|
Post by richard on Jun 1, 2011 22:08:07 GMT 10
Bah, you watch out or I'll turn up with the car that does a 13 second quarter mile despite being built in 1931 and being bog-stock.
|
|
|
Post by richard on Jun 1, 2011 22:09:11 GMT 10
and mine is ;D a 69 420g Pete The only Jag ever built that's bigger & heavier than mine!
|
|
|
Post by richard on Jun 9, 2011 20:15:18 GMT 10
It turns out that my Jaguar engine actually pre-dates the asbestos rope oil seal. It has no rear crank oil seal at all. The crank literally goes through a close-fitting hole in the back of the block, and that's it. Park nose up on a steep enough hill and you leave a puddle... Thus: Looks like I'm fitting the modern oil seal. There goes another $500. Oh, and here's a picture of the current tyres & number-plate:
|
|
|
Post by richard on Jun 9, 2011 20:34:39 GMT 10
Here's an example of the duo-tone colour scheme on a Mk 8 or Mk 9. My one will be going back to black (original colour), but where this one is grey on the bottom half, mine will be a very similar colour to Rod's coupe. So think: Black jag with Rod's maroon replacing the grey on the bottom half: I'll try and photo-shop something later tonight...
|
|
|
Post by drylander on Jun 9, 2011 22:10:33 GMT 10
and mine is ;D a 69 420g Pete The only Jag ever built that's bigger & heavier than mine! yep a whole 2 tons (non metric ton ie long ton) ;D Pete
|
|
|
Post by richard on Jul 4, 2011 10:51:38 GMT 10
Progress!
Head has been rebuilt, and is ready to fit, just needs to painted.
Block and crank are back from being machined, rods have been balanced.
Reassembly is about to begin!
|
|
|
Post by richard on Aug 2, 2011 21:19:24 GMT 10
Lots of (big) pictures!Head before:All pretty oily, especially number 6. Bores were a bit so-so and oil was getting past the rings. Not enough to blow smoke, but enough to make the combustion chambers greasy as hell. Head after:Head was also hot-tanked and has no corrosion in it (very unusual in an alloy head on an iron block). It was slightly warped, so it's been straightened in a press and given a light skim. New valves, springs, guides, seals. Plugs all heli-coiled, new studs both inlet and exhaust side.. New pistons Upgraded from factory 8:1 to 9:1 compression (which was available via special order), 40-thou oversize. Rods and rod bolts all fine, everything was balanced and block was bored to match individual pistons. Block back from being hot-tanked & re-bored:It's since been de-oxidised, given a once over with a small grinder to clean it up and painted with engine enamel. Block was also in incredibly good shape other than the bores, no corrosion and didn't need to be decked. Engine bay:There's lots of room in this mall... Rest of the do-dads have been removed and the bay paint-stripped. There's one small rust repair required on the firewall where the battery was mounted - you can see the holes just obove the little pile of tools. Gearbox, overdrive & bell-housing.Bearings and gaskets have all been replaced, needle rollers (all 300 of them) were OK (thank god). Gear cluster also in great shape and synchro not really worn. Which is lucky, because spares aren't available... One bearing felt like it was full of gravel, which explains the whine from the gearbox... More photos next week
|
|
|
Post by richard on Aug 16, 2011 23:00:45 GMT 10
|
|
CanAm
Junior Member
Posts: 80
|
Post by CanAm on Aug 17, 2011 2:08:26 GMT 10
Nice job Richard. I have a MkIX waiting for restoration. Have to finish the HD Prem first though so it might be a while. I used to have a 420G manual O/D as a daily driver, which was either a wedding car on weekends or classic rally competitor A good friend has a 1 owner MkVII which we have used several times to tow the race car to Albany. We can sit on 120, ummm 100 comfortably and overtake slower traffic with ease. It always gets heaps of 'looks' and even a "fully sic" yelled at it by a hoody wearing skateboarder - lol
|
|
|
Post by richard on Aug 17, 2011 7:34:57 GMT 10
Nice job Richard. I have a MkIX waiting for restoration. Nice! It took me six months to find a Mk 7/8/9 I was happy with. Which gearbox do you have in the Mk IX? My VIII is manual+overdrive.
|
|
|
Post by greedy53 on Aug 17, 2011 17:48:28 GMT 10
I really wish I had half of the talent displayed on this site by, I'm lucky to manage to brush my teeth by my self
|
|
CanAm
Junior Member
Posts: 80
|
Post by CanAm on Aug 17, 2011 21:37:36 GMT 10
Hi Richard. I picked up a car complete with - wait for it - hemi 6 pack & box. I later picked up a parts car with engine & box, though, I also picked up a couple of Series III motor/efi systems. I was going to put the efi setup in but keep the car looking bog stock, though, I have been giving some consideration to an AJ6 motor too. As its not a matching numbers car so I haven't really made a decision yet. Being a IX it comes with 4 wheel discs and p/s already. I'll probably just add a/c.
|
|
|
Post by richard on Aug 22, 2011 22:05:41 GMT 10
The p/s pump hangs off the back of the dynamo, but I imagine you'd be able to adapt something else if you had to. Not sure what pressure level and flow rates the power steering box of a IX takes.
I'd put the EFI XJ Series 3 motor in, replace the ribbed cam covers with early smooth ones and then hide as much as possible of the EFI system under the goddamn massive air-filter from a Mk 9 (assuming you don't have the oil-bath filter).
Speaking of that: Which air-filter do you have from the parts car? I have the oil-bath air filter on my Mk VIII and was wanting to switch to the standard one (filters better). Got one spare?
I've had no luck finding one, may have to gut the innards of my oil-bath filter and find a K&N insert to fit.
If I was going to "lump" a Mk IX with a Jaguar motor... get the XJ8 motor!
The mechanic working on my Mk VIII at the moment keeps threatening to whip the existing driveline out of my matching-numbers car and whack in the full suspension, gearbox and V-12 motor from an XJ40 parts car he has stored out the back.
The Jag V-12 fits a Mk IX reasonably easily, by the way.
|
|
|
Post by richard on Nov 20, 2011 12:03:30 GMT 10
Alright, time for an update. Firstly - the car didn't make it to the All British Day car-show august 31st like it was supposed to - the engine was in, final ancillaries being attached. Mechanic tries to nip up the oil-feed banjo bolts that go to the camshafts... no joy. Thread stripped under gentle pressure, can't seal oil feeds to cam. BUGGER!Had to get the head heli-coilded, which meant no-show to the show, which meant I decided to finish the job properly. Second: Still not back on the road, that it is finally getting close. One of the major extra pieces of work I decided to do was replace the wiring loom. The old one looked awful and the insulation appeared to be in very bad shape - the cloth braiding was falling off as oily dust, so I was worried about shorts. Thus, ordered a replacement loom from Vintage Wiring Harness. I've since spent days puling the old loom out of the engine bay, dash and front lights & horns and re-wiring stuff. Overall very happy with the replacement loom. I needed to get the overdrive loom re-made based on my one (he had a manual loom) and there were a couple of small looms missing (sidelights, the odd single wire here and there). But I'm impressed he even had a Mk VIII loom pattern available. Fit so far has been excellent, and Paul has been extremely helpful dealing with the oddities of my car. EG: custom re-make of my overdrive loom, he installed the headlamp pig-tails in the back-shells for me (I didn't have the right crimping tools so I shipped them to him). Dash is back in and done - very difficult, there's no room and a lot of sharp edges. Dash gauge panel fit once the loom is on is incredibly tight. I say "loom" - but I should really say "looms". The dash itself has 4-5 looms attached to it - two major ones plus a few smaller subsidiary ones. So far I have a total of .. 16? different looms for the car. It isn't one big integrated loom, though there are a few "major" ones. I've also restored the rest of the engine bay stuff. Heater box, wiper motor, etc. Last few saturdays have been blasting, sanding, priming, painting etc. The mechanic has also fired up his bench top plating kit and we're been re-plating brackets, relay covers, etc. So I'm carefully removing metal relay covers from the relay, cleaning and blasting the relay cover, then we're zinc plating them, then re-assembling the relay. It's going to look absolutely blood fantastic once it's all done. I stayed there till midnight Friday starting to fit the engine bay wiring looms. That's the last really major job that's left. There's a lot of cable routing to sort out, even though we have a ton of photos it isn't always easy to work out what's going on. Once the looms are in, then there's the final reconnection of all the firewall stuff. Fusebox, junction box, dynamo control box. Will be pretty time consuming and somewhat difficult. End result should be an engine bay that looks pretty much as it left the factory in 1957. Certainly as close as can be done in any reasonable amount of time. Last major job left for mechanic is to re-build the carbs. He decided they were too crufty looking to be attached to his shiny rebuilt engine, so they're in the parts washer waiting for some serious cleaning and attention. They're another thin that will need a fair bit of plating done as well. The other major piece of work I've done was to paint-prepare the inside of the bonnet. The engine bay was re-sprayed, but not the inside of the bonnet. I wasn't happy with how it was going to look (shiny engine bay, craptastic bonnet) so I've taken it back to bare metal on the inside only. Was a fair bit of work, because just like the rest of the underside, the bonnet had been sprayed with proof-coat (modified tar, basically). Pain in the arse to remove - you can't sand or blast it off, it's too soft. Thinners & scraping & more thinners & more scraping & more thinners & more scraping & more thinners & more scraping. Then wire wheel, then sanding the nearly bare metal. All without getting the metal hot enough to damage the paint on the other side, or getting any thinners on the paint on the other side. And please note that the bonnet has chrome trim down the dead centre that's riveted on, so the thinners can get through the metal of the bonnet through the rivet holes - it isn't one big seamless piece. Still waiting on the painter to collect the damn thing and re-spray it. He's tuned up twice to collect it, both times with cars too small to fit a Jag Mk VIII bonnet into it. Big car is big. Third time lucky - he's going to try roof-racks.
|
|
|
Post by Jennison on Nov 20, 2011 19:36:39 GMT 10
Are you doing up a van? jennison
|
|
|
Post by Don Ricardo on Nov 20, 2011 20:59:26 GMT 10
Hi Jennison, He sure is - one of the four finned Kennedys. This one is branded as a Wayfarer and previously belonged to Exocet. Click here for the link. Don Ricardo
|
|
|
Post by richard on Nov 21, 2011 0:49:01 GMT 10
Hi Jennison, He sure is - one of the four finned Kennedys. This one is branded as a Wayfarer and previously belonged to Exocet. Don Ricardo Are we sure there were only four of them? There's one restored one (Galaxie Belle), one rotting in Melbourne, my one (link is also in signature) and only one other? Seems like a really high survival rate. That said, it does seem to be really well made.
|
|
|
Post by richard on Dec 27, 2011 21:31:56 GMT 10
This >< close to complete for Chrissy, then Mr Mechanic put his back out, should have it for NYE.
We're zinc plating the last of the firewall brackets, screws & P-clamps tomorrow, then using them to attach all the plumbing to the firewall (clutch, brakes, heater).
Radiator is in, bonnet is on, engine is wet and has been turned over, plugs out. 30 PSI oil pressure on the starter motor!
Wiring is complete (F#@*! Me, that was a big job - I must have put ~10 days into it). Dash & gauges are in.
Once plumbing is done, last thing is to restore the carbs a little (zinc plate the linkages and hard fuel lines), then bolt them on and see if it starts...
|
|
|
Post by richard on Jan 8, 2012 9:03:21 GMT 10
IT LIVES!!Yesterday I drove the Jag for the first time in eight months - just a couple of trips round the block - the tuning still needs some work. Timing and mixture are "close" but still need a few tweaks. There's a short list of things that need tweaking and a couple of new parts required, but nothing that will stop me driving the car to work by the middle of next week Over 40 PSI oil pressure at idle, no significant problems or issues by the end of Saturday. There was one semi-serious problem on Saturday morning when we started it up - idled beautifully, but with the throttles wide open, it wouldn't rev past 1400-ish RPM. Turns out that the carbies were so clean that the variably centuries (the big pistons at the front of an SU carb) were having "sticktion" issues. Pulled them off, some WD-40 and working them up and down a few dozen times to free them up and away we went. See (some of) you at Motorfest on the 26th!
|
|
|
Post by gresham on Mar 3, 2012 23:02:17 GMT 10
Hi Richard, keep an eye out for my about to be roaded new pairing of a 1958 Mark I (Old English White) with a 1958 Sunliner (same colour). I reckon the shapes of both car and van will really look good together.
|
|
|
Post by richard on Mar 4, 2012 19:58:19 GMT 10
Hi Richard, keep an eye out for my about to be roaded new pairing of a 1958 Mark I (Old English White) with a 1958 Sunliner (same colour). I reckon the shapes of both car and van will really look good together. That combo will look awesome Enjoy!
|
|
|
Post by tonoos on May 21, 2012 20:17:39 GMT 10
Tonoos here. I have been reading the blog between you and Richard about the '56 mark 8 Jaguar. It has been invigerating to say the least. The Jaguar that I missed out buying was a Mark 5. The reason that I am interupting here is that I am a new member and I am not familiar with starting a blog. My desire now is to buy a "tear drop" with a Ford Pilot tow car. As yet I have neither, but I am on the lookout for either. Please continue, even though it is a 2011 blog. It would be interesting to know the final outcome and see the finished product. Regards Tonoos.
|
|
|
Post by ian4002000 on Oct 25, 2012 19:13:14 GMT 10
Richard, I may have the van you where looking for ! I have just aquired a 1959 Siddall, purchased by a gentleman to tow behind his new Jaguar. He travelled to England and exported the van ( car maybe as well ) to Melbourne. The van is fitted with Jaguar wheels to match the tow car. More info to follow
|
|