MJG50

I'm pretty sure the last owner had a new set of plugs fitted at the last service just before she traded it in but I'll check the service history to make sure.

I've noticed what seems like an occasional misfire on a 2013 Corsa 1.4 SE Automatic. I'd never buy a chocolate engined Vauxhall for stock but I took this one in PX. Last week, I noticed a very occasional slight knock/bang and the revs would momentarily fall slightly and then go back to normal when idling in traffic. Now the weather is a lot hotter, I've noticed when pulling away when the engine is hot the engine bangs quite a bit with the same slight drop in revs. Whilst waiting at a roundabout today for a few seconds there was a banging / pinking sensation that I felt throughout the car. Once on the move though, the car drives absolutely perfectly with plenty of smooth power. This banging/knocking only occurs when idling and just recently when pulling away.I've read about quite a few problems with this 1.4 Ecotec engine - I'll get it looked at by my mechanic but I just wondered what is the most likely cause?It will be a tricky noise to show the mechanic as it's not as though it does it all the time. The oil & water are all fine.The car was recently serviced with 5 W 30 oil (as used from new) - I'm sure I read somewhere that using thicker oil could help but is this likely to be of help in my case?It's a really nice car - this annoying misfire is the only thing wrong with it.

Thanks again for all the detailed information. I've finally managed to get hold of the warranty and repair records and there's no sign of anything to do with the diff being repaired at all! It seems strange as literally everything else including brake pads has been carried out at the supplying Jaguar dealer! So either they took it to an independent for the first time or just ignored it and subsequent MoTs haven't noticed it! I'd have taken a chance on it if it had a whole new diff under warranty but I won't go for it now at all. I bet it will make about £1500 over CAP Clean anyway! It's a shame about the diff issue with the XF as I've always liked them myself and in the old days it's the sort of thing I'd go for if I wanted a smoker but these days I've totally got interesting cars out of my system and don't mind driving anything that's reliable. My customer has been looking into 3.0 litre new shape XFs but I'm not sure that's a good idea, I see they also suffer from the same pinion seal problem, amongst a lot of other stuff. Personally speaking, I much prefer the look of the Mark 1 XF, both inside and outside. To me, the new XF looks pretty bland, a bit Audi like and the interior just feels like any volume car. The leather seems so thin too compared with older models. It's the same with the Sportbrake, the first gen looks pretty smart but I can't take to the new ones at all, the rear almost reminds me of a new Focus Estate! Jaguar have come a long way styling wise since the Series III XJ, in the wrong direction if you ask me!

Yes, the only sites taking part in this are Leeds, Birmingham and Colchester. They will be open to physical buyers for an initial 4-6 week period.

Exactly, I'm very surprised they are opening up at all. It's not like they are a supermarket, the auctions are doing very well online only so from their point of view, it's not worth opening up.

I've just received that email. There does seem to be an awful lot of rules and regulations....temperature checking/NHS track & trace app/only one person per Manheim account/marshalls telling us where to go, as it were!.....I'd rather they checked the temperatures of the car engines! I think I'll be sticking to online personally. I'm quite surprised they are opening up at all though as I'm very doubtful BCA will ever go back to any type of physical auction.

Bit of a longshot but I just wondered if anyone had a contact at JLR to access the warranty records of a car? It's great that 2013 onwards Jaguars have all their service history online as long as you have the VIN but it seems very difficult to get any information on warranty repairs and any other non-servicing work carried out on Jaguars. Jaguar Customer Service just quote GDPR.

Many thanks for the detailed replies - if anything it's made me even keener to stick to mainstream stuff in the future. I guess I was quite lucky in the past with Jaguars (apart from one head gasket nightmare). I still can't believe I wasn't aware of that rear diff known problem to be honest, if I knew about it before I'd have been paranoid about the XFs I've bought. Even if I find one that doesn't have a history of that problem, it could happen at anytime. Going back to the car in question though, my gut feeling is that the problem was fixed to a decent standard years ago (and main dealer serviced every year since then) so it probably is ok now. I did faff about worrying why a low mileage 2014 XF was in a Pendragon sale recently (I assumed if it was any good they'd sell it themselves), I didn't buy it and I noticed the dealer who bought it sold it pretty quick for about a £2k margin! I guess it's all a balance between taking a calculated risk and never buy anything! There was a very cheap XF (about £2k below CAP Clean) recently but it had no mechanical report. It was from HR Owen at BCA and I gather they often don't seem to put reports on their cars. I didn't have the nerve to go for it and so far, it hasn't surfaced on Auto Trader/eBay so there may well have been a problem with it. Again, I didn't know about the alloy bolts on the Evoque! I did once buy a 3 year old ex-lease Citroen C5 though and I immediately noticed the steering wheel felt a bit loose. I drove it gingerly and my mechanic told me that bolt that connects the steering was extremely loose!! When I got the service print-out from the lease company I saw it was advised at the last service but not acted upon!

Many thanks for the replies. I'm really impressed with the product knowledge there Halfpenny. I used to specialise in Jags way back in the 90s but these days I'm trying to get back into the trade with run of the mill cars. I'm only part-time now though as high auction prices and annoying punters have really put me off going into the trade in a bigger way again. Maybe it's just me but I've found more recently anything vaguely prestige attracts really annoying timewasters / dreamers, wasting hours and offering £1500 under the asking price. I have an old customer who wants me to source a late X250 XF as he doesn't fancy the new shape model. I've never had an Ingenium one but I really don't fancy any JLR product with that 2.0 litre 4 cylinder Ingenium engine. It's been proving tricky to find a late X250 XF as they all seem to make an absolute fortune at auction even though they aren't the quickest of sellers. Quite a few I saw go through the block in March are still on the Auto Trader! One even made nearly £2k over CAP Clean this afternoon and the most recent MoT had a lot of brake related advisories. Going back to the pinion oil seal, I've done some more research now and it does seem quite a common problem. I've never encountered it with any early XFs I've had though. It's come up as an MoT advisory on a few later XFs and XEs I've seen advertised. It sounds an absolute nightmare job to do. The only positive I can think of is that this advisory was 20k ago and the car is a one owner so he/she didn't get rid of it when this fault occured. I am hoping that it would have been carried out to a high standard so hopefully it hasn't caused a noisy diff. I'm trying to get the warranty history of the car but I no longer have a helpful contact at JLR. If the pinion nut isn't put back in the same place would it immediately cause a noisy diff or is it something that would get progressively worse with time? As I say, I'm hoping it's all been sorted. If they made a mess of it when first advised, I doubt the owner would have kept it for years afterwards. There's no way I'd touch it if the most recent MoT had that as an advisory. Funnily enough, I used to love a Lexus back in the day, especially an LS430 (undoubtedly the quietest car I've ever driven) although in saying that my last BCA one lit up like a Christmas tree a few yards down the road and cost me £1300 to put out the EML and traction light. My customer isn't keen on anything apart from the Jag XF but I'm with you regarding JLR - I've been very lucky with the occasional Range Rover I had but I wouldn't have the nerve to touch them nowadays. I think that new French boss is probably all talk. Even if I was buying new (which I never have and never will) I wouldn't fancy anything from JLR whereas in the 90s and early 2000s if money was no object and I didn't care about depreciation, I'd have loved a new XJ.

I've just been checking out the MoT history of a 2014 Jaguar XF at the block. It's first MoT with only 20k came up with an advisory of "Fluid leak, but not excessive rear differential (8.4.1 (a) (i))" I've had a few XFs over the years but wasn't previously aware of a weakness with these seals. Doing a bit of research reveals they are actually a known fault. I'd imagine the seal must have been replaced as the car has done over 20k since then but it's put me off a bit. I can't imagine that the auction assured check would cover a potentially noisy diff. I know I probably sound like a punter who asks has the advisory for brake pads from about 10 years ago been done but I always do a fair bit of research now auctions are online only and just wondered if anyone else has had experience of leaking diff seals on these XFs

I seem to recall a while back hearing that it is now possible to remove an obvious discrepancy from the MoT database - I'm looking at a car where the MoT was failed and passed on the same day but the pass incorrectly showed a mileage of 5000 less than the fail! All the service history and all the other MoTs check out. Naturally, it's not possible for car to have a difference of 4000 miles recorded on the same day! Does anyone have a contact at VOSA to get the discrepancy removed? In the old days, I recall it was only possible to change an incorrect mileage on the same day but I'm pretty sure it's now possible to change it in retrospect. Many thanks in advance

I'm considering buying car from the block with no V5 - I don't fancy trying to sell it without the V5 so I'm intending to apply for a new V5 in my name when I get the car. Should I tax it at the same time as applying for the V5 or is it possible to put it in the trade without a V5 and use my trade plates?

That's really good to hear they are so helpful. I wonder if they look up how many the company has purchased before getting back as I haven't bought many recently. I emailed them yesterday and got the usual promise to get back to me but haven't heard anything yet. It's just my luck too lol, I nearly always find I get a poor response when I'm the customer (I almost dread buying anything new these days!) but people always seem to expect the Earth when buying from me! I think I'll just stick to buying Assured stuff now it's online only but it is a shame I get no response as it would inspire a bit more confidence to have a walk around phone call on something I'm interested in.

I'm interested in a BCA car that doesn't have an Assured Report - the photos of the dash show that the car wasn't even started, the rev counter is on nil. I'm just wondering if anyone has ever had any luck in getting a BCA member of staff to have a quick look at car and to start it up. Since BCA have been all online, I've emailed about a car once and was promised someone would look at it and get back to me but no one ever did. I have bought a couple of cars that you'd expect to come with a report given their age and miles and both were an utter disaster so there's no way I'd bid on anything relatively new without an Assured Report unless I could get someone at the auction to have a look at the car for me.

About 6 or 7 years ago I heard a few traders at the block talking about how many cars they sell from Facebook. I've always been very old fashioned and resisted joining Facebook. I finally gave in a couple of years ago and was initially amazed at the response - far more enquiries than Auto Trader and eBay (which pretty much seems dead now) but then I was equally amazed at the quality of the people on Facebook. Talk about timewasters! I've had far more than my fair share in the past but Facebook enquiries all seemed extremely keen and pretty reasonable to deal with at first but they all then put in ridiculous offers (£4k for a mint £5995 car) or had ridiculous excuses (insurance too dear or they thought the car was too dear!) I can see how some dealers are turning towards a deposit on the strength of their video description approach - I doubt the sort of customers I get would want to pay a deposit to effectively view the car but at the same time, I wouldn't mind giving this approach a try in future as timewasters are even more annoying to me than they used to be, the older I get!

Yes it does feel as though the XE and 2015 on XF (which are hard to tell apart on the road) are almost modern day X-types in the sense that they don't really feel like proper Jaguars. I actually didn't mind an X-type back in the day though - they were pretty good sellers and drove pretty well. I've known people who had issues with theirs when new-ish but mine were all fault-free, they were all ex lease and under 3 years old at the time. I never trusted the auto box on them so stuck to manuals. The Mondeo it was based on was a good drive but ultimately I far preferred a 325i or 330i compared to an equivalent X-type to drive. There are still quite a few very low mileage early X-types about bought by those who 'promised themselves a 'Jag' when they retired but sadly they are a nightmare for rust now. I remember seeing one without an MoT make £800 at Manheim and a quick MoT history check revealed it had been put through an MoT before being PX'd and it failed on a list as long as your arm for rust on the sills and pretty much everywhere else! The 90 day policy can work out well potentially for auction buys as I have much more confidence in bidding on a car that a main dealer has already thought fit to retail themselves. In the past, I used to find that main dealers block prestige PXs that needed paintwork. They were mechanically fine so were good buys. I always thought it strange that the main dealer didn't do the paintwork themselves and retail them.

That's good advice, I'm always wary of buying something which in theory the vendor should be selling themselves. A while back, I used to see a few Inchcape PXs at Blackbushe and a quick Google revealed that Inchcape had actively tried to sell them and advertised them but failed to sell them in 30 days hence blocking them. I always wondered if they had the full retail prep first or whether they get advertised and only prepped when a deposit is taken. Otherwise they'd be spending a lot on cars that eventually head to the block. An old customer fancies an XF and is trying to decide between a last of the old shape 3.0 2014 or a 2.0 Ingenum 2018 XF. Buying a 2014 at auction is riskier than an ex lease 2.0 but to me, the 2.0 just feels like a normal reps car rather than a proper Jag.

Yes, that's very true!

Exactly! In some cases, it appears as though a specialist is just someone who sells the same type of car! That said, I appreciate some specialists are former main dealer sales staff and workshop staff so to be fair in their cases they probably know how to sort out any issues that arise.

Yes, my gut instinct is that it's a wrong 'un but the older get, I seem to think that about nearly all auction cars are unless they are ex-lease!! In the end, it made more than I wanted to pay anyway! Jags are hardwork to buy now as there are quite a few specialists about that seem to be able to command top retail money for them.

Thanks again trade vet, I'll bear that in mind in future. I was always a bit wary of UK Car Group cars in the past as I assumed some could be We Buy Any Car stock that private sellers wanted to get shot of. I have bought from UK Car Group before and they were fine though. Incidentally, that Jag made £600 over CAP Clean, which was more than I was prepared to pay, even if I was 100% confident about it!

That's great advice trade vet, many thanks. It's been a long time since I used to regularly frequent the halls of Blackbushe and Bridgwater so I've become a bit out of touch of which vendors are selling certain types of stock. I think I'm right in saying that Evans Halshaw operate a 'We Buy Any Car' type outfit so it's possible some Pendragon cars are from that source as well. Jardine often seem to sell very high end cars at auction - as I'm typing this I see there's a 69 plate 8 series going through! Not that I'm in the market for that sort of stock! I did initially think it a bit strange Pendragon blocking a low mileage Grade 2 2014 Jag. I bet it still makes more than I was hoping to pay anyway! As I was saying earlier, I've noticed that a lot of UK Car Group Premium and UK Car Group Low Mileage line cars are making a lot these days and it's difficult to work out where they are actually from. It can sometimes be tricky to work out why main dealers send stock they could sell themselves to auction - there was a BMW I was potentially interested in a while back and I was told that the BMW main dealer had to block it as it had missed its first service so couldn't be sold under their Approved Used banner.

Exactly, I've always tried to do as much pre-auction research as possible. It used to be interesting chatting to other traders at physical auctions, some were like me and did a lot of careful research and others didn't seem to pay any attention to the vendor of the car. My gut feeling with this one on a stocking loan and not entered in the auction for over 3 weeks makes me think it was intended for retail and then put in the auction when a fault was discovered. This vendor doesn't usually put this sort of car through the auctions either.

Many thanks for the info, much appreciated. I didn't even realise that main dealers used stocking loans on their PXs until today - it does make sense as a lot of lumpy PXs can add up to a lot of tied-up funds. I agree with Tony F that I originally thought a big dealer group wouldn't need to use stocking loans. I thought they were mainly used by those fairly new to the trade who want to kick start a 20 car+ business. When I had a pitch in the 90s, I don't think stocking loans existed - as far as I'm aware, BCA and Manheim have only been offering them for the last few years. I was a bit shocked at first to find an auction car on a stocking loan as up until today. I'd only ever expect a stocking loan to come up on a retail car advertised at a dealer. Going back to the car, it's a Grade 2 low mileage 2014 Jag worth about £10k so I'd have thought it would fit the stock profile of the vendor (Pendragon who own Stratstone Jag) It has a small scratch on a door but otherwise looks pretty much ready to retail. I noticed that all the revolving air vents are closed in all the auction photos which is pretty odd as normally they open by default when the ignition is on. I'd imagine they work ok though as normally if there's a problem, it's more likely that one doesn't work rather than all 4. The Assured report is all clean, admittedly that doesn't mean there aren't possible niggles. The other thing I do (which probably sounds paranoid!) is to check when the tax expired on all auction cars. While I appreciate that there can be delays, I tend to find most cars go from the part ex yard to the auction remarkably quickly - most cars lotted up in auction were last taxed about 10 days ago. This Jag has never had a private plate and it was last taxed 31st Jan and it was appraised by BCA on 26th Feb so my paranoia wonders if the car was intended for the forecourt, then a fault was found and it was decided to put it in the auction. In the past, I've a Googled a few BCA main dealer PXs and I see that the main dealer has tried to retail them and then after 30 days or so put them in the auction. I quite like these as I tend to think if the dealer was retailing it, in theory there shouldn't be any major faults. As far as I can tell, the main dealer has never tried to retail the one I'm interested in. What I find quite bizarre is that a lot of overage stock cars are snapped up by independent dealers at auction and advertised at a higher price than the main dealer failed to sell it for! Quite often, they sell them fast though - you'd think people would rather buy from a main dealer for the manufacturer backed warranty. Anyway thanks again, I'll be interested to see what that Jag makes tomorrow. I probably over-research them too much. The last few I've seen have made way over clean and they were all UK Car Group cars which I normally tend to avoid.

I've just carried out an HPi check on a BCA car I'm interested in before the sale. I assumed it was a main dealer PX from the line it is in however the HPi has come up with a dealer stocking loan outstanding on it. I've never come across this before when HPi-ing an auction main dealer PX car. Does this mean that the main dealer bought the car in for stock (using the stocking loan) and has now decided to stick it in the auction or is it common for main dealers to use stocking loans to buy their PXs? I just naturally assumed that if the car was a main dealer PX it wouldn't have been bought with a stocking loan. If the main dealer has bought the car in for stock and has now put it in an auction it doesn't bode too well! Update: I've carried out a bit of research since first posting this earlier this afternoon and I can see that stocking loans can be used to fund PXs but I still find it a bit strange as I've never come across it before when I've carried out HPi checks on BCA main dealer PX cars. Greatly appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks in advance