'82 XJS with the cursed Jaguar V12 comes into the CAR WIZARD's shop. Can he get it running?

welcome back to the wizard shop and today is a day in victory i have triumphed over one of the most difficult engines for mechanics to diagnose and fix in history let's take a look [Music] so this is a 1982 jaguar xjs and it's not had its guts ripped out and replaced with a chevy 350 like so many of them have been this is one of my good friends who has a dealership sells cars it's not euro asian bob it's a different person they bought this car it won't start and they just knew from the history of these cars they don't even want to begin to tackle it they said car wizard are you interested in this car and i really enjoy challenges i said bring it on i'll conquer this and i have there are a lot of the xj 12 xjs any of these with the v12 with chevy 350s in them you can go and bring a trailer you can go on different places that sell these older cars and it'll say in the description been converted to an sbc it's because these engines even the best of mechanics will make them pull their hair out if they have any i don't i don't have any but it'll make them pull their hair out and they'll be like i am done with this we're putting a 350 i'm tired of this i can't get it to run i can't get it to start i'm ready to light this thing on fire and that's pretty much the scenario what happened here like i said the owner of this car knew it wasn't going to be something they're going to try to tackle we're going to go over today everything that was wrong from somebody else's not my friend there was somebody else that tried to fix this car and get it running it made the situation worse than it should have been but i still reign victorious let's open the hood and take a look got my handy dandy hood prop any of these hoods that have hydraulic supports that are gone bad that definitely helps to clamp it and hold it into place you don't have to worry about damaging these because they're already ruined and failed anyway that'll be something we might address but the main thing here was can we even get the thing to run so you look at this engine and it just looks like a mess of wires and all kinds of things going on and they are very complicated even for me it was quite the challenge it's very difficult but we went through all the different steps everything that i know about these engines so let's take a look at some of the components on the engine some of the high failure points one of them is the ignition amplifier which is right here our ignition control module that can commonly cause issues where it's not sparking or it's not sending a signal out to the computer that the engine is turning these do not have a crank sensor the newer models that have the magnetic morelli system on them do but this one is the old lucas system the computer knows the engine's turning and turns on the fuel based on the pulse signal it receives from the ignition module car wizard you said the scary word lucas yes there is lucas everywhere on this car it's also another reason why people give up on these cars as long as you have an open mind and you say okay i know this is really strange but it doesn't matter it still has to be fixed then you can usually make good progress on these but if you're an old school mechanic and you start seeing the word lucas print on everything and you start throwing wrenches across the shop it's definitely going to be an exercise and futility for you so the next thing that can go bad on these is in the distributor inside of there is a pickup coil kind of a trigger wheel and a magnetic sensor a hall effect sensor is what it is and it actually controls a signal to this ignition control module and you see there's ignition coil here's the turn buckle i guess you would call it or the for the both throttles the ac compressor the injectors are individually right here the spark plugs are not down here on the outside where you would think they would be they're actually deep in there you can see the spark plug wire goes right down to the spark plug they're actually in the v of the engine they're still in the cylinder heads but kind of in the v of the engines where they're at so kind of easy to get to i'm actually glad that they're there so we'll kind of just do a quick rundown when the car comes in the shop and it's not running it's an xjs a v12 immediately there's a lot of things that i need to go through to see what's going on here some mechanics would try extravagant different things but it's really there's like four or five pinpoint things it's really simple on these engines let's take a look at the first one 12 volt test light hook to ground and on the negative side of the coil it should see it flicker when i crank it over [Music] i purposely have the coolant temperature sensor unplugged so it wouldn't start once it starts it's so fast you won't see the flicker but i seen that the light wasn't solid which it was when it first came in here now it flickers and pulses like it's supposed to and that's because when it came in here the ignition module was dead here's a really cool cost saving trick i'm going to give you this looks like an expensive lucas ignition module and you think oh wow that's going to be 500 some expensive expensive item to i have to get on ebay or something and try to find that if you take this cover just take these two bolts loose and flip it over what you'll see is this 1985 chevy k5 blazer ignition module hei or a van or truck or whatever that's all it is it sits in there like this this plugs into this end of it and those two go to some wires out here that's all that's in there pretty crazy huh so i put a new one of these in actually ordered it for an 85 chevy k5 blazer so i got that replaced and it still wasn't pulsing so i got my oscilloscope and hooked to this actually my autel oscilloscope is over there is what i use to check this out the two wires coming out of the distributor when you hook it to resistance reading you should see a nice cyclic pattern it shows the engines turning and the sensor is actually reading and it was but someone had been in there had hooked up a wire done some kind of wiring and it wasn't even connected properly so that's when i know somebody's been in here before so i got all that sorted out like i had this module replaced now i can get it to flicker but it would start to try and want to run but it was like it was wasn't enough gas and when it did run it would backfire really loud sound like a shotgun i thought what in the world could be wrong with that i checked all my timing i checked spark plugs finally under the main pulley is a little indicator panel it has little lines on it top dead center 0 10 20 degrees i put it at zero put it on the top the compression stroke on a1 this a and b and the distributor was 180 degrees out so you know when cars come into the shop you don't anticipate that you're thinking okay there's a module failed you don't realize you're having to backtrack and unscrew the last guy's screw-ups that's when it really starts people start throwing wrenches mechanics get really mad but i didn't get mad i decided it's not going to win i'm going to win so i got the distributor properly timed and it would try to start it was a lot better and it would run for a few seconds and die and that reason was this this little wire here is a trigger wire that goes back to the computer the white portion of this wire that goes down along the firewall here is actually a coaxial wire kind of like a cable tv back in the old days the cable had a center wire and then a metal sheath around the center wire that's exactly what that is it's just really small but right in here was a broken section where it was shorting out and at times it would start other times it wouldn't have this temporarily put in place just for testing purposes and it works but that wasn't the end of the story i still wasn't done i finally got spark i occasionally would get fuel i finally got this fixed where it should get fuel all the time but i still didn't because those were shorted out for so long i think it took the computer out let's take a look in the trunk so it's kind of a mess in here there's stuff all in here this is not my car but it's just storage for items it's not really dirty it's just right now i have a computer that i bought from sga this is a 16 cu computer i have an 86 jag the original computer which is right here i'm no longer using is a 6 cu where they're known for the fuel relay inside of it to fail and it will not turn on the fuel i think it failed because those wires were shorted out up front that i showed you and it finally killed it there's another interesting thing about these computers you think on a 1987 chevy truck there's a map sensor under the hood it's a little black box ever we've all seen it it's it's a map sensor on these cars the map sensors inside the ecm right here where you can see the vacuum line going to it i'll unplug it and show you right there the ecm is inside the computer so if you change out computers remember to swap this over it'll run really bad so now we have an upgraded 16 cu this is an upgrade to these commonly failing 6 cu computers and it ran let's go back to the engine bay so this thing hasn't ran in a long time whoever worked on it last it might have been two five ten i don't know how many years ago and from what i just described they really butchered the job i could have really found a couple things a couple issues and be in business but i had to undo the screw-ups that the last guy did on top of the original failure problems those kind of issues can throw even the best of mechanics for a loop why is this not starting i expect that the timing should be right on this engine no you shouldn't expect that this is proof that it was completely out of whack 180 degrees out he's back frying really loud it's easy it's easy to think oh it can't be the timing why not yes it can it can be a lot of different things what was the last person doing that was in here what were they doing who knows it could be anything so we got it running let's start it up i win runs good so it hasn't ran in years and now it finally is running again guess what you find whenever you get something running that hasn't ran for years you think you've got it running your problems are over you're done all that does is open a can of worms and find the next problems down the line that couldn't be found until the engine was running one of them is when i first got it running this thing was like a smoke screen it would just completely smoke up the whole shop it was running so rich i did a little trick over here let me show you where the coolant temperature sensor is so you can see this the actual sensor is right there i have it unplugged at the moment and you can see a loop of wire i have it i have it flattened out so it fits without damaging the terminals in there but this is a trick that you can do on these old jags a straight across piece of wire like that simulates a fully warmed up engine and when i did that the smoke went away it runs perfect no smoke very smooth now you heard a minute ago i had a long cranking time that's because i have the coolant temperature sensor bypassed if i were to hook it back into its normal sensor it would it would run and start right up but it would be smoking the shop out again really bad so is this car done no we're only halfway there we have to replace the coolant temperature sensor still and there's an oil leak i'm not sure where that's coming from and i believe it needs new spark plugs these are very sensitive to spark plugs in the gap i believe those need to be replaced we've got a running the last obviously the last people could not get it running i've gotten it running and there's a reason why it's so popular to put the chevy 350s in here because it is that hard to diagnose these engines it really is if you're looking to buy one of these cars and you see it on facebook marketplace that says not ran in five years and you think i'm going to be a hero and get in there and rescue this car and get it running again this is not the car for you unless you're very knowledgeable with cars because there we go again i can't figure it out i'm going to put a 350 in it and be done let's get it on the lift and see what we got going on with the oil leak i just noticed when i moved it there's a pretty nice oil puddle underneath oil puddle wasn't there until we got it running so let's find out what that is this thing runs really good as you heard i just did a little chirp with the with the gas pedal first time i took it out i gave it gas and it had a lot more power than i was expecting so this is a really powerful engine so let's get this thing on the lift let's see what's going on underneath [Music] [Music] got some cool little insignia on here it's got a v12 emblem and a jaguar emblem there pretty neat looking let's take a look through here we can see if there's any coolant leaks going on i don't see anything atrocious happening okay so let's see what we got under here right here is the timing plate i was talking about you can line up the main pulley and figure out the timing on it but somewhere under here we're having some big oil leaks let's see what we got i mean i see some seepage here but it's not like it's pouring out of there see what else we got there we go it's coming somewhere over in here the exhaust is all coated in oil it's right up by the starter coming up on top of the engine somewhere you can see it's all wet in there that's engine oil it's not transmission fluid you can see it's pretty bad through here too so need to look on top and see what's going on as well we'll go ahead and look at the rest of the car it's definitely coming from that area over there the brakes look okay that looks pretty gunky probably needs to be cleaned and greased nothing loose there i went and drove it and i didn't see anything that boot up there looks a little damaged didn't see anything too bad look over here gunky again years of road grime that boot is damaged as well some brake pads they look fine these are two cats dual exhaust all the way back there's some seepage coming from the speedometer cable and the transmission fluid there see a little bit of a drip there check the drive shaft that's good this is interesting how they did the speed sensor there's a little sensor here and there's just a flange they put welded notches on it or something there's two of them one there and one 180 degrees that's pretty neat well that's the same technology that's used on my bike yeah basically it is here's an interesting thing about these old jags if you're looking for the brakes in the wheels they're not there they're right here by the differential the rotors and the brake calipers are right next on either side of the differential you can see it there luckily the pads look good kind of a weird setup they did that for years and years otherwise check this wheel over here i don't see too much going on there big old trunk and two tail pipes out the back well let's go ahead and lower it down and see what we see on the oil leak up [Music] top [Music] it's definitely coming from that side over there near the rear of the engine we can see a oil pressure sending unit right in the middle there that's it's clean right where it comes out it looks like oil is coming out or where to the seam of it where the plastic meets the metal you can see towards the back of the engine there's a big puddle of oil and it's coming from that sensor so it's going to need a new sensor there it's literally spraying oil out so that's not so bad we'll replace that sensor it'll take care of that massive oil leak it's really gushing out of there so let's do a little recap here in order to make this non-running car running again we had to get it sparking again which was an ignition control module and we realized it wasn't getting a good signal from the distributor because the wiring had been finagled with and messed with and we got that fixed now we have spark it's still not running we found that the coaxial cable was damaged i repaired that then we found out the computer was bad and then we got it kind of running and it was backfiring so bad and it was something wasn't right with the timing we found out the distributor was out of time 180 degrees once we got all those things figured out it runs great runs very good we definitely need to get that oil pressure sending unit replaced and maybe do a tune-up on it and a few other things really be a running and driving car again so this is a common thing i run into with many other customers as they say hey car wizard i've got a 5 000 budget this car hasn't ran in 15 years let's go ahead and get it running again and they have it in their mind that the only thing that needs to be done is to get it running again and if it takes four or five grand that's fine but they don't realize just in this scenario here getting it running only exposes the five or ten other problems that the engine had before it stopped running and it's going to be another three or four or five grand to fix it and i commonly hear the same same statement i had i hadn't thought that i'd have to spend this much money i thought we would get it running and that was it it never ever happens that way this is easily going to be a thousand dollars or more to go through and just figure out what was wrong the parts necessarily weren't so expensive it was just figuring out what was going on there is no obd2 port that your scan tool can hook into your common modern scan tool these are one of the cars that your scan tool needs to be up here you can use oscilloscopes volt meters all kinds of different test equipment to figure out what's going on fuel pressure gauge you can actually pull out that old timing light in the bottom drawer of your toolbox yeah we probably will on this car to check it out do the timing on it this is a mixture of old school 1950s stuff with modern fuel injection and wiring it's kind of a combination of the both you still have a distributor you still have to get it timed kind of kind of a mix of both things like i mentioned a minute ago if you see these on marketplace and you're not an expert mechanic probably not the car for you because you're just going to take it out and put a 350 in it that's happened so many times that's not going to be the case here we got it running so we'll have a happy customer they got what they came here for we'll fix the few other things we found after we got it running and give it back to the customer if you're curious what kind of tools we use in the shop other than the test light or the hood clamp that we use there's many other tools i have listed in my amazon affiliate page in the description below we get a small cut and we appreciate that and if you haven't hit the subscribe button already i really recommend that you do that now many many more cool videos to come thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Car Wizard

Views: 824,834

Keywords: car wizard, david long, hoovies garage, tyler hoover, car issues with tyler hoover, omega auto clinic, scotty kilmer, car repair, car maintenance, tavarish, Doug DeMuro, samcrac, vinwiki, Hoovie, mechanic, Car issues, BendPak, Car trek, jaguar, xjs, v12, jag

Id: OVH1mrLuneI

Length: 24min 42sec (1482 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020