I seem to have been occupied to an unusual extent with tyres this month, not helped by the onset of winter weather. First came a mate’s request to assist him with converting his mountain bike tyres to a modern tubeless set-up which was quick enough although when he casually mentioned the poor lighting on the Toyota he’d arrived in, I couldn’t let him drive home in the dark without sorting out the horrifically clouded headlamp lenses. The polishing kit was still lying on the bench after sorting our XJ8’s lights (see page 86) and the lighting was duly transformed.
Next came the tyre pressure warning lamp on my son’s BMW, the pressure having clearly been at the threshold and the warning triggered by the first cold morning. A few days later the same warning flashed up on my wife’s Golf no doubt for the same reason, at which point I thought I’d best check the pressures on the Jaguar – which doesn’t have the luxury of a pressure warning system.
As regular readers will know, our XJ8 has been repainted and it may have transformed its appearance but has resulted in the disappearance of the tyre pressure label from the fuel filler flap. To their credit, both the BMW and Volkswagen handbooks provide the pressures for every optional wheel and tyre combination but the Jaguar handbook simply provides a blank space and invites you to write in the correct figure.
You might think it would be a simple job to discover the correct pressure, but not in the case of our XJ. A rare (it would now seem) short wheelbase Sport model from 2003,
