• Heater is excellent
The new 50,000 BTU/hr. gas heater installed last fall is working great. It warms the garage up to 65 F in about 10 minutes, then comes on for about 5 minutes out of every 25. It is now possible for me to work comfortably in the garage in any weather. This has never been the case before. I am very pleased with the heater.
• Restored Singer sewing machine.
Part of the month of October was spend restoring a 100 year-old Singer sewing machine (treadle-type) for Lynn. She became interested in vintage sewing machines after buying a Singer Lightweight she found on the Internet. The old treadle machine was entirely disassembled, cleaned, sanded, repainted with new decals, and reassembled with original parts with some parts newly Zinc plated and all cleaned and lubricated. The machine was in good condition mechanically, just neglected for the last 75 years. Lynn does not sew with it, but just admires it on its treadle table.
Lynn's vintage Singer machine, restored and back in her sewing room.
• Delivered seats, center console, and all interior parts to BAS in Palm Springs Oct.
On October 22nd I drove to Palm Springs, CA, with my grandson, Kolby Carter, 19 yr.-old son of my oldest son, Josh. Kolby was to be leaving in a month to serve a 2-year mission in Tokyo, Japan, the land of his other grandfather’s birth. He is there now and having a good experience so far. The language is a challenge even for Kolby, whose mother and maternal grandparents all speak Japanese.
We carried with us to California all of the cleaned and painted parts of the interior of the car that were to receive new upholstery. Our destination was BAS Upholstery which specializes in Jaguar interior restoration. We dropped off the parts (seats, center console, window upper and lower cantrails, and many other parts) to be re-covered by the BAS professionals. The trim will be what is called Suede Green in the original car and the new work will be in all the original materials and colors. The work is actually done now (24 Jan 2020) and I will be driving back down next week to pick everything up. Photos will follow in the next post. By the way, after dropping off the parts Kolby and I drove to Santa Barbara where we visited the Marina (Kolby is very interested in Oceanic Botony and Zoology) then on up to the Bay Area to visit my brother in Walnut Creek, CA. We stayed there Saturday and Sunday then drove home on Monday. Northern California was suffering with wild fires that weekend and electrical power was turned off in many locations, including my brother’s house!
• Took block and head back to Clegg’s machine.
With the interior parts cleaned and delivered to the upholstery shop I turned attention once again to the engine. I took the block and head back to Clegg’s Automotive Machine for rebuilding. The block needed cleaning, surfacing, boring to .020 inch oversize, and line-honing of the main bearing bores. The work came out very nice with the cylinders each fitted to their new Mahle pistons. I picked up the block some weeks later and cleaned it up, inside and out, installed new core plugs (freeze plugs by U.S. nomenclature) and painted it with a good coat of self-etching primer followed by gloss black enamel. I will comment that the dish-style freeze plugs are extremely difficult to put in. They are an interference fit in their bores and without a special tool to whack them in with one blow, they are difficult to get into the holes. The 7 plugs took me about 3 hours to put in.
Engine block on boring machine at Clegg's Automotive Machine. The operator is from England and is pleased to be working on British iron.
Later, on honing machine, being honed and polished to final bore size for new pistons.
The block after re-surfacing, note front cover in place for this operation.
Main bearing bores after line-hone to put all in perfect alignment and roundness.
Freshly painted block, gloss black as originally done
The head requires removing the worn out exhaust seats and valve guides. All the seats need new, 3-angle grinding. Then new seats and guides will be installed. New exhaust valves need fitting and grinding and all the clearances on both intake and exhaust need setting to specification. The head’s sealing surface will also be re-finished. I’m afraid the head work has not been started as of this date. Fortunately I am not anxious for it, but I soon will be so I have to pay the shop occasional visits to keep them thinking about my job!
• Cut out foot wells.
Both left and right footwells had to be removed by cutting out spot welds. On the driver’s side the footwell was too banged up to straighten it out, and on the passenger side it was rusted through from water sitting on the floor. The result was that both sides needed to be replaced. Fortunately new footwell pieces are not expensive. Some of the welds are easy to reach but about half of them are impossible to get to with an electric drill. I had to grind the welds out with a 3-inch cut-off wheel on a die grinder. This was very slow and tedious but there was no other way to accomplish the removal.
The job was eventually finished and now, after I have sand-blasted and cleaned the interior and exterior of the footwell area I will weld in the new pieced by drilling holes around the edges of the new pieces and then MIG welding through the holes to the old floor. Seam sealer will be used on both sides of the joints.
Floor with foot wells removed, a tiresome job!
• Repaired low door.
It has become apparent that these bodies were essentially hand-assembled. The must have used some kind of welding jigs at the factory to locate the many body pieces for welding, but the fitup and welding appear to have been manually done. On this particular body (and I have seen the same problem on other coupe bodies that I have looked closely at) the dimension from the rear fender crease to the side-window sill is about 3/8 inch greater on the passenger side than on the driver’s side. As a result of that difference the passenger side door sill (the doors seem to be identical, must have had better jigs for welding on door skins.) sat about 3/8 inch lower than the side window sill. This makes for a disturbing mis-match when the door is closed but there was no easy fix for the assemblers at the factory; they just had to let it go. They undoubtedly had to accept a lot of imperfection in the fit of these body parts with so many pieces being fitted together by hand. The photo below shows the mis-match of the right door.
Note the 3/8 inch difference between the top of the door and the side window sill.
I was determined to fix the annoying problem but could not see any way to change the dimension on the body. The door would have to be raised up! In the next photo you can see how I cut the door horizontally all the way across and welded in a triangular-shaped fill piece. This seems to be a good repair as the window frame fits even better to the raised door sill. I will be the only one to ever notice that the right-side door sill is a little higher than the left side!
Filler strip tack welded in place to raise the top edge of the door. You can see if you look closely that on the driver's side the alignment is perfect.
While I was working on the doors I cleaned them up, stripped off the paint from the outside and sand blasted the insides as much as possible. There was a lot of rust inside the doors where water would pool and sit because the drains were plugged. I disassembled the drains and zinc plated them along with all the small brackets and parts that go in the doors. They will be as good as new when they go back together.
• Restored window regulators and door locks.
While I was working on the doors I disassembled as far as possible the door locks and window regulators. Everything was rusty and needed sand blasting, then reassembling with new grease and plated springs. All of the rusty fasteners were also newly plated. They should work as good as new when reassembled in the doors. The striker bars on the lock plates were worn flat on the bottoms from years of use. I welded up the flat spots and filed them round again to where they fit tightly in the striker on the door jam, although those are also worn some. They are not bad enough to replace. I was pleased to find that the cylinder key locks still work with the original key, though the tumblers are a bit worn.
The restored internal parts from one of the doors. They should work smoothly again.
I feel like the doors need to be particularly well restored as they are the first thing you actually touch and handle when you are introduced to the car for the first time. I think these doors will make a good first impression.
• Bought new paint matched to driver’s door.
One more thing while I am on the subject of doors. Before I stripped the paint off of the driver’s door I polished up the original paint took the door to the paint supplier to have them match the color. The color is Jaguar Opalescent Dark Green but no-one here has a color book that goes back far enough to give a paint code for that color. I did find a reported paint code on-line but when I asked around about it none of the suppliers could find it in their sources. So I had the shop custom mix the color to match the door. I think they did an excellent match and, since I will be painting the entire car, it won’t have to actually match the old color in any side-by-side comparison. I think it will look great! (By the way, automotive paint these days has become one of the most expensive purchases of the entire restoration!)
New Valspar two-stage paint, matched to original Opalescent Dark Green
• Cleaned up fuse mounts, starter solenoid, fuel door hinge.
Since I had a bunch of small parts in the bead-blast cabinet I looked around and found a few more that needed cleaning. The four fuse-mounting blocks, the fuel door hinge, and the starter solenoid fit the description. There are many other small parts, hundreds actually, but these got done along with the doors so here is a photo of them, ready for reassembly when the time comes. The rusty fuel-door spring got new zinc plating. By the way, the starter solenoid still works!
Starter solenoid, fuse holders, fuel door hinge, all done (hinge needs painting green)
• Rebuilt drive shaft.
The drive shaft had been sitting around in pieces for some time. The parts had been cleaned already so I just had to paint them and put it back together with new universal joints. The shaft has an axial joint at the front end to allow movement as the engine and rear end are both mounted in rubber mounts and can move relative to each other. The bellows seal on the sliding joint was in pretty good condition and not leaking so I left it in place. I don’t anticipate having any trouble with the seal. It only moves a small fraction of an inch in the extreme case and is not likely to ever wear out.
Drive shaft pieces ready to assemble
Assembled drive shaft
• Rebuilt steering gear.
The steering rack and pinion unit came up next. It was the last thing caked in grease and dirt that hadn’t been cleaned yet. So I tackled it. It was a mess but when I got it apart I found it to be in good condition, bushings, needle bearings, and gears. It just needed cleaning up and reassembly with new paint and grease. I zinc plated the short tie rods as paint gets scratched off of them very easily, especially if you try to hold them with vice-grips when setting the toe. I purchased earlier new rubber mounts for the steering rack so it is now ready to go back together.
 |
| Steering rack in pieces |
 |
| Steering rack assembled. These old rod ends will be replaced with new |
• Finished rotisserie mounts.
Perhaps the main accomplishment during this period was the completion of the rotisserie based on two simple engine hoists. With the front sub frames removed (I didn’t mention that adventure. It was quite a job and not fun with several rusted screws that I had to break off and drill out) I could build a bracket to attach the engine hoist to the front of the tub. This I did for front and rear and both attachments worked out well. The photo below shows the body lifted up off of the saw horses for the first time. This system is really nice because you can raise or lower the car to any height that is convenient for work. You can rotate it with one hand and lock it in its rotation every 45 degrees. If you extend the booms on the hoists you can raise it clear over your head, though I can’t see any purpose in that; the whole idea of a rotisserie is that you don’t have to ever get under the car, you can always be working on the “top” side.
With the help of a neighbor who loaned me the second engine hoist, we set this up on a cold day.
The video below shows me raising the car and turning it over. I find it really easy to use and nice and solid for working on. I don’t trust the hoists to not slowly leak so when I leave it over night I lower it onto jack stands or saw horses. It probably wouldn’t hurt it to slowly drop down on its bottom, but it would not be good if it came down on its side or top!
The main work I am first doing on the bottom is to scrape off all the old undercoat. In some places it is loose, in other places there is rust underneath, and it is all caked with grease or dirt or both, so it has to come off. The procedure is to heat a spot with a propane (in this case MAPP gas) torch then quickly scrape the softened stuff off with a putty knife or chisel. It is slow, smoky, work that I have to do with the garage door open. Fortunately the little torch keeps everything warm. After painting the bottom I may spray some new undercoat in the wheel wells, but I won’t cover the entire bottom again. After all, the car will never be driven on wet roads or left out in the rain again!
In the next post I will show off the newly finished seats and center console and other trim items. There should be some progress on getting the body ready for paint, maybe the bonnet, and maybe the engine will be farther along. Watch for late spring!
