Mark: Hi, it's Mark Bossert from Top Local. We're here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver for the Pawlik automotive podcast. How are you doing this morning, Bernie?
Bernie: Doing very well.
Mark: So 20 years, best auto repair in Vancouver as voted by your customers and probably going to win a couple more, I bet, this year. Today's victim is a 2016 Jaguar XF. What was happening with this fine British luxury automobile?
Bernie: So this car came to our shop that was basically just due for a maintenance service. No concerns. Not a very old car, 2016, this is three years old at this point. I guess maybe four. I guess we're almost ready for the new model year, this being July. So three, four year old car basically due for a maintenance service.
Mark: So that's a B service. What's involved in a B service on a Jag?
Bernie: So B service, essentially there's two major services, there's the A and the B, the A is an oil change and a basic inspection. The B, which we did this time, is an oil and filter change and then a full vehicle inspection. So on this vehicle we would remove the wheels, inspect the brakes, do a full steering suspension inspection, inspect all the fluids, a full visual inspection under the hood, test the battery and charging system, pressure test the cooling system, do the full look over the vehicle. Scan the vehicle computer, see if there's any codes stored, usually clear them because often on these kind of cars, you'll get a number of codes stored for a variety of things that are not really relevant. But one or two systems pick up a little flaw. They set a code, store it, and we would just reset all that. So that's basically it.
Mark: So you follow a checklist when you're doing that, is that correct?
Bernie: Very, very thorough checklist. Yeah. Yeah. And it's based on our own checklist plus the manufacturer has a list of specific items, but generally speaking, from car to car, they're all the same. Unless of course you have an electric car, there's different fluid, there's less fluids to look at. And obviously you're not going to look at spark plugs on an electric, pure electric car. So there's different checklists of things for different cars. But for the most part, any gasoline or diesel powered vehicle will have the same checklist in general.
Mark: So were there any concerns with the vehicle?
Bernie: No. This car came up with a clean sheet, to use a British soccer term, nothing much found on it. It only has 12,000 kilometres. So the owner drives very little and four years old, really very little going on with the car. Next service, I think a brake fluid flush would be ideal. But which will be in a year. But other than that it's really, everything was in very good shape.
Mark: So anything interesting about this vehicle that you want to talk about?
Bernie: Yeah, I want to, well one thing I really like about this vehicle and we'll start a picture show in a minute is just what happens when you start the vehicle up. There's some pretty cool, if you've never been in a car, if you have one of these cars, you'll know what I'm talking about. But if you've never been in one of these cars, it's pretty neat when you press the start button, a few cool things happen. So we have a little video and of course, a few pictures. So we'll just start.
There's the a 2016 XF Jaguar right there. And let's just get in. There's a neat little video here I'll just share.
That's basically the start and stop procedure on the vehicle. So when you start it, you can see the gear shift knob. There's no actual handle anymore. It's just a button you rotate, pops up and down. And also, what I didn't show in this video is on the instrument panel on the dash, there are two vents, air vents, and they rotate open. So they're normally in a closed position. And when you press the start button again, these vents rotate to the open position. It's kind of cool and when you shut the car off, they kind of go down. So it's kind of neat. There's some neat little hideaway features on on this car.
Mark: So with those kind of interesting features, electrical features, did you want to show the engine and stuff too?
Bernie: Yeah, here's a view of the engine compartment. So I'll just talk about the engine for a second because I know you have a question to ask me about that, those neat features. But here's a view of the engine compartment with the plastic cover on the top. This is a three litre turbo, sorry, it's three litre supercharged engine, which is remarkably like the five litre engine you'll find in some other Jaguar models and Range Rovers.
And the engine, interestingly enough, looks pretty much like the, it looks pretty much like the five litre but everything's just a little shorter because as two less cylinders. But the supercharger, a lot of the piping, very, very similar in design. So it's kind of, it's neat when you see a manufacturer use that kind of thing, in a way where they take the same engine, they kind of scale it back and.
Mark: So they've scaled it from a V8 to a V6.
Bernie: Yeah. And it kind of reminds me, I don't really know the internal engineering of this, the internal engineering of the engine, but there's different things you have to do in a V6 motor. But Americans when they went from their V8's seem to be popular, they went down to V6's in the 1970s for fuel economy. They have a lot of engines, they kind of did this where they take a V8 and they basically chopped two cylinders off and they did it in kind of a rushed fashion and some of them didn't quite, the engine didn't quite fire properly, like odd fire V6's just by nature of the construction of the engine. Anyways, we're getting kind of technical here and but nonetheless, it's a neat way to do things and probably saves a lot of money in the long run.
Mark: All right, so the doodads, for the electronic doodads that, the first question that pops up in my mind is what happens when the battery goes dead? How do you start the car?
Bernie: Well you start the car with a... Okay, so you start the car and you can actually jump start the car. Like generally the battery, I believe on this vehicle's either located in the trunk or under one of the, probably in the trunk, usually hard to get at. A lot of, used to be a battery was always found under the hood of a car. But that doesn't happen much anymore. It's always remotely mounted somewhere, which is probably a good idea because you cram more under the hood. However, this big red positive symbol here, if you pull that cap off, you can actually attach a jumper cable to the positive and then just find a good ground somewhere else under the hood. Some vehicles actually have a ground tab and this one may have one. I don't see it readily available. But you can often even use something like a bolt from the top of the strut if you had to.
So that's how you jumpstart the battery. But if that doesn't work, then you might wonder, well what if everything is just completely dead and you can't even, I need to roll the vehicle to get it on a tow truck. There is a way and that is, with this engine cover off, there's a little piece right here, little lever. So this is a tip if you own one of these cars, there's a little lever right here. And if you pull on this lever, this will actually allow, that will actually shift the transmission into neutral so you can roll a car. So it'll actually lock up and you can do that. So there's your tip. If you own one of these cars, of course it has this little booklet picture here with a question mark.
Mark: An I, information. That's right. Yeah, I knew I was saying the wrong thing anyways. You know that you can refer to your owner's manuals is what they suggest here. So this is a good thing. Always good to keep your manual in your car, by the way. That's another tip because you never know when something comes up, you go, "Hey, what? How do I do that? Or what's supposed to happen here?" So keeping your owner's manual on your car is always a good thing to do. And that's your tip for the day.
Mark: So Jaguar XF, obviously this is a complex luxury vehicle so a lot of electrical parts, a lot of superchargers, et cetera. How are they for reliability?
Bernie: Well, they're pretty good. I often think Jaguar as having the reputation of needing to be in the shop for repairs every week. They used to be like that a long time ago, but when I think about it, they lived in a world of cars that weren't very reliable anyways. As time has gone by, cars have just got better and better and better and more reliable. But so to have Jaguars. These are pretty reliable cars but they do have a lot of expensive things to go wrong. And one thing that that we've seen on some of these, like a little slightly older models is cooling system problems, they'll develop coolant leaks. That's something that's really important to keep an eye on. We had someone a while ago, the water pump was leaking. They left it too long and destroyed their engine.
A while ago I was taking a little walk, we have a really nice walk over the bridge called Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver and I was walking across the bridge on a nice sunny day and I noticed the guy coming up the hill in a nice Jag of similar type to this. And I could see smoke coming out from under the car. I go that's very unusual that I could smell antifreeze in the air. So this person obviously had a coolant leak. And I think, I hope that guy fixes that car soon because otherwise he's going to cook his engine too.
So with regular maintenance, you can deal with these things. But of course if a low coolant warning light comes on, take it seriously. As much as we like the work of changing an engine, we really don't, because it's money that you could have, it's wasted money.
Mark: So there you go. If you're looking for service for your Jaguar in Vancouver, the guys to see are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at (604) 327-7112. Again, that's for people who live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, (604) 327-7112 to book your appointment. Call to book because they're always busy, otherwise you're not going to get in. And of course thank you so much for listening to the podcast. There is more information on the website, pawlikautomotive.com. Hundreds of videos and articles on there. Our YouTube Channel, Pawlik Auto Repair, same story, close to 400 videos on there. All makes and models and types of problems and repairs and maintenance and advice about vehicles of all kinds. We love them all, mostly.
Bernie: Yep, we do.
Mark: Thanks, Bernie.
Bernie: Thanks, Mark. Thanks for watching.
