October Update: Time Is Making Fools of Us!

Welcome back Jag fans.

It looks like I’m getting into the pattern of posting an update to this blog about every six months (Well, four months since last June).  It amazes me how quickly four months pass!  The clock seems to have doubled its speed since I retired.  Time is my scarcest resource!  This summer I did spend two weeks in bed or confined to the house with a bad ear infection, and a couple of weeks helping one of my sons paint his 2003 Ford Mustang, and I spent a week in September visiting one of my daughters in Ohio.  I guess all of that cuts into the Jag restoration work.  As I have often said, I’ve got to get this car back together before they take away my driver’s license!

Here is John's Mustang in final prep. for painting.  We did it in gloss black at the BYU paint booth and it came out beautiful.  I don't happen to have a photo.  My son Josh did the spraying  I think he misses painting cars since he has become a Physical Therapist at the local regional hospital.

The last post mentioned my plans for a rotisserie to enable the car body to be rotated above the ground so I can work on the bottom.  I finished the mechanisms that will hold the car up and allow it to be raised and lowered and rotated all the way round.  The back end of each mechanism attaches to the arm of an engine hoist, and the front to the car body, one in front and one at the rear.  The car can then be lifted by jacking the two engine hoists, and if the mechanisms are lined up properly, the body can be rotated between the two hoists.  I built these mechanisms at the BYU machine shop where I used to teach.  Fortunately I still have contacts there who let me come in and work.
I have not yet built the adapting plates to connect the rotisserie mechanisms to the front and rear of the car.  These are still on my list for this year.

Rotisserie adapters, ready to be mounted on front and rear of car body then fitted to the arms of two engine hoists.  Next post will have photos of how this worked out.

My chrome-plating shop finished a batch of parts this summer including all four bumpers and several other smaller parts. One of the parts was the emergency, or parking brake lever and mounting bracket.  This mechanism has been re-assembled and is ready to go back in the car.  Several of the parts to the parking brake system were missing or damaged when I took the car apart, so the brake must not have been working at all when the car was parked in 1990.

This is not a very good photo of the chrome bumpers because the wallpaper is reflected in their surfaces!  They did come out nice; good enough for show.  The insides are painted with silver crackle enamel.

Here is the restored hand-brake lever and mechanism.  It is mounted here on the tunnel just to see how it fits.  It looks better than new!

A batch of zinc plated parts was also completed, which included the seat sliding rails and the windshield wiper mechanism.  The seat sliders are ready to go back in the car complete with new dipped-rubber tips on the release levers.  These seat sliders and nice with steel rollers that let the seats move smoothly forward and backwards.

The seat-slider runners are on the right in this photo, still disassembled.  On the left are the newly-plated parts of the wiper mechanism.

The windshield wiper assembly was a little more involved.  I disassembled the motor and gear drive and cleaned it up, assembling it with new grease and paint.  I will leave the original wires in place as they are in good condition and would be difficult to replace.  The parking mechanism that stops, or parks, the wiper arms at the correct location at the bottom of the windshield, was not working because the insulating fiber plates that insulate the rotating electrical contact from ground had deteriorated and were falling apart.  I was able to make new insulators from a strip of plastic and rivet them into the assembly just like the original fiber insulators had been.  This mechanism is now ready to go back in the car.  I also bought three new wiper arms as one of the originals was broken and I thought the three should match.

Wiper drive components cleaned and ready for assembly.

 

Re-assembled wiper drive, and it really works!

Restored wiper-parking mechanism (most of it)

Here is the completed wiper assembly, ready to go back in the car.

Next I turned attention to the interior of the car, all the upholstery and trimming.  I have not bought any upholstery but in preparation for new upholstery I have disassembled the seats, the center console, and all the trimmed pieces that can be removed from the car.  These metal parts were all corroded and covered with old paint, dirt and adhesive that mostly had to be scraped and blasted off.  The seats were too large for my bead-blasting cabinet so I had to take them to the BYU shop where there is a larger one.  Some of the parts, like the center console and the cantrails that go above the side windows, are too large even for the BYU cabinet so I did them with my open-air sandblaster out in the garden.  I put 100 pounds of sand into the dirt but that will only help soften up the hard soil when I rototill it next year.

This collection of cleaned and painted parts includes everything that needs recovering with new upholstery.  These parts will go down to the interior trim shop in So. Cal. for that work.  Some of these parts, like the seats and the center console, are complicated and need to look very good in the finished car, so they will be finished by professionals.  

My plan is to take the seats and some of the other parts that are difficult to cover to the BAS Interior shop in Palm Springs, CA.  They can supply complete kits for the E-Type cars and they also have experienced technicians who will do the installation of trim using their materials.  I would like to have them do these difficult pieces then sell me the remaining material to finish the car’s interior here at home.  I think I can do an acceptable job with the sides, floors and headliner.

I had planned this trip to California for the 27th of September with my son, Enoch, accompanying me.  We were going to take the seats to Palm Springs then drive north to the Bay Area to visit family members there.  But Enoch was involved in a serious bicycle/car accident the week before our departure date so I had to cancel.  My new plan is to take the seats and other parts down over the last weekend of October so the work can be started and hopefully I can pick up the finished work before Christmas.

With the interior pieces cleaned, painted and ready for new upholstery it was time to work on the engine.  The head had been removed earlier and I had even taken it to the engine shop to be cleaned.  Now I removed the front cover and timing chains, all the gears and chain tensioners.

Front of the engine with the timing-chain cover removed.  The chain guides and tensioner were pretty worn so chains and guides have been purchased new.  The sprockets are fine.

Close-up view of the rear three main bearing journals (3 out of 7) and the No. 1 and 2 big-end rod journals.  All are in good condition and the bearings can be replaced with standard-size inserts.

The oil pan came off pretty easy but was a mess inside.  The main and rod bearings came apart easily and I was surprised to find all the journal bearings in almost new condition; well, one rod bearing had some scratches in it from an imbedded bit of metal that must have gotten past the filter.  But all the rest of the inserts were good.  I was able to lift the crankshaft out of the engine and removed the plugs from the cross-drilled oil holes with my high-torque impact wrench.

The complete lower end of the engine  with all bearing caps removed.  A robust design for long, trouble-free life!

The pistons remained immovably frozen in the cylinders.  They could not be moved up even with a large hammer.  But I could hammer them down deeper into the cylinders just enough to let me get a three-stone cylinder hone into the cylinders above the pistons.  With the hone and an electric drill I managed to clean the cylinder walls above the pistons enough that I could then hammer the pistons back up and out the top of the block.  It was still a job and took a lot of pounding with a large hammer and a long aluminum bar that I made to hammer on the wrist-pin bosses.  With the pistons out I could see that the cylinder walls were actually not damaged by the frozen rings, and most looked like they could be cleaned up with a good hone or perhaps a .010 inch oversize re-bore.  But the front cylinder liner/sleeve (the engine uses steel liners pressed into a cast iron block) was cracked, and would have to be replaced, so I ordered a new liner and left the block and crank at the machine shop to be worked on. 

The head I took back home with me so I could fit after-market clamps to hold down the tappet guides on the exhaust side.  Many builders report that the guides tend to come loose and, over time, work their way up out of the head. These after-market clamps will prevent the guides from working their way out of the head and getting tangled up in the camshaft. 
 I took the head down to school (BYU) to use a milling machine to drill and tap holes for fixing the clamps.  I also wanted to re-surface the exhaust manifold flange to be sure it is nice and flat and will seal well against the manifolds.

The head is on a vertical milling machine where I am drilling and tapping holes to fix the exhaust tappet guide clamps which prevent the guides from working loose.

Here the exhaust-manifold flange is being milled flat to ensure a leak-proof fit with the manifolds, which have also been newly milled flat.

Front of the cylinder head sanded smooth, ready for final polishing to mirror finish after all machine work is done.

While I had the head at home I sanded smooth the front portion where the timing chains rotate in preparation for final polishing of this area after all the machine work is done and the head assembled.  The XK engine is one of the key appearance features of the car and it must be carefully polished and painted to reflect faithfully the beauty originally designed into this engine by the Jaguar engineers.

All of my machining went well and I returned the head to Clegg’s shop to have new valve seats and guides installed.  They will also grind the seats and valves and assemble the head setting the tappet clearances to specification.

The camshaft covers here have been chemically cleaned and bead blasted in preparation for sanding and polishing.  These, too, must be  polished to a mirror finish.  If I cannot get a satisfactory finish myself I will send them to professional metal polishers.

The oil pan (sump) has also been chemically cleaned and bead blasted and is ready for some final detailing and reassembly. 

For the last three weeks, in addition to spending part of every day at the hospital visiting Enoch, I have installed a new forced-air-type furnace in my garage to enable me to work there during the cold winter months.  The heater does a good job of warming the garage to comfortable working temperature in just a few minutes.  With this heater I should get more done this winter than I did last winter!

New forced-air heater in the garage.  This has been wanting in my garage for the last three decades.  Finally felt the motivation to do it!  (Note the photo on the wall of the FIA Record-holding BYU Electric Streamliner.  The project of the first decade of the 21st century.  204 mph record will not soon be broken.)

My next focus, after getting the seats delivered to the trim shop, will be to get the body up on the two engine hoists with the rotisserie mounts.  More on that to come.

June 2019 update

I apologize for letting 6 months lapse since the last post.   Some of you probably thought I had given the project up as a bad job!  But I am back, and even though I have been neglecting to report my progress in a timely manner, nevertheless I have made good progress. 

If I report everything I have done this will be a long post.  I will try to be brief and let the photos do the talking.

Progress on the Jag was delayed for about two months this spring as I paused to repair a crash-damaged car for a needy neighbor; that is a very long story in itself, but here is a photo of the finished job; requiring fenders, bumper, lights, window, airbags, strut, control arm, etc.

2017 Chevy Equinox, delayed the Jag work approx. two months

You may remember that I removed the Jag engine last fall and sent the cylinder head to Cleggs Machine Shop for cleaning and rebuilding.   The head is still at the shop as I have no hurry for it, and the engine still sitting on its stand with penetrating oil soaking in the cylinders.  In only one cylinder has the penetrating oil leaked down through the rings!  Those rings are really stuck and I will look into getting the pistons out this summer.

The bumpers, lights, and other bright parts are still at the chrome-plating shop but should be done soon.  Once again, I am in no hurry for those parts but I probably should not have told that to the plating-shop owner!

Compressing the road spring using
home-made compressor

Four completed shocks

I will start describing things that have been accomplished during the last six months.  The rear springs were cleaned and painted and I made custom spring compressors from all-thread to mount them on the new GAZ shocks.  The process worked well and the shocks are ready to go back on the subframe.  This will be described below.

Bell housing being cleaned up on milling machine

The bell housing was cleaned at Cleggs and I took it to BYU (the university I retired from) where I used a milling machine to re-surface all of the mounting bosses.  The aluminum bosses had become badly deformed by overtightening nuts and bolts on them without washers.  They are now as good as new.

A new clutch slave cylinder, throw-out bearing and screw-lock tabs have been purchased for the bell housing re-assembly.

Pulling the locating pins out of the flywheel by
 welding all-thread to the pin and pulling with a nut

I sand-blasted the flywheel and painted the back side with Glyptol.  The pressure-plate dowel pins had to be pulled out so the clutch surface could be reground. To remove the pins I welded the end of a bit of all-thread to the top of the pin as seen in the photo above, then put a large socket over the all-thread and tightened a nut and washer onto the all-thread against the socket.  This successfully pulled both pins out of the flywheel, though it took an entire afternoon to figure out the solution and implement it.  New pins will not be difficult to find.   Clegg has re-surfaced the flywheel.  Later I will have him balance it as a unit with the clutch pressure plate and crank shaft.

Since I first acquired the car I have been debating what to do with the exhaust manifolds.  Should I buy new ceramic-coated ones from the vendors, should I clean mine up and send them to a coating service to re-coat them with new ceramic, or should I just clean them up and paint them with high-temp manifold paint? I studied several coating services on the Internet and read the experiences of other Jag owners who had tried all three of the options I described above.  I finally decided to clean up my manifolds, removing all the residue of old ceramic, and send them to Caps Coatings in Fresno, CA for new ceramic.  They did the job in just a few days and the manifolds came out beautiful as can be seen in the photo.  These are now as nice as or nicer than the originals,"over-restored" as they say.

Newly coated exhaust manifolds from Cap's Coating

The trick with these manifolds on the E-Type is to prevent water getting through the louvers in the bonnet where it will fall directly onto the manifolds when they are hot.  The thermal shock of cold water on the hot ceramic will crack the coating and ruin it.  So the first rule is to not drive the car in the rain!

As I mentioned in the last post I had decided to send the brake calipers and cylinders to my zinc-plating shop and then to send the plated cylinders to White-Post Restorations in Virginia to have them bored out and sleeved.  They also rebuilt the pistons and reassembled with new seals.  They did a superb job and returned the cylinders with pistons reassembled and ready to bolt onto the calipers.  

These are the brake parts before plating. 
After plating they looked like chrome. 
The cylinders were then bored and sleeved and reassembled
to the calipers.  These are beautiful and will perform like new brakes

With new rotors and these rebuild cylinders the brakes should be at least as good as they were when new, although everyone agrees they were only just adequate when new!  But Jaguar sold thousands of these cars and none was ever recalled for inadequate brakes, so I am not concerned about their adequacy for normal driving.  

Brake & Clutch pedal box - Right Side

The brakes are vacuum assisted on the early E-Types, by a bellows attached to the pedal mechanism that operates on manifold vacuum stored in a storage tank under the carburetors.  I haven’t looked closely at the tank yet but it is not rusted through anywhere and should just need cleaning and painting to be usable.

Brake & Clutch pedal box - Left Side

The pedal box consists of the brake pedal mechanism with its dual master cylinders and mechanical linkage providing balance between the front and rear brakes, and the clutch pedal mechanism with its master cylinder.  This entire apparatus was in pitiful condition when I disassembled it, with totally locked up cylinders, broken return springs, rusty components and worn bushings.  All of these problems were remedied with all new cylinders, springs, bushings, and new zinc plating of all the plated parts.
  
The vacuum bellows, fortunately, was not cracked or damaged in any way and with cleaning up became totally usable again.  It appears to have come from a salvage yard as it was marked with yellow wrecking-yard paint, so it must have been replaced somewhere back in the car’s history.  The photos show the completed pedal box which is now waiting for the day when it can be reassembled to the restored firewall and braking system.

Removal of the rear sub frame was described in the January post.  This assembly was the biggest mess I have had to deal with in all my automotive experience. But it eventually came apart and was was subjected to restoration.  I observed last January that the bearings in the differential looked good, but I replaced them anyway, both the main carrier bearings and the pinion bearings, also both Belleville spring disks and all seals.  Reassembly of the differential is a complicated process with specifications for bearing preloads that have to be maintained for all these bearings, in addition to gear backlash.  I am pleased to say that every spec has been met in this unit; it should run smoothly and quietly for many years. 

As I mentioned before I kept the original ring and pinion gears.  I took the differential case and pinion parts down to school so I could use the more extensive measuring tools there to set up the pinion position which is stamped on the gear end of the pinion shaft.  Then I did the final assembly at home with feeler gauges and dial indicator to set up the backlash and bearing preloads. 

Differential components, ring gear,
 bearings, output hubs

Differential case ready to receive gears and bearings

To correctly set the pinion bearing preload, measured as a torque required to turn the shaft when fully tightened down on the tapered roller bearings, one must remove and replace the inner-bearing-inner race several times, each time adding or removing shims until the specified torque is achieved.  That inner bearing race is very difficult to remove as it is a press fit into the housing.  My solution to this problem was to take the old bearing race, which was to be discarded, and grind a few thousandths of an inch off of its outside diameter so it could be easily inserted or removed from the housing.  This worked well and I was able to achieve the correct torque setting (10 – 12 inch-pounds) without too much difficulty.

Backlash spec for this gear set (.007 inch)

Setting backlash using shims under
 the output-shaft hubs

The fitting of the two short, side-output shafts sets the ring/pinion backlash.  Here again it is a trial-and-error process involving shims under the two output-shaft housings.  These housing are a tight fit into the main differential housing and are difficult to remove.  My solution here was to cut the shims in half so they could be slipped into place under the output-shaft housing without having to remove the housing; it just had to be loosened enough for the shims to slide in and out.  The cap screws, of course, had to be removed each time as they passed through holes in the shims.  The final backlash was about .007 inch, which is the value specified by a marked number on the side of the ring gear.

I’m sure that is more than anyone wanted to know about assembling the differential but these little details make the job challenging but enjoyable for me.  I like this sort of tedious precision work.

Rear brake caliper showing how it must be centered
over the brake rotor.  Shims are used to achieve
centering

All the screws holding the brakes to the differential
 housing are safety wired

The rear (and front) brake calipers also use shims to achieve a properly centered position about the brake rotors.  I was able to center all of the calipers, both front and rear brakes, within less than .003 inch, using some original shims as well as a few that I made myself out of shim stock.  The brake calipers, together with their mounting adapters (these components must find application on other Jaguar models to require the use of adapter plates on the E-Type) were all torqued together and safety wired as done originally. 

Front rotors mounted on hubs with new bearings.
Brake calipers also mounted, centered, and safety wired.
Brake pistons are not assembled here.

Moving to the front brakes, these are mounted to the respective right and left front uprights with stub shafts and wheel hubs.  Pressing out the old stub shafts from the uprights required the full 20 tons of my hydraulic press.  They fit together with a locking taper that does not like to come loose.  I probably should have applied heat to the uprights but was afraid of causing any thermal warping of the parts.  The 20-ton press force might have just as easily caused bending but I think the parts came apart without damage.

All the front brake and steering components were sent to the plating shop for zinc plating, then reassembled with new bearings and seals in the hubs. 

Speedy sleeve package from Grainger Supply
The sleeve was assembled over the worn
 surface to bring it back to new diameter
 and smoothness.

Right upright dialed in on four-jaw chuck
to turn worn seal surface

  
The sealing surface on the right-side upright had been badly damaged by corrosion and perhaps abrasive wear, it being on the gutter-side of the car that most often runs in dirt and water.  To replace the upright would be expensive so I chose the more-economical solution of a “Speedy Sleeve” repair.  Fortunately I was able to find at ‘Grainger’ a repair sleeve of exactly the same diameter as the original surface.  To install the sleeve I had to build a fixture to mount the upright on a large engine lathe and dial in the turned surface with a four-jaw chuck.  The photo shows the working setup.  Only a few thousandths of an inch had to be removed from the damaged face to be able to mount the thin repair sleeve.  I put it on with bearing “Locktite” so it would not come off or allow grease to leak out under the sleeve.  With that repair the hubs with new seals and bearings were reassembled and placed on the reassembled uprights. The brake calipers were mounted and centered as mentioned above and the cap screws safety wired to the uprights.

Rear wheel hubs rebuilt with new bearings and seals

The rear wheel hubs were also rebuilt with new bearing and seals.  The preload on these rear hubs was also set with a single shim.  You have to measure an initial position of the hub assembly using a dial indicator then order a spacer of the required thickness to give the desired preload.  On one side I could use one of the original spacers but on the other I had to purchase a new spacer.  With the correct spacers these are pressed together as an assembly.  

Setting the preload on the outer fulcrum
tapered roller bearings

The forged-aluminum hub carriers had been cleaned and bead-blasted at the machine shop and the hubs themselves cleaned up in my garage.

With the hubs installed in the hub carriers the tapered roller bearings for the outer fulcrum pivot had to be set up.  These require a negative clearance for set up, or a preload between the two opposed tapered bearings.  The correct set up is again accomplished with shims placed between spacers set on the shaft between the two bearings.  The correct thickness of shims is determined by measuring the end play between the bearings with a dial indicator as shown in the photo above.  I had to order an assortment of new shims to achieve the correct setting as most of the original shims had been damaged over the 75,000 miles the car had been driven.

Assembling new universal joints
with hydraulic press

Re-assembled half shafts with new U-Joints

When I was disassembling the rear cross member the half shaft universal joints felt smooth and tight, but after looking at them for a few months and thinking about how difficult they are to remove once the car has been assembled, I decided to replace them with new joints while they are apart.  When I disassembled the old U-joints I was glad of my decision because they were worn, some of them badly with brinelling and pitting visible on some of the crosses.  I think it is because they are so large that even in a worn condition they still feel pretty smooth.  

The new joints came from Terry’s Jaguar parts and I like to press them in with my hydraulic press rather than use a hammer because the impact of the hammer often dislodged a needle or two requiring that you disassemble, fix the needles, and start the process all over again.  They actually go together pretty easily in the press after cleaning and repainting all of the components.

After repainting the half-shaft parts with a satin-finish black I painted the sub frame, bottom tie plate, and radius arms and lower wish bone arms with gloss black automotive urethane.  With all of the sub components thus prepared I re-assembled the complete rear cross member setting all the bearing preloads according to the shop-manual specs. 

Rear sub frame parts in gloss black

Half-shaft parts in red primer, to be followed by Satin Black

The shop-manual instructions for setting the rear-wheel camber are complicated and extremely tedious with the cross member installed in the car.  To change the setting requires that at least one shock be removed on each side and the half shaft unbolted from the differential output flange and the number of shims changed.  This is a result of the half shaft actually serving as the upper arm of the double-unequal-length-A-arm suspension.  

This is almost impossible to do in a home garage without a car lift.  But with the completed cross member upside down on the work bench it is possible to set the camber to spec by setting the angle of the lower wishbone to handbook specs and then measuring the camber angle with a level or dial protractor. 

Setting the camber angle to  -1 degree with
the sub frame on the work bench

Handbook spec for wishbone angle required
for correct setting of wheel camber angle

I tried this method and I think it turned out well.  It is hard to read the value of the angle any closer than about + or – one-quarter degree, but it would be difficult to do much better than that with wheels and tires on the car sitting on the ground.  The only really accurate way to get the angle read would be to take the car to a computer-alignment shop after it is completely assembled and running.   I might do that when the car is done but I will be very reluctant to make any changes to the rear wheel alignment!

Safety wiring of wishbone-mounting bracket to
differential housing after correct shimming
is established

The inner wishbone mounting brackets have to be shimmed to exactly fit between the mounting holes in the sub frame itself.  I was able to get a correct fit by using the original shims. The brackets are then safety wired to the differential case as shown in the above photo.

Below are photos of the completed rear assembly almost ready to put back under the car.  Only the brake lines and U-Joint covers need to be added and the case filled with limited-slip-type gear oil.

Moving the unit from work bench to rolling dolly with the
engine hoist.  I don't think six strong men could have
done it by hand!

Back side of up-side-down rear unit showing
after-market brake bleeders installed

Front side of completed up-side-down unit
on the dolly

While I was painting parts I cleaned, straightened, and primed the front rectangular sheet-metal box part of the space frame and the tubular front frame that mounts the bonnet hinges.  These will be painted with the rest of the body and front frame parts in the original green color when I reach that point in the restoration.

Rectangular box frame piece joining tubular
space frame to radiator mount (in red primer)

Triangular frame extension for mounting radiator and bonnet

I did the same with the rock-guard screen that mounts inside the bonnet in front of the radiator.  The original parts were rusty and bent.  I had the screen zinc plated at my favorite plating shop in Springville.  I also zinc plated the original fasteners in my home-plating tank and reassembled the guard.

Painted rock guard frame with zinc-plated screen
ready to install under bonnet

To satisfy an urge to start work on the body I spend a few hours removing the lower lip piece from the front of the bonnet.  The Phillips-head screws holding this piece to the rest of the bonnet assembly had to be heated red hot to loosen the corrosion and old undercoat that was binding them together, but with patience they all came out.  This piece has the largest dent on the entire car but disassembled it will not be difficult to straighten.

This thing is very hard to take apart. 
The fasteners are rusty and buried in dirt and
undercoat.  Heating with the acetylene
torch is the best solution

I also designed and purchased the raw material for the rotisserie structure that I will build to turn the body over for working on the bottom.  I plan to get this device built this summer so I can work on the body in the early fall, along with the engine.

More could be said in describing all the little parts that have been restored since last January, but this post is already too long.  Stay tuned for a report on the interior trim and upholstery and hopefully some body and engine progress.