Thousand Dollar Supercar

Spot the difference between the rear lights - the one on the right with the black-painted chrome piece must be from a 1970s car. Not sure which I prefer. I decided the alternator drive belt needed changing. I bought one then realised the fan and the A/C drive belt needed to come off, and that meant wrestling with overtightened stuff that's difficult to access with my limited range of imperial tools. Got it done today minus buying a new A/C drive belt. More satisfying was fixing the horns. I'm supposed to have a French horn duet but only the low tone was working, and that sounded a bit too polite even for a British car ("Ahem.. boop boop"). I took them off the car to see what was up. This is after cleaning: I'd never disassembled a horn before, but it turns out there's no complex electronics - they use a sort of electromagnetic oscillator to vibrate a diaphragm. My high-toned horn had swallowed too much water, so I used a multimeter to find all the corroded/bad connections and clean them. After reassembly I had to set the adjustment screw to get it to oscillate and then to maximise its volume. Now if any other fellow's driving isn't up to snuff, I can give him what for. Because Jaguar couldn't be bothered fitting a welded nut for the horn mounting, I had needed to take the grille out to unbolt the horns. It made sense to give it a clean. See that badge: Normally it would say 'V12', but six cylinder cars have a big 'S' for 'Stingy'.

It's back at the upstairs carpark behind the Ellerslie Burgerfuel. Enough regulars have disappeared that we now seem to be sneaking under the radar of that nearby resident / maybe he can't hear us over the 6-lane motorway across the street....

Didja buy it? I see it's no longer listed, although there's always the newer green one in Northland for $6.5k. The autocar buyers guide has this very "Jag owner" advice: "Check for misfires on the V12 by holding a bank note over the exhaust pipes and watching for uneven fluttering." You might also want to test the cigarette lighter by rolling up a bank note and attempting to smoke it.

You mean XJ-S, this one here? https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/jaguar/auction-1935049799.htm A British racing green coupe with tan leather and a V12 for under $4k. In a couple of hours you could have it looking a lot nicer (from a distance) than in the photos. That pre-HE V12 is meant to be the thirstiest engine in the world, but you can fix that for more than $4k with manual conversion kits or Chev V8 conversion kits depending on what shape the V12 is in. You should absolutely purchase that rough, underused V12 XJ-S which has no history, no WOF and no reg, and then you should bring it to oldschool Nats. This would make you the grandmaster lunatic.

Go go gadget homemade spring compressor! If you're also a Kiwi nutjob, you too can get high tensile fine threaded rod by bolting on down to Steelmasters. It takes all year to raise and lower the spring pan, but it works. =\ Next, remove the fulcrum shaft to get the lower wishbone off. It hits the steering rack (already lowered a bit in this photo): That's kind of understandable / forgiveable, but this (below) is a bit retarded: That pipe is in the way by just a few mm. Haynes would probably tell me to take the engine out to resolve it, but I just used violence. I finally had the lower wishbone out, and the bushes were better than they had initially looked. It was only the upper control arm bushes which had definite wear. Oh well. Replace anyway. When reassembling the suspension, you've got to try to align the spring pan with this wishbone (while it's under twisting force from the compressed spring) so you can bolt them back together. This is not a fun game, so you think "I'll go out and buy some long bolts to use as guide studs while compressing the spring." Unfortunately: Stupid imperial car. I did not realise the implications of this prior to purchase. While putting everything back together, I had a look at these red sway bar end link bushes which were fitted to the car when I bought it. I think they're the wrong part which has just been hacked to size. The flat cut surface facing upwards in this photo sits against the cupped washer, which looks like it's designed to accept a specially contoured bush and to hold it in place as the suspension moves. The result is that the bushes get pushed out of position. I shall order new ones and hope for a better fit. Meantime I reinstalled them and took the Jag camping up north, a 470km round trip (via SH16 because corners). Using the A/C and the loud pedal I averaged 12l/100km. I believe I could feel the improvement to the front end on occasion, but the feel of the rear still reminds me of old timey race car footage. I'm trying to practice different approaches to cornering than I used to use in my light FWD Alfa 33, because there's a good chance I am the problem. =) At the campground the Jag was parked right in view of our gazebo and I confess to admiring it all day. What silly thread pitches? What total loss cooling system? I even got a thumbs up from a farmer as I wooshed by in my conspicuous consumptionmobile.

Wow, that was the car I went to look at in Waikanae. It got brought to Auckland and was listed on TardMe for too much money not that long ago. If only it wasn’t so thoroughly mangled it would be good for manual conversion parts.

I'm still fighting the front suspension. The upper control arm inner bushes were easy, yay. I couldn't get a splitter on the lower balljoint but the XJ-S Barry Bible had the answer - unbolt the upper balljoint so the whole hub assembly is just hanging on the lower balljoint, turn the steering until you can wedge something in the gap between the lower wishbone and the stub axle carrier, and grab the brake disc and pull the hub assembly against this wedged item to lever the balljoint apart. I thought I was pretty clever at that point, but I was wrong. The spring is longer than I hoped - it's still compressed in this photo and it annoyingly prevents the wishbone from dropping / opening any further. I still can't get my normal spring compressors onto it in this position. Fortunately there's plenty on the net about Jaaags. Dodgy people like myself seem to favour making their own OEM-style spring compressors out of threaded rod, so that's what I'll have to do. Hopefully I can get this all finished this weekend without ending up dictating my next post from a hospital bed.. I found that the nuts for the front sway bar end links had worked themselves most of the way off, so the swaybar probably wasn't as effective as it should be. I choose to believe this could have been contributing to the slightly dicey oversteering feel the car seems to have.

I'm trying to split these posts up a bit more. Have a photo: It's a nice place to be, despite the number of warning lights. =) Wheel balancing didn't completely cure the vibration the car has, and it also feels a bit oversteery when I start to push it hard. Some of the bushes looked a bit tired, so I ordered some new ones. First on the list is the front lower wishbone inner mounts. I thought this would be easy until I went to start the job today. Haynes recommends compressing the spring as the first step, but straight away this requires a special tool that inserts through a hole in the middle of the spring pan. Then he goes on to get you to take the front suspension basically to bits, removing the caliper and disc and separating ball joints. Lastly you have to knock the lower fulcrum shaft back through both bushings to get the wishbone off. The trouble (well, one of the troubles) is that on the XJS, the power steering rack is in the way of removing the fulcrum shaft. There has to be a dodgy way of doing it.. I think I'll have to lower the steering rack (and change its mounting bushes too at the same time). The fulcrum shafts apparently can get really stuck in place (as in, people have dropped the whole front crossmember to saw the shafts in half!). Because of that, I don't know that there's much hope of violently removing them with the suspension otherwise still together and the spring force countered by a jack. They'd probably still have some amount of load on them, and the suspension might come off the jack and fly apart etc. Has anyone done this before? Discuss: https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/58671-thousand-dollar-supercars-1988-jaguar-xj-s-36

I promised a zorst recording. I hoped to record some runs up to redline under load, but this will have to do for now. It already took me ages to edit out all the smoke. I think the exhaust sounds more like what you'd want from a car like this - payoff for the hassles and fuel economy. It's no lumpy V8 burble, and of course it would be more interesting with carbs and a manual transmission, but it'll do. Even if the auto sometimes keeps the engine at a steady maximum rasp up hills, which sounds like someone's cutting grass with a line trimmer... Also, gotta love that ultra refined starter motor, for sneaking out to the club late at night. =\ Pity that this plan..... ....wasn't going to work, but I'm happy enough with the result. I also ended up increasing the induction noise, because I decided to check the air filter and found this: The filter diameter seemed a bit big for the housing, leaving a gap of only a couple of mm as shown by the arrows. Despite appearances, the gap was pretty uniformly small the whole way around. Rather than think too hard about whether that total area could in fact be adequate for a whole 220 horsepower, I ordered a K&N filter which has a smaller diameter: I'm also now running this with the intake snorkel removed. Despite the long intake manifold etc, there's some decent induction noise at large throttle openings (kinda the whole point if I'm honest). I could have gone for a pod filter, but I read that it's important not to alter the airflow pattern through the type of airflow meter sitting right behind this filter housing. The changes I've made don't seem to have made the car run any worse. What else... I got some piping to suit the vents in my battery and carry any corrosive fumes outside the car, equivalent to the system the car apparently would have had when new: When I got the car, the RHS rear light was missing its internal divider so that the tail light bulb could illuminate the indicator and vice versa: That was stink, so I made up a temporary divider out of cardboard. It wasn't long before the cardboard started to warp: That looked pretty dumb, so I made a proper one out of metal, using the divider from the other side as a template. Here they are: Now it's sweet.

It's ten years to the day since @Goat last updated his Jaguar build thread. Sad times.

Maybe the 19th of December? / come to drag day tomorrow at Meremere.

Looks like rain tomorrow - is this on or off?

I approve. It looks like a performance setup done the right way - properly lowered to a sensible height, less sidewall without resorting to smaller diameter tyres or rims that don't suit the car, wider rubber without bolt-on flares etc. Plus dirty bogan wheels are just cool.

Next weekend I'm momentarily back in town between weeks working in New Caledonia then Wellington. I'll be missing driving, so I approve of this postponement date. =)

Sweet! I like to think I was able to get away with that........ .........because I've got a Jaaaaag.