London Classic Car Show

A fellow Jaguar enthusiast and I went to the London Classic car show at the Excel centre in London on Saturday. It was pretty busy for most of the day, so much so that during the parade sessions it was almost impossible to get a decent view. The very brief video at the end of the article shows that there were people three rows deep  between the casual observer and those keen to ensure a good view by grabbing a front row view early. I did however like the idea of the “road” down the middle of the hall to allow for a bit of noise and excitement during the day.

E types definitely ruled the roost as there seemed to be at least one or more on every stand. Judging by the prices that some of those were listed for it is unlikely that I will ever be able to afford something like that. At the same time however, I don’t actually want a car that I can’t drive for fear of getting it dirty and loosing a massive amount of value. What’s the point of owning a £250,000 car if all you can do is keep it in a temperature controlled garage with the occasional visit to a show, taken by trailer of course. It takes all sorts of course and investing in a E Type has probably increased more in value compared to what you would receive leaving your money in the bank over the last few years.

I did expect to see more parts and component suppliers but I guess the costs for a stand these days is fairly high. One of my usual parts suppliers S N G Barratt were there and if I had got my act together I could have saved some postage on the parts I need. I would also have had to carry them around all day too.

There was another show going on in one of the adjacent halls which was similar to the Comicon type event. It was the London Super Comic Convention. Hundreds of colourfully  dressed people wandering around certainly brightened up the day. I applaud those visitors who made the effort as I am well aware of the time needed to create the various outfits as my daughter attends these shows quite regularly.

It was certainly a different kind of car show to those I normally attend, if only for the sheer restoration quality of the cars on display. I doubt if I will go again as most of the cars were out of my reach financially and I was unable to to find any of those little bits and pieces I need as part of the ongoing Jaguar rebuild.

DIY was the order of the day for Sunday so no progress this weekend on the XJ6 either.

Here is a 10 second video of the noise reverberating in the hall from an Audi Quatro rally spec car. A bit of movement and noise makes a big change from the static displays. The Lotus F1 car and a Subaru WRX sounded great too but unfortunately I have no video.

back to the rebuild!

XJ6R – Quick Spray job – Part 2

I managed to get a few short hours in the garage over the weekend when it was not raining outside. I needed it to be dry so that I can put my small compressor outside to feed fresh air to the face mask. I had done some wet sanding to get rid of the worst of the paint runs (from part 1) and of course I had gone through the paint and back to the metal in a couple of places. I re-masked off the various parts and resprayed the inner wing again. Although not as good as I would like, it is passable. Especially as this is the side where the Supercharger goes, along with a few ancillaries so there is not a lot of room left for you to see any bad paint work! I will let it harden for a few more days and give it a light buff and polish. Apologies for the picture quality, trying to show a paint finish is very difficult at the best of times but this is black in a fairly dark part of the garage. Also the phone camera is not that good either.

I also made a start at cleaning the engine up a little as it looks quite a mess. I removed some of the metal work that makes up the inter-cooler air feed pipes and washed them in solvent. They do look a lot better but I might have to resort to polishing them or even spraying them. They are aluminum but have a kind of textured finish to them. I guess that there is more exterior surface area meaning that it might allow more cooling from passing air? I was wondering what other people have done with these engines. I did see an E-Type with a fully polished (very shiny) XJR6 engine installed so maybe that’s the extreme.

It is -2 outside so I will do some more research and planning!

I did a quick search and found a video on youtube of a Supercharged E-Type with the polished pipe work which looks nice, (see around 1:50 in) I am not so keen on the wheels though!

Next!

XJ6 R engine bay preparation and respray

I had mucked up an earlier attempt at respraying the passenger side of the engine bay. Firstly I had covered part of the inner wing with tape around the VIN plate so that needed redoing and I also scratched the side during the fitting of some of the new items needed in the engine bay. You can see the initial repairs highlighted by the red primer and can also see the new wiring (temporarily laid out).

Rather than repair it and then damage it again as I carried on working on fitting the items and the new wiring needed in the engine bay. I also needed to cut a hole as that discussed in the cutting a hole in the bulkhead post.

Respray Preparation

The first step was to remove the new wiring, the fuse box and the newly added modules to allow for the respray. The blue tape masks off the various parts I did not want to remove.

Well I tried to respray it and obviously had some setting wrong because no matter how delicate and fast I was, I still ended up with a significant amount of paint runs. I guess I am a better storage  technology guy than a paint sprayer 🙂

I have left it for now. I will carefully wet sand out the paint runs and see what it looks like in a week or so. stopped there as I decided to write this and then look to see if I can find some of the items I need to purchase.

Here is my current list of items to locate and buy next.

• Brake Master Cylinder and clips to hold on the reservoir
• Reconditioning kit for the steering rack plus the bellows
• Front shocks
• Front suspensions ball joints
• Alternative fuel pump as the ones in the twin tacks will not provide enough pressure on their own
  • need some more thought regarding the fuel system such as can I use the XJR tank or do I use a surge tank as suggested by Larry Louton on the Jaguar forums page
• The rubber pipe that connects to the battery tray and the air inlet by the windscreen (BD4654) because mine is split
• Supercharger Belt for the XKR to stop the tweeting noises

Looks like I need to do a little research rather than watching the paint dry 🙂

next!

Brake Master Cylinders

I spent some time in the garage over the weekend. Most of it was spent inspecting the Brake Master cylinder for the car. I had a pair of these for the XJ6. One I rebuilt, maybe 15 years ago and put in a drawer and the rusty looking one that was the original still in the car. The rebuilt one looked OK externally but had the wrong rubber fittings on the top where the reservoir should sit. It had the two identical rubber fittings that I believe go to the later versions of the car.  These had a separate reservoir attached to the bulkhead via two pipes. My car has the reservoir fitted directly on top of the master cylinder. I had problems getting the pins out that hold the reservoir onto the master cylinder. I ended up cutting and eventually drilling out one of the pins. I then started to disassemble the cylinders themselves. The original master cylinder was very rusty and took a little persuasion to disassemble. Having removed the first of the two plungers, a quick look inside at the cylinder wall proved that it was beyond repair. I think you can see the rust damaged cylinder walls in the photos.

I then started on the one that had new rubbers fitted years ago to see if that was in a usable state. Unfortunately not! It looks like a new master cylinder is needed. They are no longer available from Jaguar Heritage. A quick look through the suppliers I often use reveals that there are  superseded items available.  Not a cheap item but better safe than sorry!

ODBII Socket

As I could do no more to the braking system, I spent a while reviewing some of the wiring and finally decided where I would place the ODBII connector. It is going to go inside the drawer in the central arm rest, between the driver and passenger seats. Not too difficult to wire up, deciding on where to put it took longer than wiring it 🙂 I was initially looking at somewhere under the dash but the centre console seems a better place. I will no doubt require access to it quite frequently, at least in the initial stages of installing and getting the engine running. I still need to check for clearance under the drawer as there are a couple of large pipes feeding the heating/AC flow to the rear of the car. I have left a fair amount of slack in the wiring to allow a lot of positioning options just in case.

There are just a few connection needed.

Brown/Red – Box 101 is a fused but constant +12v supply

White/Pink – Circle 5 is a switched +12v when key is in position 2 which is normal running position

White/Orange – Hexagonal 3 is a switched ground signal also when the key is in position 2

Pink and Orange are CAN bus serial data lines

Black is chassis and Black/Pink is logic ground.

I had previously wired/reserved the constant +12v, and the switched +12v using the fuse box I installed into the passenger foot well by the door hinges. I had also implemented a relay to provide the switched ground connection elsewhere so I just tapped a wire off of that feed. The rest were either available to tap into around the J-Gate assembly or running across the area to get to the Instrument PCB. The Instrument PCB is going to be installed vertically on the drivers side of the centre console.

Another step closer….

XJ6R Hole cut out

To get the ECU loom from the engine bay into the passenger foot well I needed to make the LHD steering column hole larger. This hole is used to feed the engine vacuum to the AC unit to drive the various flaps and valves.

There is a thick strengthening ring surrounding the standard hole so I decided to cut around that meaning the hole would be around 60mm in diameter. The plugs on the loom would not fit through the standard hole as they are quite bulky.

I had to make up a simple wooden template to enable me to centre a holesaw in the right place. The holesaw, along with some cutting fluid made short work of the sheet metal and I was left with a nice clean cutout. Picture taken after a quick clean up and a bit of paint for protection.

I will be using the rubber gaiter/plug to seal up the hole as used on the original XJR.

There was a strange tweeting/squealing noise emanating from the engine bay on the XKR which started a few months ago. It stopped once the engine got warm. I did mention it at the last service and they changed the Supercharger belt. The nest full of hungry birds returned shortly after the service. I tried using a tube and an old funnel to isolate the noise which I deemed to be the water pump. There was some notoriety with early water pumps so I changed it before Christmas. The noise did stop for a couple of journeys however it returned again! Not needing to use the car for a little while, it sat while I decided what to do next. A friend of mine from the JEC (Thanks Neil), lent me an electronic listening device which has a long tube that you place onto the various parts you suspect are making the noises and listen via a pair of headphones. You could not hear the tweeting but a rumbling noise and some were worse than others. One of the tensioners was noisier than the rest so that was the initial target.

I did a little research and there is a replacement tensioner and idler wheel set for the princely sum of £200. The set also included the Supercharger belt which I had just changed so I did not want to go down that route. I then came across a post on a Jaguar forum.

The solution is to replace the bearings in the various wheels and idlers and the post included details suitable part numbers. I ordered four bearing for a total of just over £14 so a big saving. I changed one idler wheel bearing without removing the Fan assembly but you do have to remove it so you can get to the bolts holding some of the other idler wheels on. This is reasonably straight forward.

Once you have struggled to get the two nuts off of the fan assembly, they are not tight or anything just there is no access to them. I used a small ratchet type ring spanner that also could be angled enough to get into the tight spot. (from a cheap set I brought myself last time I was in Aldi)

I removed the top plate holding the radiator in position and I found I needed to remove the top radiator hose and the air filter top to allow the Fan Assembly to be juggled out of the way. Once the Fans were out of the way you can undo the various wheels as needed.

I used a socket, a long threaded bolt & nut  plus a large metal bar to pull out the bearings and tapped them back in using a suitably sized socket and hammer.

Made famous by Haynes, Reassembly is the reverse of removal, and once all back together, topped up the coolant that I lost disconnecting the pipe and went for a test drive. All seems well except for I started the engine with the plug into the air box unplugged so I have an engine MIL light illuminated. I’ll see if it goes off on its own after a few journeys otherwise I’ll plug in the ODB2 device I have and turn it off myself.

Back on the road and no tweeting …. for now anyway!

No good 🙁
A couple of days later, the noise was back see the video below:

Welcome to 2016, hope it treats you well and you keep healthy 🙂

I did spend a little time in the garage on New Years Day and did some work on the XJ6.

• Cleaned up and sprayed a bit of clear lacquer onto the two washers and large nut heads that are used to hold on the bulkhead heat insulation panel. See the before and after pictures below
  • I also tidied up the wiring a little
• Made up a gasket, found some suitable bolts and installed the brake pedal assembly and servo unit.

Next up – XKR