After owning a variety of Jaguars, I recently purchased a 2008 XK Coupe for daily use to complement my 1971 E Type. The car is in very good condition, has low miles and suits my needs very well. However, I realized a design flaw that is bothersome as I travel - the car has no gauges to monitor engine functioning (water temperature, oil pressure, ammeter). While I realize that the “modern” driver may be comfortable in relying on warning lights and voice messages, I’m probably “old school” and still rely on these gauges for instant information and patterns. As a result, I’m researching the feasibility of installing a set of additional gauges to provide the “missing” information. If anyone has gone down this road, and cares to share the experience, I would certainly appreciate some discussion.
There was a discussion, recently, on this site about an available mod
that turns the gauges from ‘dumb’ to active displays?
Fazal
Dan,
Search the archives for “RealGauge” and JagWrangler.com. You’ll find a very well engineered kit to reverse the idiot light effect of factory installed gauges. Money well spent. I was told Jaguar made the change due to customer apprehension over real-time readings. In my case I had to find out the -from the factory - water temp gauge stays in the middle until the engine overheats sufficiently to a Well Done roasting!!! The RealGauge package returns gauge function to an actual time -in-moment reading instead of a computer smoothed output.
Happy Motoring,
Dick
'74 OTS
'99 XJR
1947 Stinson 108-1 “Voyager”
Make a decision or else you’re just another flat squirrel in the road.
Fazal,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my forum inquiry. I suspect that the system you refer to is the RealGauge unit. While it appears to be a well designed system, it’s not compatible with the 2008 XK. Their system is designed for the 1997 - 2006 model years.
Thanks again
Dan
Dick,
Thanks for the suggestion regarding the RealGauge system. It appears to be well-designed and the feedback/reviews are all positive. Unfortunately, after communicating with the folks at jagwrangler, they confirmed that the system is not compatible with the 2008 XK. The system is specifically designed for the 1997 - 2006 XK8 models.
Thanks again,
Dan
There are OBD dongles that you could plug in the OBD II port and then connect a display or Phone to that. It might be able to display all the data the car produces, and although it’s not really elegant there might be a good looking solution to go that way?
David
There is apparently an app called Torque for Android devices that some say works quite well. The solutions for Apple are more rudimentary. You can get temp info and voltage through OBD, but there is no input for oil pressure. I have also heard of an interface that puts gauge faces onto the touch screen, but it seems not to be available any more. After you drive the car for a while, you do get used to the absence of gauges.
Tony
I use the Torque app, but it is a pain to keep a phone hooked to the car just for this purpose. I had a water pump issue a while back so watching the gauge was important. Water pump replaced, and I haven’t really used the app.
This is all opposite of where I went on my racer: I had a tach and two lights! Made things much easier in the heat of battle, where there is NO time to read gauges!