DaftMule

So my car's paint code is HGZ. A quick google seems to imply that is Racing Green, not BRG. Oh well, two thirds of the way to BRG..lol :-)

Hmm...can't decide from that colour chart whether mine is BRG or Emerald Fire. I always assumed BRG but now I'm not so sure.

Mine in booked in for a Terraclean service on Monday so I'll let you know if that makes a difference re smoke.

I have these on mine but look at the state they are in! :-S Found a place locally to do full chemical strip, recon and baked powder coating re-finish though. £68 a corner. They need the car for a few days to do it though as I don't have a spare set of wheels.

Car is booked in for Terraclean on Monday so I'll let you all know if it makes a difference.

Hmm...might just give that a go. I think my car has actually suffered from doing low mileage...only 63K over 10 years. It had one owner prior to me and I get the feeling he was a "steady" driver. Looking at the service book, it did very low mileage over the last few years and I'm willing to bet it didn't get a good blast on the motorway much.

I have a automatic 55 plate diesel...the one with the down-turned exhaust pipes. I have had diesels for years now, a series of Vauxhauls, Citroens and Skodas and the S-Type beats them all into a cocked hat in terms of performance, smoothness and noise etc. You can barely tell it's a diesel and it has bags of grunt. Interesting to see the fuel economy people are getting. Maybe I have a right foot made of lead because I get around 33mpg on average with maybe 35 to 36 on a motorway run.

My 2.7lt Diesel Auto, 55 plate (pre addition of carbon scrubber tech), S-Type Sport does around 31 to 33 mpg on average on my mix A-road and dual carriageway, 30 mile round trip, daily commute. Motorway runs at a steady speed tend to see that rise to around 35 mpg.

My 55 plate 2.7 lt diesel smokes a fair bit on heavy acceleration. Relatively low mileage (63K when I got it 6 months ago) so maybe that's half the problem. Never had good, long trips out to clear the tubes for the first 10 years of its life! :-) I notice it most at night when someone is following. Accelerate hard and you can see the clouds of smoke in the rear view, illuminated by their lights. But then, I've had diesel's for many years now and of many sorts and they all smoke like that. As I understand it, you only need to really worry when it's clouds of white smoke as that is an indication of turbo failure. If yours is a 2004 vintage then it'll have the down turned exhausts like mine, i.e. it's pre carbon scrubber tech or whatever it was they did to the later models.

Still loving my S-Type. Just had the first big (ish) bill though. Both lower spenny arms on the front needed to be replaced + new pads on the front. I was getting a bit of a 'graunching' noise from the front just as the car came to a stop under braking. Was obviously knackered joints on the arms making the noise. The car was also feeling a little unsteady in it's handling. All good now though. No noise and rock steady handling once again. Bill came in at over £600 though and that was with after market parts. Ho hum.... That aside, I have an odd, intermittent feature with the external temp reading. Usually when I get in the car to go home from work and it's clearly latter teens in temp outside, I turn the ignition on and the external temp will be reading much lower. If I switch ignition off and on again, it sorts itself out. Is this common? Wondering if the sensor is a bit flaky but no clue where it is located? Finally, does the wing mirror glass pop out if pulled, without having to completely dismantle the unit? I know some wing mirror glass on electric mirrors kind of has a ball joint on the back with matching female socket on the unit which it pushes into. Not sure if that is the case with these? Been hunting online for some images but not come across anything yet.

Interesting...so it seems it is a known issue then. TBH, it is not something that really troubles me, just wanted to know whether it was a sign of something more serious or not. Reading the work sheet in the above link....that is a lot of filling and flushing and re-filling! Love the way it seems to end with draining the gearbox for a final time but there is no mention of re-filling it again! lol :-) Is changing the gearbox oil something my local garage can do or is it a main dealer job? The worksheet mentions " Undo and remove filler plug using special tool 307-452". If you don't have the special tool, is it not possible?

Anyone else get a little muffled squeak/squawk noise from the auto box, usually when it changes down under load (accelerating up a hill for example.)? This is my first car with an auto box so I'm not really familiar with the idiosyncrasies of such. I gather the auto box is a sealed unit. Not sure what the "life" of that box is meant to be though. I have seen figures of 120K miles thrown around. Mine has done about 67K although it is a 55 plate so over 10 years old.

Got a quote from Platinum Alloy Wheel Solutions for a refurb of my wheels. They have quoted £316 for a refurb which will mean leaving the car with them for 4 days. It's an extra £15 per unit if they have to straighten out a buckled wheel. Sounds fairly reasonable.

Thanks for the replies. I know the name of them now anyway. Seems my assumption that they will be a pain to clean is true. They do look very nice though. I'm torn really. Buying second hand alloys is obviously a risk as you may just end up with ones that are buckled or knackered in other ways. After market alloys can be equally risky it seems from comments in other posts. Mine don't look great and they are definitely not all "true". I had them balanced checked recently to solve some vibration issues and one needed balancing. They also adjusted the tracking. It has 75% solved the vibration but they rotated the bad one to the back and now the car feels very different to drive. Seems to feel less solid now in the steering and like it is more prone to veering around following the worn tracks in our crappy road surfaces. Didn't feel like that before...just had the annoying vibration between 50 and 70mph. Do you think re-conditioning would be a better option? I have been informed that given the level of degradation (see pic of worst one) they would need to be blast stripped and re-powder coated. Not sure if that is just going to paper over the issue so to speak if they are slightly off true. I suppose re-conditioning will change the balancing anyway. There is also the issue of the car having to be on blocks while the wheels are sent off to be done. Decisions, decisions. Probably looking at the same cost for re-conditioning mine as it would cost to buy a set of after market alloys.

The alloys on my S-Type really let it down and I'd like to replace them. The previous owner had an affinity for kerbs by the state of them and 2 are also starting to flake quite badly. I would love to get my hands on a set of these ones: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jaguar+s+type+18+inch+alloy+wheels&oq=haguar+stype+18&sourceid=silk&ie=UTF-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=vM_hVprpOIXOPbDDlIAG#gws_rd=cr&imgrc=XrnUKVkjxKoWGM%3A I think they would really suit my BRG S-Type Sport even if they are probably a bit of a mare to clean! Any ideas where I could get my hands on a set that are not going to be as knackered as my existing ones? Various sites sell new alloys but none like this that I can find. Also, what are the insurance implications of adding non-factory-fit replacements?

Yup, tyre pressure was checked during the balance and tracking and I keep an eye on them regularly anyway. Don't get me wrong, it's not violently pulling left...it's just a bit of gentle drift and it's quite difficult to tell most of the time because the roads are in such a shocking state around us! Just feels different to the way it felt before the work. It's probably just me being pedantic! :-)

Got the wheels balanced. One was apparently a bit "buckled". It seems to have 90% sorted out the vibration anyway. They swapped the wheel they balanced onto the back and did the tracking too as it was out a bit and now the car feels quite different to drive, but not in a good way! I took it back to them after 2 days to get them to check it again as the car was definitely wandering off to the left. They tweaked it slightly and it is better but the car still feels different. Before this work, it felt like you could happily let go of the steering wheel and the car would remain rock steady (other than the vibration issue). Now it just feels like it picks up any blemish in the road surface and wanders around. Amazing how much difference rotating the wheels can make! In fairness though, the only bad thing on the car is the wheels. The previous owner obviously had an affinity for kerbs and one in particular is flaking quite badly.

Hi, Have a 55 plate S-Type diesel. Had it a few months and am over the moon with it but recently, I have noticed a bit of a vibration happening between about 60 and 70mph. 70 seems to be the spot where it reaches that resonance peak which gives the worst, constant vibration. Below that it is almost like the vibration fades in and out and you don't feel it at all below about 45. It feels like it's coming from the prop shaft but I guess it could possibly be something to do with the wheels and their alignment? It's not awful by any stretch, just a little annoying and definitely a little worse now than when I got the car. Was going to send it in to the garage I use for a bit of investigation but thought I'd ask here first as it may be something common? Thanks.

I'm 45 and bought my first Jag (S-Type V6 diesel) a few months ago. Frankly, I'm glad it has the rep as an old man's car as it means you can pick them up for a song! Mine is a 55 plate with only 63K on the clock. All the whistles and bells (including the Sat Nav console) and it only cost me £5k! The equivalent BMW or Audi would have cost me twice that or I'd have had to settle for one that had been around the galaxy and back. The other thing is, with generally older previous owners, they are more likely to have been looked after.

Yup, I read up a lot on the cam-belt and general advice was 105K miles or 10 years. As mine is 10 years old I pushed the trader I bought it from to sort that before I would buy. It also replaces the water pump as part of the kit so, should be good for another 100K now :-) I'll have to investigate re the mirror as I can't continue with it like that for much longer! I just hope it's not a case of to replace the mirror you have to replace the whole unit! BTW, any advice on a good place to get spares like new mirrors?

After many years of driving remarkably dull but serviceable cars, I decided to have a mid-life 'mild panic' and swapped my ageing Skoda for an S-Type. I wanted the 2.7lt V6 diesel and after some looking around with a budget of about £5k max, I stumbled across a nice 55 plate S-Type Sport in dark green (is it BRG?). Automatic, 63,000 miles, full set of main dealer stamps, 1 owner from 6k miles. It is immaculate inside, black with cream leather and also has the sat nav/entertainments console which I believe was about a £1,500 extra when new. Bodywork was very good, in fact, for a 10 year old car it seemed too good to be true over all. Only slight issue is 1 of the alloy wheels in particular is flaking a bit and they all look as though the previous owner had an affinity for the kerbs! Test drive was a dream, solid as a rock, effortless driving. No rattles, clouds of white smoke from the turbo's, whining gearbox...nothing like that. Suffice to say I was sold on it. The dealer seemed unconvinced that the car had a timing belt, let alone that it needed a replacement. But, I insisted that I would only buy it if they replaced the timing belt and gave it a service. They agree'd to this so I was happy to go ahead but what really sealed it for me was I managed to speak to the previous owner! The service book had the buyers name/address and tel in it. I called on the off chance that the previous owner was still there and he was! He backed up everything and gave me plenty of history and confirmed nothing had happened to it in his time of ownership. Prior to him it was owned by the accountant for the Jag dealership. Anyway, I bought the car and I've now had it a couple of weeks. It is pure pleasure to drive...a bit like driving around in my living room! Absolutely love it. The diesel is smooth as butter, yet responsive when you bury it past the kick-down gate. I have only one beef with my S-Type. The passenger side wing mirror is idiotic! It seems to have a high degree of magnification to it which is insane as it massively restricts the field of view in the mirror. I usually have my nearside mirror so I can just see down the side of the car on it's inside edge. With this one I have to have it pushed out a long way just to pick up the car I am overtaking as I am going past it otherwise I am about half a mile past it before it appears in the mirror! It is basically useless when it comes to reversing without fiddling with it every time. Is this the standard mirror? It looks identical to the driver's side other than the magnification aspect.