RESTOR
Buying a supercharged Jaguar with an engine problem might seem like a brave decision but it didn’t deter S-Type fan Neville Hobbs
I FIThasn’t got a supercharged V8, I’m not interested,” jokes Neville Hobbs as we ponder his triple-Jaguar garage which includes an X100 XKR, an X150 XKR and the S-Type Ryou see here.
It’s afitting conclusion to aJaguar ownership experiencewhichbegan in the ’80s behind the wheel of an XJ-S V12, but whichtookadiversion into BMWownership during the following decade. Until, that is, acustomer arrived one dayinthe then-new Jaguar S-Type and Neville wasintrigued.
Within the year,he’d been lured back to Jaguar courtesyofan18-month old S-Type in 3.0 V6 manual flavour which those in the know will appreciateasa thoroughly underrated car.It’sfairtosay Neville liked the S-Type, yetwhen it came to replacement time some 100,000 miles later,hefoundthe bold new style of the XF wasn’t really his cup of tea. Afterabrief diversion with an Evoque, he hit upon a solution whichwas to source the highestspec S-Type he could find –whichnaturally meant an upgrade to the 400bhp Rmodel.
Having found asuitable example on acertain online auction site, Neville reckoned it wasagood £7500-worth, so wasdulygratified when acheeky last-minutebid nettedthe car forjust £6100, meaning therewas afairbit left in the kitty forgeneral tidying.
Whichturned out to be agood thing. The car had been advertised –very honestly as Neville says –ashaving the EML light glowing with the associated code suggesting it needed areplacement catalytic converter.Knowing the car wasalready on its second pair of cats at nine yearsold, the vendor admitted he wanted to moveitonbeforethe looming MoT required the work.
“Can’t be that bad... can it?” thought Neville but with at least one spare Jaguar on the premises he was able to take his time to get to the bottomof the issue before simply throwing costly parts at the car. Muchhead-scratching followed, but the knowledge that aprevious owner had suffered from an unusual fuel contamination problem gave auseful head start.
If you’venot heardofHydrocarbon Utilising MicroOrganisms (and we hadn’t) then they’remuchasthe name describes: abacteriawhichlives on the fuel system, thrives on petrol and eventually gums everything up.
The story goes that aprevious owner had unwittingly filled up with contaminated fuel and that the partially blockedfuellines had caused intermittent backfires and other problems whichhad essentially wreckedthe internals of the catalyst.
The first solution had been to replace the catalytic convertersbut when this didn’t curethe problem, the bacterial diagnosis wasarrived at and the fuel system wascleaned out from tank to injectors. Naturally,having replaced the catalytic convertersonce, the
