Thousand Dollar Supercar

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.

I’ve turned up early but there’s some construction happening on the top carpark and it’s pretty busy. I think I’ll head home if nobody else is likely to show up anyway. :p

Bump. Third Wednesday of the month is tomorrow.

I can endorse Avenga's services - we used his Charger on my brother's stag do in 2013. Posing for silly photos at the rifle range: I arranged this because I saw the writing on the wall - my brother and his wife now only own a white hybrid SUV. =(

Do you reckon the engine / gearbox from my Alfa 33 would fit? This photo is from an installation in a mid-engine Porsche 550 Spyder replica.

'N' was a very good year. Every road-legal car I've ever owned has been an N plate, except my black Alfa 33. /spam

Attendance was better than last month - we had two oldschool cars, plus a bike and a 'modern' S14 Silvia. =) Sparkly filter adds ALL of the sparkles!

I needed to replace the speakers in a musical keyboard, so I thought I'd scavenge the factory rear speakers out of the Jag for this purpose and put some new ones in their place. Sounds straightforward. To take out the interior trim panels which hold the rear speakers, you have to take out the rear seat base, rear seat back and front seat belts. The lap section of the belt attaches to a rail which is bolted to the floor of the car, and the lower threads of its mounting bolt protrude below the car where they get all corroded. When you remove these bolts, they get destroyed and their nuts (welded to reinforced sections of the floor) get damaged. Then you're left with no seat belts. So then you have to drive around with no seat belt to visit speciality stores during business hours and buy some stupid imperial 7/16 UNF bolts and a stupid 7/16 UNF thread tap that you will never use again. Aaanyway, here is one of the factory rear speakers: They're mounted to an actual piece of plywood, rather than to flimsy door card like the front speakers. As with the fronts, though, the speakers are mounted on the rear of the panels via threaded rods which are welded to the speaker grilles. I measured the plywood panel dimensions and got the biggest suitable speakers which could be mounted from the rear without modifying the panel (most speakers weren't suitable for rear mounting as they don't provide a standoff ring to stop the edges of the cone contacting the panel). Here is a new speaker, a factory speaker and the factory grille: Then I recessed the mounting nuts for the speaker grilles and cut down their threaded rods as short as I could. This allowed me to slap the new speakers onto the back of the panel while keeping the factory speaker grilles in place. Result: It looks factory (good), and sounds factory (not so good) except a bit clearer. There's still not much bass and the sound starts to distort when the head unit is still quite far from its maximum volume. I probably won't try to improve things further though, because there's no ideal spot for amps / subs in an XJ-S. While I had those interior panels out of the car, I got a look at Jaguar's superb rust traps. Behind the rear speakers / below the rear side windows, there's a join where the bodywork meets the sill. Rather than installing drain holes in case water gets in, Jaguar just fitted lots of foam to absorb the water: This seems like it would promote rust, and indeed it does. My car's not too bad for rust just yet, which is why I was not prepared for this rust under the sound deadening below the rear seat base! Water must have been getting in and pooling at this join, helped by the foam stuff. I took a few handfuls of rust out, revealing some holes. However, the holes revealed that this seat framing is not the floor of the car - there's heat insulation below here to stop the passengers getting toasty bums from the inboard brakes and exhaust. I just hit it with rust killer / corrosion primer / fish oil and hid it away for another day, since it's very easy to access. Before putting the rear seats back in, I noticed they were made by the notorious Jack the Stapler: