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| It aint over until it's over. |
Do you remember those great Quinn Martin television series like the Fugitive, Cannon and the Streets of San Francisco? They were always narrated by a dramatic, gravel voiced announcer, The segments were always divided into individual "Acts" then followed by an Epilogue.
Unfortunately my story also contains this addendum.
The perfect ending to my story would be the successful start up of the engine. It would be my moment of triumphant celebration and satisfaction.
The engine did not roar to life. It wheezed to a smoky mis -firing, shaky life. Then it stalled out. I managed to restart it and back it into the street where it again died and refused to restart. I was lucky to have my Wife come to my aid and we pushed it back into the garage.
My Wife likes this car more than I do. She thinks that it is beautiful. She is right about that!
What could be wrong? All I did was change the plugs.
Of course there was a problem before I changed the plugs.
My first reaction was of course, annoyance, I had spent more than the entire weekend of my time trying to fix the car, but it just didn't work. Yes, I was a bit angry, but that wouldn't fix anything and it's a very bad plan to work on a complex mechanism, which that V12 is, when you are in a sour mood. So I closed up the garage and went into the house. The car could wait.
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While I was waiting, I started to look for answers on the internet which means going to the Jaguar Forums. Searching through the XJS forum I found the "Stickies" at the front of the forum listings. There were many helpful troubleshooting and service procedures available.
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| Distilled Wisdom! |
Grant Francis is an extremely knowledgeable contributor to the forum. Over the years he has transferred a vast amount of his knowledge to grateful forum members. His sticky, "So you've got a HE V12 that won't start" is 11 pages of pure gold. I printed out the down load so that I could peruse it at my leisure. I read through the whole thing once completely, then started looking for things that could help me specifically.
I also started a written log that describes what situation proceeded the problem, the description of the problem, my thoughts about what could be wrong, and documents the steps that I'm taking to trouble shoot it. I just wrote it down in plain linear fashion, in short declarative statements and partial sentences. This will help keep my thinking straight. It's also easier to review my actions on paper instead of morosely staring at the motor standing in the garage.
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| Nothing fancy, but it helps. |
Okay, the initial situation:
The car was driven into the garage for some suspension work.
It drove in without any problems. The car had been driven successfully for many many months prior to this and was actually used as transportation on a few occasions.
It sat for at least a couple of months afterwards. I was busy on my Summer vacations.
I consistently maintained the battery at full charge.
I decided to "prime" the motor, (excessively it appears!) before attempting to start it.
The motor caught, ran very poorly, smoking heavily, did not rev easily, and died several times.
I managed to back the car out into the street. Pushed car back into garage a couple of times after backing it out into street. Luckily my Wife was available to help.
I added a couple of gallons of fresh gas and attempted to restart it.
Same result.
Decided that the engine had been badly flooded, fouling the plugs.
Concluded that a new set of plugs was in order. Proceeded to initiate a plug change.
Changing of all spark plugs was completed.
Unfortunately, things were not improved, as I described at the top of the post. What to do next?
Systematic trouble shooting. Preceded by a lot of research.
My problems began when I started the car after completing the suspension work.
Obviously my work on the suspension could not affect how the engine runs, could it?
No, but things can happen suddenly, or coincidentally, events can follow one another but that doesn't imply causation.
Perhaps an ignition or electrical component just happened to fail at this time. Electronic components are known to do that, often without warning.
For example, the fuel pump in my Mustang expired on the freeway late one night without giving me any indication of trouble. The engine just died and would not restart. Luckily I was able to stop safely on the right shoulder. This is when having AAA comes in handy, There was no pretense in diagnosis or repair at this time and location. I just had the car flat bedded to my house and diagnosed the problem at my leisure.
I performed a couple of diagnostic checks and determined that the fuel pump was the culprit.
Now I am facing a similar task.
As a a disclaimer I have to admit that the following series of posts are probably going to be pretty tedious. I'm going to be following a checklist and I'm going to document the process. However this is where I am at, right now. I've got to find a way to fix this car. The question is, "Am I up to the challenge?"
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