Piston Slap: A Supercharged Way to Cheap NOS Parts?

Keith writes:

Hi, I’ve recently acquired a 2003 Jaguar S-Type R. Sort of rare. It’s the supercharged V8 model. The car is in good condition, but has 140,000 miles and needs some TLC, to say the least. I’m having trouble finding parts. Salvage yards tell me they have parts, only the donor cars are standard S-Types. I’ve been on Jag forums and found help with engine, supercharger, and mechanical parts.

I need the lower (under engine, trans) body panels from the front valance back through the trans including inner fender wells and spoiler. The correct parts have cooling channels for brakes and trans. Jag dealers want small fortune. I’m trying to get salvaged parts. I even bought all new aftermarket pieces from eBay UK. Struggled installing them, five hours on my lift, altering parts to fit. So, obviously not correct, as a “Jag expert” assured me. During my first test trip I saw my new panels in my rear-view, bouncing off the highway into a million pieces.

So, I’m looking for some direction in finding R Model parts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh since most EVs are north of 70k specc'ed out + charger installation this is not news. You don't buy a new car every few years.This is simply saturation and terrible horrible third world country level grid infrastructure (thanks greedy exces like at the holiday farm fire where I live)
  • MaintenanceCosts I think pretty much all of the difference between this year and last year is that the right-wing noise machine, facing an audience crisis, has decided that EVs, and wildly distorted claims about EVs and EV mandates, are a good way to to get gullible people angry and start replacing lost traffic.
  • MaintenanceCosts I'd like to see a comparison between this and the base Model S, which should have similar performance numbers.I spent five days and 500 miles with a base 2022 Model S in Texas last week, and enjoyed it far more than my previous Model 3 drives - I think the Model S is a very good to excellent car, although "FSD" is a huge fail and I'd still have a lot of trouble giving Elon Musk money.
  • DesertNative In hindsight, it's fascinating to see how much annual re-styling American cars received in the 1950's. Of course, that's before they had to direct their resources to other things like crash-worthiness, passenger safety, pollution controls, etc. It was a heady time for car designers, but the rest of us have benefited immeasurably from the subsequent changes.
  • Cprescott Aside for how long it takes to charge golf carts since I don't live in a place where I can have my own charger, is the game that golf cart makers play when your battery fails and they blame you and charge you $15-25k to replace them.