Long-Term Car Updates

The last generation of the Jaguar had a massive factory problem. One of several electronic control modules on the HID headlights used to keep shorting out in some way or the other every time there was some sort of power surge, such as when your battery dies or sometimes even randomly, maybe once every two years. This used to cause the auto-levelling function to go stupid, making the headlights point permanently downwards even though they are perfectly working fine otherwise (while flashing a warning light in your gauge cluster permanently as well). Oddly enough, the warning light was for the turning-headlights feature,

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If you’re wondering why we don’t talk about our 2013 Toyota FJ Cruiser any more, it’s because we sold it last year to a reader. And what a great car it was. Let’s take a final look at the running costs.

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Our family wagon, the 2014 Nissan Patrol LE, got a major service in late September 2018. Here’s a rundown on how much it costs from the dealer.

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Our cars are parked on the street. As much as people like to baby their cars, some of us truly have no time to fiddle with microfibre cloths or doddle around at manual car washes. So we do what the majority of people do — get a dude to clean it. These dudes use dirty cloths and muddy waters, but there’s not much you can do about it unless you like sitting and supervising these things. Regular paint protection loses its shine in months and barely lasts a year, as per our experience. So we decided to try out the new-fangled “nano-ceramic”

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Our Honda had its last major service at the end of last July. Here’s what it costs at the dealership.

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We haven’t been keeping up with updates on our 2007 Honda S2000 because we didn’t drive it much over the past 12 months (apparently less than 700 km as per the RTA inspection). But it had some major work done last year anyway, so the armchair accountants among you will surely be throwing the “cost per km” number at us as if it’s a taxi cab.

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Hard to believe, but our 2008 Jaguar XK is a decade old now. I’d say we’ve kept it cleaner than most, even though we simply park it outside all the time and service it once a year. Real premium cars (not the rebadged stuff from mainstream carmakers) are generally built with better materials, so they last longer in terms of trim and leather (but not always mechanically). However, our Jag needed a bit of care to keep it looking fresh.

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A few months ago, our Nissan Patrol LE went in for its mandatory bi-annual service. Yet again, we pointed out that the fuel gauge was showing wrong readings half the time. If you’ve read our past long-term updates, you’ll know this is an ongoing problem since we bought the car (although curiously, no other post-facelift Patrol owner seems to have this issue). This time, the service advisor blamed it on a low battery. Okay, we’ll play along and see what happens.

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If you roam around enthusiast circles, you will consistently hear just one thing — “It’s much cheaper to buy car parts online than at the dealer!” And for the most part, it’s true. But is it universally true though? We find out with our aging Jaguar XK, which had a minor issue recently.

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Since our Chrysler 300 SRT needed window tint, we hit up ACDelco to supply us with the “40%” version of their new ACDelco Shield film a couple of months ago. It comes with a 5-year warranty and installed at Liberty service centres. We also figured this would be a good chance to test how well tint actually does in keeping a car interior cool. So we grabbed an infra-red thermometer and sweated it out in the summer sun.

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