A while ago I thought I would have to scrap my lovely xj8 because of a mysterious fault. I had no power to the emc, or lots of other areas of the car. I was getting scrolling of all the fault warnings you could imagine.

I had contacted lots of auto electricians, most of whom were not helpful at all. Then, by chance a friend I was visiting in Ipswich told me about his electrical problems and the electrician he knew who solved his problems.

The end of this story is a happy one. After searching the car for 2.5 hrs he found what he was looking for. The inertia switch. Jaguar, in their wisdom had hidden it in the side kick panel at the top of the o/s foot well. It took about 2 seconds to reach and, with a quick press,  the fault was cleared and the engine fired.

so if you have to raise you xj8 high enough to work underneath, be very gentle with how your lower it down. Do it slowly and as smoothly as you can. It was this that caused the inertia switch to trip and nearly a year of intensive investigation, on my part, and many hours following workshop manual diagrams, later I still had to call in an expert.

 

hi

the inertia switch cuts power to the fuel system, usually the first thing you would check when you find there no fuel

getting the car plugged into jaguar software like jaguar ids/sdd would of clearly showed the inertia fuel cut off tripped

also even though its semi hidden the fuel inertia cutoff off switch features in every cars handbook

its definately one to remember

cheers

Joe