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Jaguar S Type shifter failure
Alright this is going to be a two part article outlining the most common repairs I see at our shop that fail on the Lincoln LS and Jaguar S-Types. I will be able to save you thousands of dollars, headaches and miss diagnosis of these problems.
I personally think these vehicles are absolute junk and I feel sorry for anyone who has purchased one and hope to sway any future buyers from ever buying one. If you are one of the lucky ones who have not had any of these repairs go wrong with your S-Type or Lincoln LS you are very fortunate. I
n case you did not know these vehicles are sisters, meaning they are identical, they share many similar parts and design flaws.
The 3 most common problems are as follows. Shift linkage breaks and vehicle will not go into or come out of park, front lower ball joints or front struts rattle and clunk, and rear of vehicle clunks and rattles badly from bad lower strut bushings. There are many other ones but these repairs I can save you thousands of dollars.
Shifter failure is the most common and expensive repair on the Jaguar S-Type. Unfortunately doing it once does not guarantee it will not happen again. Many owners find that a few days or months later the shifter breaks again. Average cost of this repair is $500-1000.00
Currently Jaguar has no supplier for the failed shifter assembly and to my knowledge I bought the last new one back in December of 2009! I have purchased used ones on EBay for around 100.00.
Why does this part fail you might ask? Well in Fords genius design and engineering skills they decided that a small plastic block the size of half your hand would be strong enough to handle the force of the entire weight of your vehicle, the shifter itself, the transmission, the shift cable and normal wear and tear of these parts. To this date no recall has been issued as they do not feel this is a safety issue or not enough people have been injured (only your wallet) from this part failing.
I found an aftermarket company who is now selling an alternative design ($129-$229) that will once and for all take care of shifter block failure. The piece that originally failed was formed from hard plastic. The new design is made from aluminum and will never fail again. The repair will take you around 1-2 hrs to do if you are good seasoned mechanic. If you are not you may want to let someone else try this one. You will need to remove the center console and part of the dash and then remove the shifter assembly to install this part.
We can replace the shifter block in the Jaguar S-Types in around 30 minutes due to the large number of replacements we have done.
If you are interested in obtaining any of these I can be reached through my company website @ http:www.professionalfleet.com.
Once the shifter repair has been made on your Jaguar S-Type you will have years of trouble free shifting.
Now you can move on to the next list of common part failures.