Thousand Dollar Supercar

I like that your service manual comes from the thirties! Hard to get much more oldschool than this car. Unfortunately, whenever I read your build thread, my brain plays this song: Let it never be said, that Austin is dead... Ruby ruby ruby ruby!

Yay page 2! Discussion link: https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/58671-thousand-dollar-supercars-1988-jaguar-xj-s-36/ The cheek of it - Dillon Photography cut me off in favour of some hairdresser's car! I filled the tank up with injector cleaner and went racing at Hampton Downs to blow out the cobwebs. After I locked up my brakes severely and made huge clouds of smoke, the angry man driving the pace car informed me that we were not in fact racing - this was only the track cruise.

It turns out I do have such a thing, hidden under the gear selector: One bulb to light them all Quite a job to find them Ten leads to bring them all to the Prince of Darkness bind them. Why was I taking my centre console apart? The varnish was lifting off the veneer: I removed the varnish pretty easily with a stripping disc, but this just confirmed that the veneer itself was cracked, not just the varnish. I probably should just buy a new one for £175.00 from the finest English craftsmen, but meantime I tried some Danish oil: Unfortunately if you press that growler face below the right-hand ash tray, it doesn't call upon the power of ten tigers. It's just a switch blank where the cruise control would be on a V12 car.

In my last post I thought I'd made the idle better, but it turned out I just made the car idle faster when warm and hardly run at all when cold. So I kept researching. Most results relate to the more-popular V12 engine, and you also have to contend with the fact that the AJ6 had at least two different fuel injection systems on it over the years, with and without various anti-pollution devices. Here I've removed more of the intake bits to check for gunk and vacuum leaks: Some crankcase oil must end up condensing on the throttle plate and running down into the throttle position sensor mounted underneath it (TPS arrowed, throttle assembly shown upside down): I cleaned the TPS and measured its resistance. It seemed correct and linear except slightly higher at idle than immediately off idle. I measured and adjusted the throttle plate gap, reassembled everything and followed the idle setting procedure. Basically you fake the coolant temperature reading to cause the idle stepper motor to close, then you unplug that and set the base idle speed with the air bypass adjustment screw. I couldn't quiiiite achieve a low-enough base idle even with the air bypass fully closed, which I guess isn't ideal. The idle speed seems good now (hot and cold), but the car still struggles into life if it hasn't been started in a day or two and its idle still stumbles a bit. I tried new plugs and I tried spraying flammable stuff all around the intake to check for more leaks, but no luck. The next step of the idle setting procedure is to check the exhaust CO at idle, but I'll obviously need to find a shop to do that. I think you adjust the CO with a calibration screw on the airflow meter. My iteration of the AJ6 engine has no exhaust gas oxygen sensor, therefore I guess it just bases the fuelling on the AFM reading, a wing and a prayer? (fun fact - this is better than the early AJ6 EFI which just used manifold vacuum with no possibility for calibration - the vacuum would deteriorate at quite low mileages because the engine's valves didn't seal very well, or something nightmarish along those lines...) Anyway, my aftermarket electric aerial destroyed itself already. A piece of a little cog broke off and jammed the big cog..... ....but the Jaguar inline fuse did not blow. Instead the motor got very hot and began to melt the surrounding plastic, until a wire connected to the motor burned through. Electric aerials are very important and I couldn't deal with mine being out of action, so I bought another of the same brand. When I opened it up to oil the crap out of it, I noticed it had been revised - the cog which broke in the old one is now made out of a black material in the new one. Hmmm. Also, I spotted this XJ-S (not mine) with a lame personalised plate: It looks like they've parked their planet-pillaging V12 in a bay reserved for bicycles only, which of course they could get away with....because they've got a Jaaaaaaag.

Or how about these ideas?

I haven't seen the setup - would I be able to see anything from in my XJ-S if there was an SUV in front of me?

I knew it!

Yay trackday! I'd be keen to bring my Jag and spin out repeatedly. Friday would be no problem. Do you have a theme in mind for the type of entrants you'd like to invite? A friend of mine who's not on oldschool is currently throwing money at an EK9 Civic Type R.

In the event that you have no shame, I'll be going back through the CBD in my groovy rental Mirage... It needs some "Mirage VI Panther" stripes. Then it would be awesome just as crap, but with stripes.

I’m bored of staying in my hotel room. Nothing on TV but Coronavirus 24/7.

A bit of Elton John for your Friday afternoon.

I'll be in town as well, staying in Thorndon but I'll have a rental car.

video is unlisted / not public. I also don't mind which date for 2021. I arbitrarily voted for the later one.

The Jaaag is not allowed near any mechanics until after Nats, so I'm just mucking around on it myself without achieving anything. I found the reason that the windscreen wipers don't auto-park when you turn the switch off: It's true what the XJ-S Barry Bible says - the switch doesn't ground the park circuit of the wiper motor properly. Not sure if it's just dried grease on the contacts - the switch is riveted together and I didn't want to risk wrecking it. You can buy new old stock switches, but they go for more than I'd pay for something made by Lucas. I have discovered there's a pull-to-wipe function which parks the wipers if you hold it down, and I guess I'll live with that. Fun fact - the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, once had a job in the Lucas factory, as did his mother. It seems he tuned car horns and she assembled circuits. Anyway, I became concerned that my diff might have leaked out all of its oil, so I looked for its filler plug. The internet taught me that in the boot, behind the spare tyre, below the fuel tank and behind some sound deadening, there are these removable covers behind which you can see the brake discs (arrowed): You can see the diff filler plug through one of these holes, but with my diff model (Salisbury 4HU Powr-Lok, 3.54:1) you can't really use the holes for access to remove the filler plug with normal tools. You also can't access the brake calipers through these holes, so I conclude that the holes exist to homologate them for brake cooling because racecar. The way to get at the diff filler is to take off the plate covering the whole underside of the diff area. This photo is with the plate removed: You can't see it in the photo, but the speedometer drive comes from the diff. This must somehow explain why the speedo reading decreases during lateral grip tests. Turns out the diff did need some oil, but not as much as I feared. Back to my other problem then - the idle. I joined a Jaguar forum, and they pointed out that I should read the XJ40 sedan section for info on the AJ6 engine. Also, I should clean out various intake components and look for vacuum leaks. So I removed the idle air control valve thingy. The arrow shows the location of some sort of manual bypass adjustment screw: The valve didn't seem gunked up, but after I cleaned and reassembled it, tightened a few random intake hose clamps and started the car, the car stalled. On the second attempt, it was idling low and would get close to stalling when the engine speed fell back down after a throttle blip. So I just gave that adjustment screw a random tweak. Hey presto, idle is up and is smoother. Maybe this adjuster really is meant for compensating for vacuum leaks... Anyway, the idle's still not 10/10 but I''m seeing signs that I'm on the right track. I''m wondering about getting the fuel injectors tested and cleaned (new ones don't seem to be available) and then getting the idle set up properly. After Nats of course. =)

See the first post in this thread for the location. The next meet will be the 18th of March, but I'll be in Wellington that week. It's probably for the best that the XJS has fallen out of favour.. Definitely don't watch the bidding on this auction to see how cheaply you could put yourself into a V12 coupe.