Hi Amanda,

 

You are quite right about mudflaps.  I had a full set of genuine jaguar mudflats fitted [£50], but they showed their value when I went to the RAF Waddington Air Show and collected a bucketful of mud from the field in which we parked.  

 

Peter.

 

 

 

 

XF Bonnet being resprayed today and mudflaps fitted at £90 per axel! Thanks for the suggestion, I hope it stops the sills getting so dirty.

Mudflaps do protect the sills very much.  Mine cost £50 - genuine Jaguar part --  and my mechanic fitted them for £20.  Well worth the money.

I know this is a very, very old topic but as I've just bought a 2009 XF in black, I enquired about getting it ceramic coated. During the course of the conversation I was told that certain cars now use water based paint (including Jags) and the main drawback is that this is a lot softer than the older type of paint. 

The ceramic coating is sounding like a decent proposition. Would cost around £500 including prep, he said black or very dark colours are always the worst at showing up every flaw (his actual words were "I'll never understand why people buy black cars, they're a nightmare"). Hard for me to judge as my last car was metallic gold, and though it's faded a bit it was still in really good condition on my 19 y.o. Volvo and seems very strong. I've never had a dark colour for at least 30 years, and I'm beginning to regret it already and I haven't even picked the car up yet! 

Hi Gary,

I have had cars of every colour and the dark ons have been the best.  My current S type had a coating which worked well, but not as well at the ceramic coating non my wife's car.  Ceramic had not been invented when I had my s type treated, but its dark blue is rather good especially when it is sunny when it seeks to change. My two black Rover's were very good, even though my company did not bother treating them,

I am still having thoughts on giving my s type a ceramic coating, bit it does look rather good.  I would get your black car a coating.

Regards,

Peter.

P.S  — In the Trough of Bowland

 

 

 

Oh my! The chips on the bonnet!
2011 XF-S, has a rash all over the front. It's had a ceramic coating, which looks fabulous all over, but does nothing for the chips up front.
Thinking about a respray, but what's the point if it just gets chipped again!

A related issue is (with big 20" wheels) road dirt gets thrown up along the sides. Wouldn't swap the wheels though.

Car is metallic red, btw.

Old Peter wrote: 'Ceramic had not been invented when I had my s type treated'

Well, MB were factory ceramic coating cars in 2008 and do not know how long before then. Easy to spot on an MB if it was ceramic coated as the paint code on the ID plate had a 'C'

I was told differently —  must have wanted to do the other treatment.

Some good information there but yes, I need to think carefully, my wife retires in a couple of years so I don't want to go too mad. The car only has just over 50k on it with a clean history, and I only do around 5k a year so I should get years out of it.

I pick it up on Wednesday or thereabouts, but I'm not sure what the actual colour is. The dealer described it as Panther Black metallic, but I couldn't find it on any official colour chart. It looks more glossy than metallic:

 

The main reason I was asking is there seemed to be quite a few swirl marks in the paint which showed up in the showroom lights. I suspect the last owner used a drive through car wash to clean it.