Dateline - 05/17/2014 - Worked on fitting the center wood dash pieces in the car this weekend. I have not had the whole dash in the car for a long time and I need to finish up the woodwork on the dash, so I thought this would be a good weekend to work on that.
The situation is that the center dash piece that holds the five smaller gauges was cut a bit too small in height originally Matt and I did the best we could, but changes happened in the dimensions of the car over the build out and there was a significant amount of space to fill. So last fall, we added a piece of the backing material (9 layer plywood) to the bottom to extend it about 1/3 inch and also so that it would "wrap" around the edge of the center console. We cut it as best we could to fit, but knew that some sanding would be needed to fit it correctly. The sanding is what I did this weekend. This is very fiddly work because I need to sand the wood down to precisely fit between the left and right hand wood panels, the dash pad and the center console.
Now that I have the shaping done, I need to glue a book matched piece of maple veneer to the backing and shape it to fit. Then it will need to go through the flat bed sander to get the faces even. Then I can concentrate on final finishing of the wood (shellac, grain filler, lacquer clear, polish)
Since I had the whole dash in the car, I thought it would be a good idea to test mount the five gauges and see how they fit in the car. I was very disappointed to find that they don't! They are much deeper then I thought and with all the wire in the center area from my re-wire, there is just not enough room, especially around the oil pressure and water temp gauges. So, I am yet again re-routing the wiring! I will be glad when the wiring is done! It sure turned out to be more work than I ever expected!!!
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
Still Cleaning Under Hood and looking at Upgrades
Dateline - 05/10/2014 - I just realized it's been a couple of weeks since I posted last. During that time, I've been concentrating on cleaning up the engine bay and getting ready for paint. There is a lot there and it required more work then I expected, of course! But as of last night, I have the engine bay completely degreased and the rusty areas painted with rust inhibitor. I've welded the hood latches and sanded the underside of hood. So, except for a few details, the engine bay is ready.
Of course, now that I have the hood off, it really made sense to look at the engine detailing too. I pulled the alternator, power steering pump, water pump, crank pulley, carburetor and distributor off to give myself some room and gave the engine a good degreasing also. This will also make painting the engine bay much easier.
Last week, I started looking around on the Summit Racing site, which is never a good thing for my bank account. I found a set of billet aluminum pulleys that I really like that use flat grooved belts instead of V-belts (http://www.marchperf.com/pg66.html). I thought of going with a serpentine belt setup but the conversion kits run over $1,500 and that seems extreme, even to me! So I'm going with the pulley replacement which will allow me to use the original equipment, but will look really cool too. I like the fact that the alternator will be moved from the high mount position to a lower mount. It will make the engine look a lot less cluttered. I've got plenty of room for it, so that should be no problem.
The aluminum pulleys will get rid of the horsepower robbing belt driven fan, so I will also install an electric fan on the radiator. This has always been something I wanted to do, so now is the chance.
I also found a polished Edelbroch intake manifold to replace the one I currently have which is stained and really doesn't look very good (http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive/mc/manifolds/sb/27011.jpg). A new polished one will go well with the pulleys and really make the car stand out.
I think I'm going to keep the cast aluminum Micky Thompson valve covers. These are really worth quite a bit and are pretty rare. I'll take them off and clean/polish them up so that they look nice.
So, I'm going to put these on order so that when the car comes back from paint, I can do all the detailing on the engine while the fenders and hood are off.
Here are pictures of the car from this weekend.
It's funny when I look at the car now, I'm thinking, "Hmmmm. It sure
would be easy to take the engine and tranny out right now. That would
make it really easy to paint."
SOMEONE PLEASE STOP ME!
Of course, now that I have the hood off, it really made sense to look at the engine detailing too. I pulled the alternator, power steering pump, water pump, crank pulley, carburetor and distributor off to give myself some room and gave the engine a good degreasing also. This will also make painting the engine bay much easier.
Last week, I started looking around on the Summit Racing site, which is never a good thing for my bank account. I found a set of billet aluminum pulleys that I really like that use flat grooved belts instead of V-belts (http://www.marchperf.com/pg66.html). I thought of going with a serpentine belt setup but the conversion kits run over $1,500 and that seems extreme, even to me! So I'm going with the pulley replacement which will allow me to use the original equipment, but will look really cool too. I like the fact that the alternator will be moved from the high mount position to a lower mount. It will make the engine look a lot less cluttered. I've got plenty of room for it, so that should be no problem.
The aluminum pulleys will get rid of the horsepower robbing belt driven fan, so I will also install an electric fan on the radiator. This has always been something I wanted to do, so now is the chance.
I also found a polished Edelbroch intake manifold to replace the one I currently have which is stained and really doesn't look very good (http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive/mc/manifolds/sb/27011.jpg). A new polished one will go well with the pulleys and really make the car stand out.
I think I'm going to keep the cast aluminum Micky Thompson valve covers. These are really worth quite a bit and are pretty rare. I'll take them off and clean/polish them up so that they look nice.
So, I'm going to put these on order so that when the car comes back from paint, I can do all the detailing on the engine while the fenders and hood are off.
Here are pictures of the car from this weekend.
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| Engine Bay Front - Engine Stripped |
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| Engine Bay Right Side - Engine Stripped |
SOMEONE PLEASE STOP ME!
Monday, April 28, 2014
Cat in the Sun!
Dateline - 04/26/2014 - Even though the weather forecasters said it was going to rain on Saturday, it never materialized. So I rolled the cat out into the sun so I could start decreasing under the hood. Getting the car out of the garage was easier then I had expected. once I got it in the sun, I sprayed everything down with "Simple Green" which is my favorite degreaser. I took a scrub brush and in some places a tooth brush and gave the fenders and firewall a good scrubbing. Lot and lots of grease, particularly in the corners! 40 year of collection!!!!
There were a couple of other items I had to remove off the fenders in order to get to all the corners. The radiator overflow tank and the front brake lines which ran along the bottom of the fenders. The overflow tank was interesting because I could not figure out how to get it off the fender. The nut on the back side of the fender well was welded onto the fender well as a blind nut. I tried everything I could think of the get the nut loose, but it was sold. So I ended up hammering and prying the tank out. It didn't hurt the tank and all I have to do is re-cut the treads on the tank bolt, drill out the nut on the fender and use a regular nut to secure it. I still have no idea how that tank is installed! Magic I guess.
The brakes lines were much more simple. It's really funny though how the bake lines work. It's very obvious this car was engineered to be a right hand drive. The main pipe that leads to the back brakes and the tee the splits the front brakes are on the right hand side. To convert the car, they ran two pipes from the master cylinder (front and back brake mains) to the rear brake tube and front brake tee the right hand side. From the front brake tee, two hoses run, one to the right break, and one that runs to the front of the car, under the radiator and to the left hand brake. Jaguar must have been getting a kickback from a steel tubing and pressure fitting company to use so much pressure tubing and fittings!
I also needed to degrease under the hood, and realized there was no way I could do that with the hood on the car, so even though I wasn't going to, I pulled the hood off. It was surprisingly light! Lighter then my Spitfire hood. Easy to handle by myself, although I don't know if I want to reinstall it by myself once the paint is done. Too big and bulky. Once the hood was off, it was a simple matter of laying it upside down in the driveway and scurbbing it down. I need to do a little welding on the hood latches. Both had been welded before and one had come loose, causing the hood to pop open when driving. I plan to weld them back and clean up the bad weld job done before. Probably done with the hood on the car, which would be pretty hard to do well.
Of course, once I had the hood off, I realize that it really makes sense to take the radiator out. It will make it infidelity easier to paint, and I can clean up the radiator supporting bracket that runs across the top to the radiator.
Once I finished up the degreese, I pushed the car back into the garage (again, easier then I expected), and went inside.
In the evening, I focused again on the windows. I took the rear quarter lights out of their frames so that they can be painted and I can replace the rubber gaskets. Again, rust was an issue and I did quite a bit of sanding to get ride of it. I also pulled the front quarter lights of their frames, and pulled the gaskets, which appear to be in pretty good shape. Rust again rich required yet more cleanup. Finally, I all parts with rust inhibitor. The good thing is that all of these parts or hidden behind chrome, so you really don't see them. But I will not that everything is clean and in good working order.
So, next on the agenda is to weld the hood latches, fill in some gaps in the firewall with body sealer, rough up fender wells, hood and firewall to take paint, and put some rust inhibitor on some rusty areas under the hood. Then, off to paint!
Here are some pictures from the weekend:
There were a couple of other items I had to remove off the fenders in order to get to all the corners. The radiator overflow tank and the front brake lines which ran along the bottom of the fenders. The overflow tank was interesting because I could not figure out how to get it off the fender. The nut on the back side of the fender well was welded onto the fender well as a blind nut. I tried everything I could think of the get the nut loose, but it was sold. So I ended up hammering and prying the tank out. It didn't hurt the tank and all I have to do is re-cut the treads on the tank bolt, drill out the nut on the fender and use a regular nut to secure it. I still have no idea how that tank is installed! Magic I guess.
The brakes lines were much more simple. It's really funny though how the bake lines work. It's very obvious this car was engineered to be a right hand drive. The main pipe that leads to the back brakes and the tee the splits the front brakes are on the right hand side. To convert the car, they ran two pipes from the master cylinder (front and back brake mains) to the rear brake tube and front brake tee the right hand side. From the front brake tee, two hoses run, one to the right break, and one that runs to the front of the car, under the radiator and to the left hand brake. Jaguar must have been getting a kickback from a steel tubing and pressure fitting company to use so much pressure tubing and fittings!
I also needed to degrease under the hood, and realized there was no way I could do that with the hood on the car, so even though I wasn't going to, I pulled the hood off. It was surprisingly light! Lighter then my Spitfire hood. Easy to handle by myself, although I don't know if I want to reinstall it by myself once the paint is done. Too big and bulky. Once the hood was off, it was a simple matter of laying it upside down in the driveway and scurbbing it down. I need to do a little welding on the hood latches. Both had been welded before and one had come loose, causing the hood to pop open when driving. I plan to weld them back and clean up the bad weld job done before. Probably done with the hood on the car, which would be pretty hard to do well.
Of course, once I had the hood off, I realize that it really makes sense to take the radiator out. It will make it infidelity easier to paint, and I can clean up the radiator supporting bracket that runs across the top to the radiator.
Once I finished up the degreese, I pushed the car back into the garage (again, easier then I expected), and went inside.
In the evening, I focused again on the windows. I took the rear quarter lights out of their frames so that they can be painted and I can replace the rubber gaskets. Again, rust was an issue and I did quite a bit of sanding to get ride of it. I also pulled the front quarter lights of their frames, and pulled the gaskets, which appear to be in pretty good shape. Rust again rich required yet more cleanup. Finally, I all parts with rust inhibitor. The good thing is that all of these parts or hidden behind chrome, so you really don't see them. But I will not that everything is clean and in good working order.
So, next on the agenda is to weld the hood latches, fill in some gaps in the firewall with body sealer, rough up fender wells, hood and firewall to take paint, and put some rust inhibitor on some rusty areas under the hood. Then, off to paint!
Here are some pictures from the weekend:
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| OMG! Empty Garage! |
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| Cat outside enjoying the sun! |
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| Hood off, radiator out, fenders clean. |
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| Hood off, radiator out, fenders clean, other side. |
Monday, April 21, 2014
OMG! It's On Wheels!
Dateline - 04/19/2014 - I know some of you believed it would never happen, but it has. The Jag is back on its own wheels! For those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning, you will remember that the Jag went up on jack stands in October of 2009 (see post http://www.leapingv8s.blogspot.com/2009/10/down-for-winter.html). Note the title of the blog post: "Down for the Winter." Oh if I only knew then what I know now! Four an a half years later it is finally back on its own wheels and I have pictures to prove it:
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| Still on jack stands |
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| On the ground at last! |
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| PROOF! |
Also on Saturday I cleaned up the garage. It was really a necessity because I forgot how much stuff I had stored under the car! I had to find a place for it all so that I could park my other car in the garage. So, with the wheels back on, I had a lot of room against the wall and was able to rearrange things and throw out a winters worth of stuff that had collected! Nice to have a clean garage!
Sidebar: I've not had the XJ6 on wheels since I purchased my XK-8. Now that I have them both on the ground, I took a look at overall length and even with the bumpers on the XJ6, the 2002 XK-8 coupe is LONGER than the '71 saloon! the XJ6 is significantly taller though. It just goes to show that, even though these cars were considered "full size" they were never as big as others on the road. One just has to remember the England of the 60's (my car was designed in 1967 remember) to realize why. Not many freeways, lots of B and C roads that are barely two lanes wide, parking was at premium, gas was very expensive (for the time) and you paid higher taxes depending on the weight of you car. So there was a lot of incentive to keep cars small, light and economical. Remember, the Morris Mini, MG Midget, Austin Sprite and Triumph Spitfire all came from England and these cars were built until British Leland went out of business in the early 80's.
In the cleanup, I found all the side windows (eight of them in all) and brought them into the house for cleanup. On Sunday evening I started the long process of cleaning the windows, window tracks and chrome polishing. Someone in the car's past had Mylar window tinting installed, most of which had gotten pretty clouded over time. So I peeled all of it off, which is a major job because the glue sticks to the windows. The way you get that off is to soak the window is Windex, then use a single edge razor blade to scrape it off. It turns into a gooey mess pretty quickly and I went though half a roll of paper towels before I finished. Took about three hours. I've also got some rust issues on the window tracks (Rust! Go figure!) that I need to take care of, and chrome to polish, but I can take care of that another night.
So, pretty productive weekend I'd say!
Monday, April 7, 2014
Headlight are done
Dateline - 04/05/2014 - Finished off the headlights this weekend. Boy was that a job. Again, trying to graft something from one car onto another is a real pain! But I now have the headlights figured out.
The entire exterior of the car is now sanded to an inch of it's life! All the doors are off, hinges are off, fenders are off, boot lid is off. Now, I need to get some air in my tires so that I can roll the car into the driveway and degrease the engine bay. Once done with that, I need to rough it up with some sandpaper then the car will be ready to go to paint! Hard to believe that this car will finally come back together! It's been a long haul!
The entire exterior of the car is now sanded to an inch of it's life! All the doors are off, hinges are off, fenders are off, boot lid is off. Now, I need to get some air in my tires so that I can roll the car into the driveway and degrease the engine bay. Once done with that, I need to rough it up with some sandpaper then the car will be ready to go to paint! Hard to believe that this car will finally come back together! It's been a long haul!
Monday, March 31, 2014
Bringing Light to Headlights
Dateline - 29 Mar 2014 - Continued sanding on the car to remove all the primer and get it ready to go to the paint shop. This weekend it was focus on the front fenders. What I had forgotten was that I needed to do some more metal work because of the front headlights. As I had put in a previous post, the outside headlights had been replaced in this car. The original headlight buckets, which had 6 inch sealed beams bulbs had been removed and 7 inch bulbs were put in their place (as well as Chrysler Cordoba light bezels!). The way the light buckets had been mounted into the car was, well how should I say, not the best (read, "Sheet metal screws drilled through the light buckets directly into the fenders.")! The buckets themselves were also in pretty bad shape with rust and bad attempts at welding new pieces to fix them. Several years ago, I made a mental notes to myself that I needed to spend some time on the headlights to get everything working before I sent the car to paint. Well, I forgot about the note! So as I'm sanding on the fenders, I realized I still had a couple of days work to get these sorted.
The first order of work was to sand the fenders. Done! The second was to repair the headlights. I have no idea were the headlight buckets were sourced (Chrysler?). There was a part number on them, but three hours on Google did not bring up a match. So repairing them was the order for the day. One reason these buckets were originally installed so badly was that parts of them were missing (broken or rusted off) and since they are not the correct buckets for the car, they were missing tabs needed to mount them. So I pulled out the trusty sheet metal tools, bench vice and welder and went to work. I was able to add the tabs and weld new metal where needed. Not the best welding job in the world, but far better then what had been done before and should work to hold the lights. I will even be able to adjust them, which I could not do before!
The chrome bezels, being from a Cordoba where mounted on this car by by screwing them directly into the fender. Ideally, there would be a nut plate that the bezel would screw into but these have to be designed into the fender. To mount the bezels correctly requires screwing into the fender in a place were there is no metal! So in the prior installation, the bezels were turned about 10 degrees off center. Well, I could not have that! So I welded new metal into the fender to allow for the bezel to be mounted correctly. This would also aid in headlight adjustment since the indentations in the bezels designed to allow a screwdriver between the bezel and the bulb now line up! I finished the work on the left hand fender and started on the right, but ran out of time before I could finish.
Finally, I had to source two chrome headlight retaining rings. These rings hold the headlight bulb to the bucket via three sheetmetal screws. The rings on the car are in pretty tatty condition. Both had been welded in the past and the heat flaked the chrome, which rusted pretty bad. An hour on the interwebs and I found universal mount stainless steel rings for $10 a piece! They should be in this week and I can see if they will work. I may need to cut off a couple of tabs that are not needed.
So, as usual, I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, but I've definitely improved on a shoddy job and I still keep moving ahead, and that's the point!
The first order of work was to sand the fenders. Done! The second was to repair the headlights. I have no idea were the headlight buckets were sourced (Chrysler?). There was a part number on them, but three hours on Google did not bring up a match. So repairing them was the order for the day. One reason these buckets were originally installed so badly was that parts of them were missing (broken or rusted off) and since they are not the correct buckets for the car, they were missing tabs needed to mount them. So I pulled out the trusty sheet metal tools, bench vice and welder and went to work. I was able to add the tabs and weld new metal where needed. Not the best welding job in the world, but far better then what had been done before and should work to hold the lights. I will even be able to adjust them, which I could not do before!
The chrome bezels, being from a Cordoba where mounted on this car by by screwing them directly into the fender. Ideally, there would be a nut plate that the bezel would screw into but these have to be designed into the fender. To mount the bezels correctly requires screwing into the fender in a place were there is no metal! So in the prior installation, the bezels were turned about 10 degrees off center. Well, I could not have that! So I welded new metal into the fender to allow for the bezel to be mounted correctly. This would also aid in headlight adjustment since the indentations in the bezels designed to allow a screwdriver between the bezel and the bulb now line up! I finished the work on the left hand fender and started on the right, but ran out of time before I could finish.
Finally, I had to source two chrome headlight retaining rings. These rings hold the headlight bulb to the bucket via three sheetmetal screws. The rings on the car are in pretty tatty condition. Both had been welded in the past and the heat flaked the chrome, which rusted pretty bad. An hour on the interwebs and I found universal mount stainless steel rings for $10 a piece! They should be in this week and I can see if they will work. I may need to cut off a couple of tabs that are not needed.
So, as usual, I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, but I've definitely improved on a shoddy job and I still keep moving ahead, and that's the point!
Monday, March 24, 2014
Still Sanding
Dateline - 03/22/2014 - "Still Sanding" says it all. I wish I would have known that I didn't need to spray all that primer! It sucks to have to sand it all off. Good news that I found a few wobbles in the finish that I'm getting cleaned up (e.g. Body filler) and I've finished all the doors, back two fenders, boot lid and back end. All I have left are the two front fenders!
Next, I need to get some air in my tires, get them mounted and get the car off of jack stands! Yup after over five years! I need to get the car into the driveway so I can spend some time de-greasing under the hood with some simple green and water. Don't want to do that in the garage. Once that is done, I'm pretty sure the car will be ready for the paint shop! Pretty exciting!
Next, I need to get some air in my tires, get them mounted and get the car off of jack stands! Yup after over five years! I need to get the car into the driveway so I can spend some time de-greasing under the hood with some simple green and water. Don't want to do that in the garage. Once that is done, I'm pretty sure the car will be ready for the paint shop! Pretty exciting!
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