Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted April 16, 2018 Popular Post Posted April 16, 2018 I'm back, ...and I've got a Jaaaag. "He's bought a grandfather clock!" 1988 Jaguar XJ-S 3.6L six cylinder auto - not a V12 big cat, more of a house cat: Such car, much pussy cat.. but why? I bought my poor Alfa 33 as a budget daily driver 14+ years ago. This time I was buying more of a weekend toy, so I decided I should get a midlife crisis an old man's car a hopeless British Leyland anachronism a coupe with at least 6 cylinders and maybe even some market value. I considered the Z31 300zx, C4 Corvette, third gen Firebird / Camaro, BMW 635CSi.. and then I realised none of those are in my buyers guide, "Lemon! 60 Heroic Failures of Motoring" by Tony Davis. Where's the fun in that? With the XJ-S, I'm on my third Heroic Failure car in a row! Also, why wouldn't you buy one of these. DOHC 24 valve, all alloy fuel-injected motor, independent rear suspension with inboard disc brakes and a limited slip diff. it's basically a high performance weapon. It's so awesome that it needs six shock absorbers and six coil springs. It's got luxury covered too - climate control air conditioning, heated seats, heated electric mirrors, leather, wood, chrome, and a trip computer to impress your stockbroker mates. All this for similar $$ (today) to an old Ford Escort. Best of all, because it's only a 2-door 2+2, it's so compact that it fits in my garage very well... I don't have any good photos yet, but it's a stock '88 hardtop in Arctic Blue with the mesh alloys, blue leather seats and no rear spoiler. Impressions: A barge. Smells like an old car. The long bonnet look means the windscreen is in your face. The low roof means you sit on the floor with the seat reclined to get enough headroom. The exhaust is too quiet, so the soundtrack is mostly a bunch of mechanical whinings and grindings and miscellaneous grumbling and wheezing. Plans: Fix stuff, fix more stuff, fit soundz, work on making it better to drive and subtly hot it up enough that classic car snobs disapprove of me. Oh the fun I'll have. Discussion: https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/58671-thousand-dollar-supercars-1988-jaguar-xj-s-36/ 45 1 5 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted June 10, 2018 Author Popular Post Posted June 10, 2018 I've been slowly getting to know the Jaaag and to work through some of its issues. I started with easy stuff like blown bulbs and cleaning out the driving lights: Tried to improve the reversing light lenses with Brasso, but they're pretty cracked: Repainting the JAGUAR text so other motorists know how wealthy and stylish slightly caddish I am: Then I started to notice the car was losing its murky 7-year-old coolant. I might have panicked a little bit after my years of being punished by a straight six Rover SD1 with unfixable head gasket issues... However, it was just this bit of hose which was to blame: Jaguar apparently "designed" this part of the cooling system so that one fitting (the block) is larger than the other fitting (the vacuum-actuated heater valve). The previous owner had to replace the heater valve, stressing the hose where it was stretched over the larger fitting. Anyway, I obviously needed to drain and flush the cooling system. No radiator drain plug = remove the underbody aero(!), wrestle off the lower radiator hose and make a big mess. Then I had to look for the drain plug in the engine block. Underneath a shiny chrome exhaust heat shield are these crappy-looking log headers: See how the primary pipes for the front three and rear three cylinders run down next to eachother, giving good access to the side of the block both ahead of them and behind them? Guess where the drain plug is? It's behind the headers where you can't get a socket onto it. It also has the transmission cooler lines screwed onto it, but you can't get a screwdriver onto that screw. It's also a giant imperial size so you can't just go out and buy the right size spanner. This will learn me for buying a British car. I used a ratcheting ring spanner thing with a screwdriver bit to unscrew the bracket from the drain plug, then I bought the closest match of giant metric size spanner, which I had to operate from underneath the car. I flushed everything out and replaced that bit of hose, and now my British car doesn't drip a single fluid or have any warning lights on the dash. =) 18 1 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted June 10, 2018 Author Popular Post Posted June 10, 2018 (edited) Next was to fix the soundz. I had my aging oonst oonst gear left over from my Rover stashed away and ready to go. I ripped out the Jag's existing head unit and got the door cards off. Check out the little rain hats on the factory speakers: Also notice how they're just mounted directly to the disintegrating door card. I'm not impressed. Here are the old and new speakers: They look about the same size but just like the Jag's imperial bolt sizes, the speaker hole spacing is just a little bit off. If you want to retain the original speaker grilles, you're in trouble because the new speakers have to sit on the bolts which are actually part of the grilles: I ended up slotting the mounting holes in the speakers even further and bending the mounting bolts. Then I had to cut the bolts down short cos they fouled the door metal once I'd splayed them outward. Because I was using component tweeters, I had to run extra wires between the door and the interior. I can report that the Jag is more thoroughly built than other cars I've owned, but no better designed. It was not easy to run these wires. Aaand when it was all back together, I discovered one of my tweeters was blown. Couldn't get identical replacements because obscure brand. Bought some Soundstream ones which are way too loud. I think there is a jumper on the crossover boxes to set the level of the tweeters, so I need to pull the door cards off again to check whether I can tone down the killer treble. Right now I can't be bothered. It's better than it was. Also, there's no room for my amplifier and subwoofer. The Jag's seats are so close to the floor that I don't even think a modern slim active sub would fit under there, so I'm living without a sub. =( While I was hunting around the car for spare space (there isn't any - every little cavity has mysterious relays just chilling in there already), I removed the false floor in the passenger footwell. A chill ran down my spine as I gazed upon the heart of Darkness: I quickly put the covers back, nailed them down and drove a stake into the floor. Next thing: Wheel balancing. Done. This car has actual Linglong brand tyres all round. =| Next: Grinding brake noises. I took it to a shop and they put it on their hoist..... This is one of the inboard rear brake discs. Both discs are similarly unhappy. I was directed to a Jaguar Barry, who says that if you buy cheap handbrake pads, the friction material detaches from the backing plates or the whole lot falls out of the calipers and that's probably why the discs are wrecked around the outer edges. My car is going to be booked in for new discs etc. Apparently the way to work on the rear brakes is by removing the rear seat and getting at them through an access panel in the floor! Next thing: The illumination of the '70s-tastic instrument cluster is so poor I can't really drive the car at night, and the minor gauges are all reading too low. "Experience In A Book - Help For The Jaguar XJ-S Owner" (henceforth referred to as The Barry Bible) told me this instrument cluster is some of the Prince of Darkness's finest work and I'll love it. Barry was right - look at how the electrical connections to the minor gauges are done: You get one-and-a-bit threads of screw gnawing into a copper PCB track and that's your connection. The head of this screw sits against the flexible plastic circuitry on the rear of the instrument cluster, so the screw is the current path. Also, the entire instrument cluster earths through just one pin of one plug, which is predictably prone to being rubbish. There are many reports of XJ-S gauges under-reading by a quarter just like mine were. I even found that someone in the past had removed the bulb from my alternator warning light...... Thankfully the illumination of the instruments is via conventional bulbs and not the weird fiber optic centralised system someone mentioned in the discussion thread. The main bulb for the speedo had just about gone black, so I replaced it with a higher wattage one to offset 30 years of voltage loss. Following the Barry Bible instructions, I put some solder on the minor gauge PCB pads where those screw tips bite, I cleaned every connection and I made up an additional earth for the cluster. Now I can actually make out the speedo at night (just), I've gained oil pressure and voltage and a little bit of engine temperature. The alternator light now works properly too. The Prince of Darkness' crappy electrics driving me to distraction and making me want to put a bullet in something meant that I simply HAD to buy this air freshener - "Driven Into Darkness": Fortunately it doesn't smell like Lucas smoke. I was hoping that cleaning all these instrument connections would make the engine temperature gauge read in the Normal range, but it still doesn't quite get there. A new temperature sender is a hundred bucks and fitting a new thermostat would require me to spill my new coolant everywhere. Grrr. Also, the boot smells like petrol so I pulled the spare tyre and all of the trim out. You can see the ninety-one litre fuel tank (which has already been replaced once), the fuel pump and the battery. The Barry Bible says the battery is supposed to have a special attachment to vent its gases outside of the car to stop them rusting everything. Also, Barry says condensation on the tank or rust around the rear window causes water to sit in the foam pad they cleverly mounted the tank on, rusting out the tank. The tank also leaks from stress on its overengineered and uncommon pipework fittings and basically any other excuse. This enables the XJ-S to guzzle petrol even when the engine's not running! The fix is to rip out the British and replace it with custom. Maybe some other time. Edited June 12, 2018 by Thousand Dollar Supercar clarity 20 2 4 1 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted August 14, 2018 Author Popular Post Posted August 14, 2018 I've been trying to resist driving the Jag too much because of the condition of the rear brakes, thinking that my local Jaguar Barry was ordering me in some brake parts and would be contacting me any day once they'd arrived. Long story short, brakes not fixed and I need a new Barry. =( Meanwhile, the drivers seat had come loose and the seat heater wasn't working, so I took the seat out to have a look. What's it mounted with? Bolts that take a Torx T35. The seat heater wiring insulation was brittle and cracking and the wire had broken at an inconvenient point: I used a crimp joiner thing to fix it, and confirmed that the seat heater was working with a current clamp before putting the seat back in. Fortunately the reason for the seat being loose was just the rail coming unbolted from the frame (Jaguar appear not to have used washers), and I found a compatible replacement for the missing bolt. Now I use the seat heater at every opportunity, but considering the state of the wires and the amount of sag in the Jaguar seat bases, I don't imagine it will last long. Rather, one of these days it'll attempt to catch my arse on fire. Another thing I "fixed" is the squealing from one of the two cabin ventilation fans. I thought that the squeal plus a lack of air from the central vents meant that the motor wasn't spinning, so I took the fan out to test it. This wasn't actually too difficult - only some of the passenger side of the dash had to come out. The fan housing was getting a little rusty but the motor was OK and the brushes weren't too worn, so I lubricated it heaps and wrestled it back in place. I then realised that the central vents only lack hot air, but cold air works fine once I understand the controls. Still, the undignified motor squealing did spoil the ambience and I'm glad it's fixed (or at least stopped for a while). While trying to understand weird things about the dash, I checked the owners manual. I got a laugh out of this section, which aims to psychologically prepare you for life as an XJ-S owner: 28 1 9 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted August 19, 2018 Author Popular Post Posted August 19, 2018 Here's what's inside a Jag electric mirror: I opened it because the mirror glass shook around too much to see anything while driving. On the left of the photo is the glass backing plate (complete with heating element because England), and on the right are the two motors. The 'fixed' central ball-and-socket pivot mount with the yellow arrow had in/out play for some reason. I put a washer down its socket hole to pack it out and take up the slack, and it's improved. Another even more important thing I needed to fix was the radio aerial. The original motorised one had failed (big surprise) and the previous owner had replaced it with a manual one. This made me die a little bit inside, especially as the aerial is out on the rear wing. One does not feel very wealthy pulling over and getting out of one's car to go and extend the aerial in view of passing commoners. I bought a new electric aerial (universal, not Lucas) and fitted it with much excitement. Antenna goes up, antenna goes down. Antenna goes up, antenna goes down. I feel like a yuppie. Antenna goes up.. ..and thankfully stops short of my very low garage door. Just need to find an adapter for the annoying coaxial connector on the Jaguar cable back to the head unit. Tomorrow the Jag is going away for a while to get those inboard rear brakes and their awful grinding noises sorted out. Expect some horror stories, but also expect some form of exhaust modifications to be done at the same time. 17 1 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted October 9, 2018 Author Popular Post Posted October 9, 2018 My Jag has finally been returned to me! The bill was very scary , because.... On 15/08/2018 at 07:30, KKtrips said: Those rear brakes are a shit cunt to replace. Rear disc replacement is major involving removing rusty seized together exhaust joints, busted knuckles, prayers to multiple deitys, suicide and a lot of swearing. I ended up having to cover the funeral expenses of the mechanics who decided to try their luck in the next life. And then the rest of them went on trauma counselling / bereavement leave*, so the job took two months... I listened to the survivors tell their tale. Every nut and joint put up a fight and had to be soaked overnight, the whole rear subframe ended up coming out, and it was all because someone had apparently installed the handbrake pads upside down! This allowed the pads to move such that the backing plates were grinding away at the discs and starting to chip bits off. Jaguar changed the rear suspension for the last four years of XJS production, moving the rear discs outboard. Can't think why. After having not exactly the kindest introduction to the costs of old British luxury grand tourer ownership, I've made myself a new t-shirt design out of owners manual images: Still, I can't say I didn't warn me. And now I have nice brakes, a new WOF and reg and my 'zorst volume is turned up! What does an AJ6 ('the other Jaguar engine') sound like with half its mufflers removed? Not as good as a garbage Rover straight six ironically, but stay tuned! * Not really. Nobody died. Geez. 39 1 4 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted January 20, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted January 20, 2019 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. 20 1 Quote
Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted January 20, 2019 Author Posted January 20, 2019 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 6 1 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted January 24, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted January 24, 2019 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. 10 2 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted February 2, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted February 2, 2019 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: On 17/04/2018 at 09:38, Snoozin said: UNF thread pitches. 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 home in my conspicuous consumptionmobile. 26 1 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted February 17, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted February 17, 2019 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 first, 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'. 23 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted May 5, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted May 5, 2019 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. 21 2 2 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted June 23, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted June 23, 2019 I took the car to the specialists where they rebuilt the power steering pump and rack (which was also leaking). This was not very cheap, but now the pump leak will not damage any more suspension bushes and the rack leak won't risk me failing WOFs. The specialist told me that some of my whines and clunks were the auto transmission (ZF 4HP22), which had good fluid so wouldn't improve without money being thrown at it. One of my rattles was the clips on the airbox - some idiot had taken the front cover of the airbox off for extra induction noise and hadn't figured that the resulting loose cover clips would rattle at certain engine rpm. Another rattle is either the engine fan clutch or the water pump, so I'll look into that myself at some point. I got new bushes for the front sway bar drop links. Here are the old bodged ones which are too thin and too large in diameter: And here are the new ones which don't really look any better! Oh well. Apparently you can get spherical bearings to replace these bushes if you're hardcore, but I think I'll pass. Anyway, the Jag specialists got someone to do my wheel alignment after they'd rebuilt the steering rack. This resulted in improved steering self centring, but the feeling of square wheels at 40kph and the vibration at 80kph did not go away. So I started looking at replacements for the Linglong directional tyres which were on my car when I got it. Other than more Linglongs, the only other tyres available in the right size are reproduction retro hotrod stuff - BF Goodrich Radial T/A, Cooper Cobra Radial G/T, Hercules H/P 4000, Galaxy Radial G/T... all tyres that OS report as being a bit average ("harder than a whore's heart"). I looked at going to wrong-sized tyres on the stock 15-inch mags, but this doesn't expand the tyre selection much. Jags of this era have a bolt pattern of 5x4.75" / 5x120.65, which is what a lot of old GM cars used. This means most aftermarket wheel choices are stuff like Cragar SS / Torq Thrusts which look wrong and/or only come in small diameters. But then some 17-inch "Performance" brand wheels came up on TradeMe, so I grabbed them. The seller had taken them off his old Jag to upgrade to 18s, so I knew they were gonna fit my car. Surprisingly, I could buy wheel nuts off the shelf at Repco with the right imperial 1/2" UNF thread pitch and tapered seats. I just threw the wheels straight on with no issues. I didn't have to take the dust caps off the front hubs to allow the wheels to fit as the seller said I might. I haven't even noticed the wheels rubbing so far. The fronts will be easier to clean than the original lattice design, even if the rears look a bit weird with no brake discs visible between the spokes. Dish photo! The improvements and compromises are all as you'd expect. The Potenza RE002 tyres on the new mags are obviously an improvement. Their lower profile doesn't magically give the XJ-S any steering feel though. I can't benchmark the lateral grip against other cars I've owned - when going around my 180-degree test curve, the Jag's speedometer reading decreases significantly for some British reason, only to increase once I straighten up again. Also, the vibration at 40kph may be gone but the one at 80 remains. Back to the drawing board. 23 1 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted July 14, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted July 14, 2019 These new wheels have a tyre diameter 3% smaller than stock, so my speedo is even further out than before. It now seems to under-read by around 10%, officer. I went looking for more reasons for the vibration at 80kph, and found the diff seems to leak oil from the input seal. Probably explains its woooo noises on deceleration. So many things to fix! This car will keep me entertained for many years. I found a bit of play in the front wheels when rocking them at 12 and 6 o'clock, but not at 9 and 3 o'clock. I ordered some lower ball joints (an unscientific guess) and installed them this weekend... While doing this, I found the shock absorber top mounts were loose, one by a reasonable amount. After replacing the ball joints there was still some play in the wheels, so I think I guessed wrong. The vibration situation seemed to have improved for some reason though. Maybe I need to do the upper ball joints too / I don't know what I'm doing. 15 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted September 21, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted September 21, 2019 (edited) So I did the upper ball joints as well.. ..but it wasn't those. The push/pull play at 6 and 12 o'clock was still there. So I looked at how to adjust the wheel bearings.. I was expecting it to be horrible but it was easy, and now the play is gone. Should have done that first. Alas, the vibration is still not quite gone. It's probably just something I have to live with in a British car which has made it all the way to..... 200,000kms. So I got a new obsession instead. The engine doesn't run all that well - it has a random half-stumble at idle and low rpm.. You can see the misfires by watching the shaking of the motor, and although it appears to smooth out if you raise the rpm sufficiently, the higher engine speeds could possibly be disguising the problem. The car has also never really started that well from cold. I checked the spark plugs and they looked amazing to someone who has never owned fuel injection before. I looked for bad connections and vacuum leaks, since the ECU directly reads manifold vacuum (in V12 cars, the ECU is in the boot and its vacuum line has to run the whole length of the car, because why not... ). Nothing stood out though. Several tanks of fuel system cleaning pills didn't help either. Today I took off the airflow meter and cleaned it, and this did make an improvement. The raise in engine speed on startup is more pronounced, and the idle speed seems to have raised slightly which makes the car coast better / makes it not decelerate as aggressively when you lift off the accelerator. But just like my reduced 80kph vibration, the shaky running issue's still detectable. I'll try a compression test and then randomly change every ignition system part, idle valve, fuel pressure regulator and injector before giving up in 6 months from now. The Jag let me know what it thinks of my diagnostic skills: Edited September 21, 2019 by Thousand Dollar Supercar Grammarly 30 5 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted December 8, 2019 Author Popular Post Posted December 8, 2019 Big news! I ran over a screw: This meant I had to get a new tyre, so I asked the shop to check the balancing of all my new wheels at the same time. They were all out of balance. With them balanced, vibration on the motorway is finally OK. Then the Jag was due for a WOF, but its handbrake had stopped working. This was a bit annoying after the expense of the rear disc replacements. I took the car to the local one-man-band Jaguar Barry who'd been too busy to replace the discs for me last year. He repeated that only certain handbrake pads could be trusted, but he also basically said that the Jag handbrake is a marginal arrangement. It needs to be set up correctly and used carefully to avoid ripping the pads out. My handbrake cable was rusty, causing a lot of friction and making the handbrake heavy to apply and tricky to release. Barry has sorted it now though. WOF obtained (after a second new tyre). Unfortunately this handbrake drama took a while and meant that my Jag was not available for New Plymboes, so I took my company car. Not only was this not exactly 'limited' personal use, the manner in which I got busted wasn't the best - by some extreme fluke, I overtook my company's human resources lady on the wrong side of the road. Soooo.. I took the Jag on a work trip around the Waikato to make up for it. Although the car feels fine around town and has plenty of grip, at open road speeds it still feels sketchy. Not only is there tramlining from the lower-profile tyres, there's the (excessive) rear steering effect that Jaguar built into the rear suspension. Also, there's this: Quote Even if the original Jaguar steering rack mount bushings in your car are in fine shape, the steering response is awful. .... There are bumpers (flat washers with a layer of rubber on one side) on either side of the mounts to limit the side-to-side motion of the rack. This design results in a nonlinear response: When you turn the wheel gently, the steering is somewhat unresponsive, since the mounts flex and absorb most of the steering motion. When you turn hard enough that the bumpers are contacted, the steering suddenly becomes much more responsive. The inconsistency of response makes it difficult to steer smoothly, especially when driving hard; the car seems indecisive about how much it wants to turn. The solution is to replace the steering rack mount bushings with ones that are not merely stiffer but of a totally different design. Folks, please take this recommendation seriously: even if the stock bushings have not yet failed, even if they are brand new, replace them with aftermarket bushings as soon as possible. ... Downes concurs: “Regardless of perceived 'quality' of feel, when I move the wheel expecting a twenty degree turn, that's what I want, not fifteen or twenty five degrees depending on side- loads, braking loads, road camber or any of the other variables that can influence the 'mood' of the original bushings.” Whether because my car's a 'sports' variant or because someone already modified it, the steering rack mounts are packed out with these rubber bumpers on the outer side. This looks like it should limit movement of the rack, but I think I'll try new rack mountings anyway. Finally, because of that screw in my tyre, I'm now guilty of violating this rule: Quote Do not mix tire types, sizes or makes on a Jaguar. The XJ-S and the XJ6 have a suspension design in which the entire suspension assemblies are attached to the car with flexible mounts, and the relative stiffness of the mounts is premised on all the tires being the same. Mixing tire types, even outwardly similar ones, can result in dangerous instabilities in this suspension system. This is no joke; having one type of perfectly good tire on one end and another type of perfectly good tire on the other can result in you being rudely introduced to a tree when you aren't even traveling that fast. On the idle issue, I did a compression test. Ignore the oil on the last two plugs. The compressions are only a bit uneven, but they're all much too high (meant to be 160-170psi). Faulty gauge? Carbon buildup? Just lucky? This ain't no technological breakdown, Oh no... This is the road... ...to Hell! 14 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted January 12, 2020 Author Popular Post Posted January 12, 2020 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: 17 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted February 29, 2020 Author Popular Post Posted February 29, 2020 (edited) 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. =) Edited February 29, 2020 by Thousand Dollar Supercar 14 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted June 30, 2020 Author Popular Post Posted June 30, 2020 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. 17 Quote
Popular Post Thousand Dollar Supercar Posted July 19, 2020 Author Popular Post Posted July 19, 2020 On 19/04/2018 at 11:18, Dolan said: dont these have hilarious early fibre optic spec dash lighting? 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. 18 1 1 Quote
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