Damo's 1965 S-Type

[dmulally]

I have owned this for maybe 8-9 years. Have never had it wof'd but I have driven it around a fair bit. Enough to know I don't like it as it is. I have tried to sell it about 8-9 times and although I came close to swapping it a couple times and even outright selling it, it still remains in my possession. Somebody please buy it and end this madness. 

Here is how she looked when I got her home. Didn't run and rear brakes seized. 

 

Had a few rust spots in it that I had to weld up. Still does underneath which I have only just found and need to attack. 

 

So where are we now? 

The gearbox is a 4 speed od and the od works effortlessly which is nice. The clutch master I had rebuilt and it works very nicely now. Really responsive and classic jaguar engineering. Also CJE is the bullshit rear main seal. Or lack there of. It uses an Archimedes screw to sling it back into the sump. 50% of it seems to miss and end up on my garage floor blardy fuck you blardy. I have read into the rear main seal conversion kit which requires the crank to come out and it has mixed reviews. Some say it is worse than before and others love it so maybe it's a machine shop skill issue or luck of the draw.

 I am planning to semi retire in a few years and after 8 years of wrestling with the jag bits of this stupid jag I need to make it more reliable and reasonably economical. I have never been able to get much better than 20l/100kms out of it and that's when it is actually running. The goal is to put some running gear into it that will outlive me. Something I can turn the key on and just drive across the country without having to bring a tow vehicle support crew. I'm going on a magical mystery journey in the diesel spam thread as to the options which is food for thought. @Bearded Baldy thinks it should have a jag engine. Of which a 4.2 XJ6 bolts in (after I swap over all the 3.4 parts and get a new manifold that will fit) and an AJ6 and AJ16 have been done before. The AJ6 is one of my all time favourite engines but even they are getting long in the tooth at around 30 years+ these days. Great torque and decent on fuel. My old XJS would take a hill on cruise control and not even shift down. 

I'll open a discussion thread and might start a poll there to chew the fat. The budget is whatever I can sell the Imp for which will probably be around $10k in this market. 

 

 

[dmulally]

Parking this here for when I get it running in a few years it may idle high without aircon or power steering pump slugging it down. 

[dmulally]

Picked up the AJ6 which isnt even for this car. 

Including the incredibly rare manual bellhousing and flywheel

[dmulally]

EFI sucks so I'm trying to educate myself on how to do it. Starting off with writing myself a set of instructions that if I break down into small steps it might make it semi doable.

[dmulally]

So an odd thing happened this weekend. I had to move it to get it out of the way to sort out a garage audit. 

The brakes worked. They have never worked before on the pedal. I just find that interesting.