Thousand Dollar Supercar

There's a guy on here called MIRAGE-MAN, and the reason his car has these funny-coloured doors....... .....is because his original doors were in good condition. He took them off to save them and put crappy ones on instead.

Fear not - the sun never sets on the Burgish Empire. We shall eat on the bleachers We shall eat while standing around We shall eat burger meals, out in the streets We shall all eat our fills, if the chicken is tender!

I'm roaming the Waikato on work again this week. It's on you to keep the dream alive. Edit: Today's job postponed, back in town, heading for a burger.

A kerb weight of close to 1700 of your finest kilograms I believe. The internet says 1660kg for the manual transmission. You could probably find small cars from the '80s that weighed half as much!

Ah, but do you have a four speed auto (with '4 SPEED' proudly written by the selector) and a lockup torque converter that comes in clumsily at about 80kph? Around town the Jag's economy is not so flash - when coasting at 60kph (foot off the throttle) it uses 3~4 l/100km just to idle the engine. Economy-related Barry fact - due to being an automotive grandfather clock, the XJ-S was aerodynamically average for 1988 with a drag coefficient of 0.40. That's worse than most new designs of the era and only better than boxy Volvos, the Countach and a 2.6 datto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient#Typical_drag_coefficients

I've heard that about poly bushings too, and seen an example. The internet seems to think it's just variable quality - some bushings (poly or rubber) are fine and some are crappy. Nothing bad happened to the poly ones I installed in my Alfa. You're right I could still have bought OEM Metalastic bushings for my XJ-S. They're cheap and some owners like them because Jags are supposed to be about ride quality. I think the one in my car which was coming apart must have been damaged by oil, and the ones which were worn out were just in a spot that's known for wear in the XJ-S. Assuming they're the originals from 1988 I can't complain. I went with SuperPro without doing my homework because I just assumed any British OEM part would be crappy / old stock, and I liked the convenience of being able to pick up the SuperPros off the shelf on the weekend. Time will tell if they fall apart and I have to do this all again.

Jag life's a bit variable so far.. but my Jag does get a lot more comments than my old Alfa 33 did, and kids who don't know any better do think I'm rich. Now that the XJ-S looks like a classic car, I probably get less resentful stares than Nelson's high power accountant did back in the day. I imagine it's just the odd Auckland electric car driver / hipster cyclist who hates me, for driving what they assume is a mega-thirsty V12. And for having a noisy exhaust. The guy I bought my XJ-S off said that if the motor had ever died on him, he had intended to fit a Jag V8. Maybe I'm missing something - the Jag V8 doesn't sound amazing, it's only 4.2L, if it's an old one then its cylinder liners will wear out, and you don't retain many car snob authenticity points for sticking with the same manufacturer when doing an engine conversion on a classic car. Just put a Chev in it so you can use a conversion kit and have better aftermarket support. Or if you're going for a more difficult engine conversion, have a better reason for it.

I passed another WOF, by deliberately seeking out a garage who wouldn't fail me on my chipped headlight glass or my worn front brake discs. I'm going to send the Jaag for a wheel alignment to see if it fixes the vibration, so first I had to change the remaining lower wishbone bushes on the more difficult side of the car. I wasn't looking forward to this, because the whole steering rack had to be unbolted so I could move it down and sideways out of the way of this fulcrum shaft: Not sure why Jaguar couldn't have made these fulcrum shafts insert from the front of the car where there's nothing in the way of withdrawing them. Still, the whole reason for doing these bushes was on this side of the car. The inner edge of the bush below had looked bad while the wishbone was still on the car and I couldn't get a good look at it: Actually its mechanical integrity was fine, despite that bit hanging off. And when I say 'fine', I mean relative to how hard it was to replace! Reinstalling the steering rack was horrible because it's a tight fit (I had to use a jack to push it into position) but you've got to precisely line up the rack and its shim thing with the subframe bolt holes. Reinstalling the suspension spring was also horrible because of trying to get the bolt holes in the spring pan to line up exactly with the wishbone while the spring's compressed, so that I wouldn't cross-thread any bolts. Because I can't work on this side of the car in my tiny garage, I had to do this work in view of my neighbours. Trying to align bolt holes in the dark for a conspicuously long time, hands grimy, lying on the ground with moths and mosquitoes, while people passing by correctly conclude that I'm crazy. But it's back together now. =) I noticed that the power steering pump appears to leak, but it's in a horrible spot and I'm not about to tackle it myself. I'm booking the car in for its first visit to some Jaaag specialists, so I can ask them about all its other rattles and whines and clunks. The impossible quest to make a Jaguar into a good car continues.

Burger Knight. An old loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the appetite, the stomach, the tastiness, in a world of parking that's located above the store.

Burger Knight - a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a meet that does not exist..

So that's three cars. Four if you count Bigfoot's Camry wannabe. :p The days of filling up the whole carpark would appear to be gone. =(

That's not how it works. I voted 'No' for the reason kyteler mentioned. I'd paid to enter Cancelled Nats (the one which should be happening right now ). If I didn't vote 'No' on this Hanmer poll, that could suggest I might show up. You can still hold the event and drink whisky and discuss the end of the world without me. =( TOTP fail. =(

Would you believe I fell asleep and missed this? Now I can't have burgers until next month. =(

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....