russian scientists.

Voter I.D.: Fraud Not Required

The federal District court in Tennessee has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to overturn the states voter ID law in effect saying that you don't have to catch a burglar in your house to justify putting locks on the doors. This is the most sensible ruling I've heard on the topic to date what with most other cases getting sidetracked with arguments about how racist protecting the franchise is.

What The Angry Peasants Want

So having run the dictator out of town, what's the first thing the peasants suggest they want to keep from having to do this again?

As of today Ukrainian Gun Owners Association will start to work on the preparation of amendments to the Constitution, which will provide an unconditional right for Ukrainian citizens to bear arms. 

 Their proposed wording sounds kind of iffy to me but maybe it sounds better in Ukrainian. 

What Can A Bunch Of Angry Peasants Do..

Against a well equipped military or militarizes police force? Well, quite a bit if they put their minds to it:


I recall similar results against T-33 tanks in Hungary back in '56. Of course when no backup came, the Russian army rolled in in force and that was pretty much the end of that. One can easily win the battle but lose the war.
Found here at elmtreeforge.

Update: Speaking of winning battles...

Feds Cut Off Farmers Water

But don't worry, to paraphrase something I heard somewhere else; "The price of food will necessarily skyrocket, but the Delta Smelt will be protected."

Extended story here.

A kinder, gentler holodomor I guess.

Job Change

Not me, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is being given the job of United Nations Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change. Sweet gig I guess what with the graft, corruption and child prostitution the UN is famous for.

If we're lucky, he'll be sent to some city that desperately needs his expertise. 

Beijing come to mind.

Colorado Mini Maker Faire

So I've let myself get signed up to run a table in this and it looks like I'll get a 30 foot nerf range to let kids try the Pedal Air Gun with All New Guaranteed Non-Lethal foam darts at much reduced pressure. Plus some other interesting stuff TBD.

Denver Mini Maker Faire - May 3rd & 4th, 2014 @ National Western Complex

More info on the Faire is at  http://denvermakerfaire.com.

So pop on over and see what's on offer. Meantime comments at this post will be the contact point for the Denver Mad Scientists Club in case any of the membership has anything they want to demo there. My table is available to multiple exhibitors from that group. 

I'd like to send you to their web site, which used to be rather nice, but the disk drive holding the site crashed 10 or 15 years ago and no one in the group knows how to fix it. Other than that, it's a bunch of really clever and creative people.

Update: And finally, please put Wednesday, March 26th at 6pm on your calendar for a Denver Mini Maker Faire meetup at Club Workshop http://www.clubworkshop.com in Denver.  We will be filming!  Connect with your fellow Makers and bring your makes, pictures, prototypes or any other item that you would like to get on camera.  Publicity for Makers is part of being a Denver Mini Maker Faire Maker and we are putting together a few promo videos of our Makers to share with the world.  This is your chance to get on camera!  So get your friends and family to sign up to be a Maker so they can be on camera, too! 

As a side note I think I'll call my exhibit the Family, Lawn, and Garden department of the DMSC.

World To End Saturday

So it must be time to clear your pantry of all that booze and bacon you've been hoarding. The Jorvik Viking Center in York, England is basing their prediction on recent climatic events which they describe as 3 winters with no intervening summers.

The past two summers have been cold and wet, so declaring that Ragnarök (otherwise known as the Twilight of the Gods) is upon us is a subjective call

Anyone who has had dealings with Vikings in the past however will tell you that predictions of the end of the world made by Danes usually have nothing to do with climate change and usually only apply to the residents of the town or village the Danes had surrounded. The predictions of the end of the world could also be mitigated or eliminated by paying a sum of protection money to the Danes although this reputedly only caused them to return the next year with further demands.

East Bloc Humor - Not Just For The East Any More

There's a lot of old East Bloc humor now making the rounds in this country. Not that the president, who regularly channels Benito Mussolini, would be causing the upswing in popularity of the genre, but:

In America now, the survey takes you.

Bruce Tinsley is a very funny cartoonist.

Home Security and Journalism

The local news in Detroit is reporting that a local mother met an attempted home invasion with gunfire, thwarting the effort.

When the thugs were driven off with the first shots, one of them retrieved a dropped pistol and attempted to return:

No matter. His tenacity was rewarded with a second shotgun blast, and he took off again into the night. None of the suspects were hit by any gunfire.

Here's the "shotgun" in question:

 I have a similar one. Less rust though. I had no idea that shot shells were available for it. Maybe she had it loaded with those "snake shot" loads. I'd wonder about their ability to cycle the action though. I guess we learn something new from journalists every day.

O.K. here's the video.

The Future Of Transportation - Trucks

Safeway has rolled out a much-modified tractor that reportedly gets 75% better mileage than its fleet of conventional trucks. Not to be outdone, Wal-Mart has debuted a tractor unit that looks like it was hijacked from the set of the latest Transformers movie:

Optimus Prime, with the Wal-Mart livery removed. Should have left it on, we'd have never recognized him.

Sensing an opportunity, the President has jumped in and joined the affray announcing that he will order the EPA to demand that heavy trucks double their mileage and be quick about it. After all, anything that a room full of engineers can do in 3 years can certainly be duplicated by imperial decree in 6 months.

XL Pipeline Solution

It occurs to me that there is an easy solution to the foot-dragging the president is doing on the XL pipeline.

Step 1: Build the pipeline on both sides of the border, right up to the border.

Step 2: Recognize that is is current practice to ship the oil by rail in tanker cars across the border.

Step 3: Park a tanker car straddling the border where the two ends of the pipeline would otherwise meet and connect the pipe to their respective ends of the tank car.

Step 4: Turn on the oil. Besides in 2017 the last chunk of pipe can replace the tank car being used as a splice. Of course we would have to pay the railroad the freight rate for all that oil traveling by rail 50 feet, but that should be cheap by comparison to the hundreds of miles they ship it now.

See? Easy. We Americans can do anything.

Violent Liberals

Of all the people you wouldn't normally expect this sort of thing from, the Jefferson County PTA is making threatening noises and implying GUN VIOLENCE against the Jefferson County Board of Education which recently has a full set of conservatives elected to it.

Being solid liberals we presume that the gun violence being suggested would NOT involve anything defined as an Assault Weapon or any firearm with a magazine that held more than 15 rounds. Background checks would have to be performed on all designated shooters in any case. There is a No Firearms rule for all county buildings where any school board meeting would likely be held, so we presume that the actual shooting would be limited to the parking lot.

Why are liberals so violent?

Motorcycle Maintenance

Went over to help a friend with his motorcycle Friday. Some (long) time ago I use to do this for a living and he had an odd problem. Seems he had replaced the ECU with a "high performance" one, and shortly after that the engine began refusing to run longer than to get through 3rd gear. Sounded to me like a fuel starvation problem to me.

Start with the gas tank outlet which has evolved to a Q.D. fitting with a check valve. Remove fuel line and push check valve seat open. Fuel drips out one drop at a time. Not Good.

The Mechanical manual for the bike shows the valve as having a short filter attached to the inside, just like the Bad Old Days. Remove check valve and discover that the picture was of a short section of a long hose connected to something way up inside the tank. Remove hose from valve and find the valve works just fine. Blow air up the hose and find it doesn't.

Check the book and discover that inside the gas tank are enough doo dads to assemble a Kholer Magic Flush Eco-Dyne toilet. To get at this, one first removes the seat, then the trim running up the middle of the tank, then the retainer ring using Harley-Davidson special tool # XXXYZZZ.VV. Alternatively a ball pien hammer and a big flat nosed punch will do fine. Some things never change. Wiggle and jiggle the assembly and it will slowly come out. Visualize a mammal giving birth to a starfish.

Disconnect the other end of one of two hoses, move the assembly far enough out to work with, remove a large clip which frees a housing, and inside the housing is a fuel filter. I swear only trans-dimensional engineering would have made this thing harder to get to. Yep, the filter was good and properly clogged. It looks like a Fram unit, $5 at O'Reily Auto or $25 at Harley Davidson. Plus labor. Fuel filters are routine maintenance replacement items. Replacing one should not be up there with open heart surgery.

Reassembly is the reverse of the assembly. My friend just had spinal fusion surgery and won't be needing the bike until July at the earliest so I can wait until another warmish weekend to reassemble the thing.