LairdScooby

Welcome Don! Keep your left leg tucked under the seat, if you don't you'll nosedive it when you have to stop quickly! Been there, T-shirt etc! 😛

Welcome aboard Trevor! Nice car but i'm biased as i also have a blue S Type!

Welcome aboard Alan! Thinking of modifying already!

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The biggest major problem is with tyre depots using windy guns to tighten the wheel nuts. The torque figure on my S Type is 93lbft or 130Nm for the wheel nuts, windy guns (pneumatic impact wrenches) have a maximum torque of 250lbft (~320Nm) which is a shade over 2.5 times what the wheel studs/nuts were designed for - also more than the wheels (more importantly) were designed for. This is something i get particularly angry about as after having wheels balanced on two separate cars at a tyre depot, the wheels were damaged irreparably due to the use of windy guns. There is also the strong likelihood the wheel studs will sheer simply through excess torque. As for the corrosion problem under the stainless steel cap, if windy guns are NOT used, the cap remains close fitting, excluding all corrosion catalysts (water, air, dirt etc) so the nuts themselves do not corrode. If they do corrode, rust grows almost organically and does indeed swell the nut - just look at the rusty wheel arches on a late 90s Merc/VAG or similar and you will see big bubbles where the rust has formed. Using a smear of copper grease on the threads of the fasteners and avoiding ALL use of windy guns (including removal of the nuts) will prolong the life of the nuts in the first place. Replacing the nuts with aftermarket solid nuts is one option, however the quality varies and the bright nickel plating on some cheaper nuts tarnishes and flakes off. Sadly i've got a lot of experience of these type of nuts having run Rover 800s for many years - not relevant? The nuts are near, if not completely, identical. The basic design of a steel nut with a polished stainless steel sheath over the top is definitely the same, the thread of M12 x 1.5 is the same and when the S Type was designed, Jaguar Land Rover were still (at least in part) part of the Rover Group and Rover had been using these Honda designed nuts for over a decade by then. I know Ford bought the remaining shares in JLR a little later but many things were kept the same.

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Glad to hear you got a much better payout, also worth checking out this website and suggesting to your insurers they may be able to arbitrate over the £500 they are shorting you : https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-can-help/insurance You almost certainly have a case on the "face value" of their words, i believe (but not sure) that every complaint made to the Obudsman incurs a charge on the insurer that they have to pay regardless so they may decide it's cheaper to pay you the £500 than pay the Mbudsman and then still have to pay you on top.

Glad to help Max, good luck with the restoration! 😉 😄

With cars above 60000 miles (~100000km) i've always adopted the "part-change" method or as some call it, the "sump dump" method. Undo the drain plug after a 5-8 mile run and drain the contents of the sump. Refit the drain plug and top up with fresh fluid to the correct level. Repeat 3 times at 1-200 mile intervals and then do one drain/refill operation a year to keep it fresh. This means you are adding the new, thicker fluid gently and with it, the seal conditioner present in all ATFs. The conditioner will have worn away in the old fluid, potentially allowing the seals to become dry and brittle and if all the fluid is changed in one go (like in the flushing or "Gibbon" method) then it suddenly gets all new, thicker fluid with the associated increases in pressure. This can cause rupture of seals that are dry/brittle due to the extra pressure before the seal conditioner has time to do its magic. Also this way of doing 4 part-changes means any dirt has 4 chances of being drained, further cleaning the inside of the box. I also subscribe that no fluid lasts the lifetime with the theory that once it fails, so does the unit it lubes - to that end it has lasted the lifetime of the unit but that lifetime could be so much longer if the fluid is regularly changed.

It's funny you mention this, my S Type does this too. Thinking it was just the way the suspension is, i ignored it until your post and then started thinking back, firstly to my Series III 4.2 Jag Sovereign (one of the first Jag Sovereigns) followed by my XJ40 3.6 and they both did it. Then i thought about other cars i've had with IRS and RWD, only ones i can bring to mind instantly are Nissan 300C and a Datsun 240KGT Skyline (3 of those!) and they all did it too - twichy on the back end up to 30-50mph depending on model then above that, settled down and felt supreglued to the road while absorbing bumps and ripples seamlessly. Even my Rover 827 Sterling did similar on the back end and that was FWD but overall handled more like a RWD car. I would hazard a guess it's a characteristic of RWD with IRS as my Volvo 700 series (all estates) didn't do it, or at least not so obviously, presumably the live axle damped it although sometimes in the last one, a 760GLE V6, if i was giving it the beans it could be a bit twitchy but never lost traction - again it settled down above city speeds. With that in mind i would still suggest you get the tyres (especially the back ones) checked as sometimes they can distort, saw one once on an Astra that was a distic=nctive S shape! 😮 If all is good and the bushes etc are good then i would say it's a characteristic and adopt it as a means of telling you if you're within certain speed limits.

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On the premise that prevention is better than cure, it would probably pay to rub some silicone grease into the boot seal, leave it 20-30 minutes to soak in then wipe off gently. Also clean the boot lid around where it meets the seal. Try and find out where the water is getting in and fix the ingress. For what it's worth, silicone grease is a good alternative to dielectric grease, both are waterproof and non-carbon based and (i'm told by someone who said he knew) are near enough identical. Silicone grease tends to be more wallet-friendly and easier to find though.