Mark: Hi it’s Mark from Top Local Lead Generation, we’re here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, 17 time winners of Best Auto Repair in Vancouver as voted by their customers. How’re you doing Bernie?
Bernie: I’m doing very well this morning.
Mark: So we’re going to talk about a classic, some people would say, another classic Jaguar XF from 2009, it had a thermostat problem, what was going on with this fine English sedan?
Bernie: Well our client came to us with a complaint of a coolant warning light on the dash, basically it was an overheating warning light. We’d actually had the car here a few months ago with a similar issue and it turned out the coolant overflow bottle which has a sensor in it, a level sensor was malfunctioning, so we replaced the bottle. Solved the issue and for a couple months it was working fine and then the same light came on. Although the conditions were different this time. It was only on after driving for about half an hour driving down the highway that the issue occurred.
Mark: So how did you go about diagnosing the problem?
Bernie: Well the first step with any coolant diagnosis is to make sure there’s coolant in the vehicle, so I verified that in fact the coolant level was full, it hadn’t lost any coolant, there were no leaks present anywhere. So the issue was either something internal in the engine was causing it likely run too hot or maybe that overflow bottle had a malfunction. Again so the first step basically hook up a scan tool which is something we can do on this vehicle, and access the data on the vehicle and see what the actual coolant temperature is. Drove the vehicle and it was pretty apparent, I didn’t have to drive a half an hour on the highway, it was pretty apparent just driving in the city, the temperature was creeping up pretty high. It’s normally, like the normal temperature on this vehicle should be under a hundred degrees Celsius. It was you know pretty quickly running up to a hundred, a hundred and two, a hundred and three slowly creeping up to a hundred and ten and you can hear the radiator fan running full blast the whole time. So that’s again, an indicator of a problem. So we brought it back to the shop and continued the diagnosis and I’ll share a couple of, well actually no, we’ll talk a little more then I’ll share some photos.
Mark: So what did you find that was wrong with the vehicle?
Bernie: Well after testing and looking at a few things further determined that the thermostat was the cause of the problem. The thermostat is supposed to open at a specified temperature, usually it’s around 95 degrees Celsius. It can be up or down five degrees above or below that number but that’s usually the right amount of time and as the temperature just kept creeping up, I figured it was either, the coolant’s full, it’s flowing, it’s mostly likely a defective thermostat and that was a place to start. When we took it apart we found the thermostat housing which is made of plastic, was broken apart which is not an untypical issue to find on these cars and that along with the bad thermostat was the cause of the problem.
So at this point I’ll share a few photos.
So here’s our fine 2009 Jaguar XF, very nice stylish looking four door sedan and this is a screen capture of our scan tool. It’s an Autologic scan tool, excellent for imported vehicles and there’s a number of items that we look at this. On this particular car it lists the temperatures that are running in the engine. So you can see fuel rail temperature, engine oil temperature, intake air, ambient air which is the outside temperature and this is the engine coolant temperature. Now I did this screen capture after we repaired it and everything was working properly and you can see it says 96 Celsius. This is pretty much where it sat the whole time when we did a long road test once the engine was warmed up but previous to doing this, as I said this number was creeping up to a hundred, a hundred and three, a hundred and five, a hundred and ten, so it kept going up. So this was a place where we get data and good data and information to look at. Back to a couple of the photos, here’s the thermostat housing, now initially you can, for this particular engine, it’s a V8 non-super charge, you can actually buy the thermostat separately but it was pretty apparent once we took it apart that the housing was damaged. Here’s a closer view of the inside of the housing. You can see this is a, this is supposed to be a nice round cylinder and you can see these rough edges, this is bits of plastic that have basically broken off and disintegrated and the the thermostat fits into this area. So it really affects the flow of the coolant through the thermostat. So the whole housing needed to be replaced. Not an untypical repair for these vehicles and Land Rovers use a similar engine as well and they do have problems also.
Mark: Alright, so this is a pretty, upper, special, fancy car is there any particular unique feature about this car that we should look at?
Bernie: It’s funny that you mention that because yeah there’s a couple of unique features about this car. I love the interior of the vehicle, when you get in there’s a push button start like a lot of newer vehicles have but is has a knob instead of a gearshift lever for the transmission, it actually has a knob that comes up, it’s a rotary knob and it actually lifts up out of the dash but the other really neat feature and I’ll just share a video here, so if you watch these dash vents as the engine’s starting, for some reason there’s no sound here, but when you shut the engine off which I did then these vents close. So that’s my kind of unique feature of this car. I think that’s pretty nifty, there’s four of them and they all pop open but strangely whenever I’ve worked on these cars, I go that’ll be interesting when something goes wrong with them and sure enough one of the vents which is not in that view, actually doesn’t close properly, it eventually closes, but it’s slow. So you know there’s with all that beauty and neat engineering, there’s extra stuff to go wrong but it’s a pretty cool feeling when you get the car and you push the button and all these things kind of pop up and move into position.
Mark: You’re showing your age Bernie, it’s like you talking about a 69 Corvette.
Bernie: Yeah I know, yeah exactly we talked about pop up stuff like hide away headlights awhile ago and now pop up dash vents.
Mark: So in the past, English vehicles had let’s say a, well terrible reputation for reliability, how is this age of Jaguar?
Bernie: These are good and yeah, you’re right, I mean older English cars are the kind of thing where you’d be having it in to the mechanic shop every week doing some tinkering or fixing it and these vehicles are really reliable. I mean, as I say, the thermostat problem is not uncommon and there’s a, it’s probably the worst thing about these cars is there’s a lot of plastic on them which just happens on a lot of European cars, not so much on Japanese, but a lot of European cars, there’s plastic in the cooling system so they seem to use a lot of it and it breaks. So that’s sort of one of the things that affects the reliability, but overall they are actually pretty good, I mean you can usually get in these cars and you can drive without much problem. So the engines are pretty good. They used to be problematic in the past, I mean as much as I often have had not great things to say about Ford’s ever since Ford took over Jaguar and Land Rover, it’s made them a lot better vehicles. So yes Ford’s aren’t that bad after all.
Mark: So there you go, if you have a Jaguar in Vancouver and you need some service, the guys to see are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment, you have to book ahead, they’re busy or check out the website pawlikautomotive.com or our YouTube channel Pawlik Automotive, you just have to search for it, you’ll find it, hundreds of videos on there over the last few years. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thanks Mark
