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Well there's a quandry! Our personal choice would be to go with the Indie based on the fact that the two indies that we have used give a very concise and thorough whats-what of the car, over and above doing the service, whereas main dealer can be a bit "tick boxy". The free collection/delivery wouldn't sway us as we like to know whose been behind the wheel, so we deliver and collect. Likewise the free valet, just in case somebody decides to use a sponge/leather/cloth which isn't quite up to scratch (no pun intended!). The price difference is negligible. We agree with Joe/Lazlo etc ref doing your own work, but it is often the case, certainly for us, that our days of crawling around underneath are past. My partner once removed the 4.2 XK lump from his XJ6 (some 20+ years ago now), stripped it completely and successfully rebuilt, whilst I indulged in a complete rebuild of one of my Gilberns back in the day. Whatever, happy growling will be the order of the day

Thanks for all the replies! I will definitely take the advice on where to go for the Air Con Re-gas. I have a couple of trusted mechanics, JR Motors in Ryde and Tom Hitchcock, also in Ryde. In answer to one question, I have an almighty grin! My last car was an MX5, which caused a lot of grins, before that a Ford Cougar - very underrated, but the Jaguar is everything I wanted. Not too much tech as I don't particularly want to be a mobile hot spot and don't feel the need to be connected! This is an S so does not have cruise or remote controls for the stereo but has has enough for me and I feel involved in driving it. Handles better than the Cougar although that was front wheel drive. It gets around the corners very nicely without shaking my fillings out like the MX5 and of course I can take the dog and the grandkids. This is the subjective bit, to me it looks like a jaguar should, I prefer it to newer models, I too have to catch the reflection of it in shop windows. The niggles? part of the ownership and "bonding" with it! Pictures tomorrow!!!

I get where you're coming from. I had such problems with a car of mine once that I bought another because it cost me less than taking another week off work. Stick a for sale ad up on the forum and maybe a cheeky thread here to link to it.

Just a little update on rear track rods. I put the old inner end back on one side as it was better than the new one. Unfortunately I had had to cut the one on the other side off. It's doubly annoying because I changed the whole rods due to wear in the outer ends only to then have the inners fail. I looked at replacing the inner end ball-joints with a universal replacement one that I could replace as and when without changing the arm as well. But they're not as easy to find any more, especially straight ones. So I went with my fall back plan of ordering an arm at my local factors for £52 expecting a two day wait for it to arrive. When I got there they had one on the shelf for under £40, bonus! It's a Moog p/n: JA-DS-8881 replacing Jaguar p/n: XR813478. It comes with a three year warranty. Check out the poor spot welding on the silver eBay jobby compared with the black Moog one. It's almost non-existent on the ball-joint end. I fitted that one yesterday and the horrible fidgeting and self steering is gone. I'll update again in 3000 miles...