March 2020 Update

    Only two months have gone by this time since my last post, instead of six!  Not a lot has been accomplished but more frequent updates may help keep some from losing interest.  All restoration is slow work when done single-handed.  One advantage this  month is that all activities scheduled for outside of the home have been suspended or postponed due to the world-wide spread of the Covid-19 virus.  That should mean everyone can spend more time dedicated to home-based projects.  I suppose this is true but we seem to be busy with other matters even during this time of social isolation.  Anyway, here goes.

·         Upholstery picked up

Early in the morning of 28 January I picked up my son, Enoch, and we drove together down to Palm Springs, CA and picked up the finished interior at BAS Jaguar Upholstery.  Not only did I purchase their full interior kit but I had them do the seats, center console, door panels and other tricky parts.  These are difficult to do correctly and I wanted them to be perfect so decided to use the professionals.  I will install all the rest of the interior myself; I don’t anticipate any problems with it.  The color, “Suede Green”, is really very impressive.  It didn’t look like much in its rotted and faded condition after 30 years of sitting, but it will be beautiful when installed new, and fairly rare, the most popular colors being red, black, and tan.

Enoch and I stayed in Palm Springs for the night then drove back to Utah the next day.  It was a fast trip and uneventful.

                         Here is the finished center console all in new Suede Green leather and vinyl.

    

and the finished bucket seats which are very complicated to assemble.  The backs are fuzzy and the bottoms sealed with a burlap material, same as original.

          The bottoms of the seats.  All the material is hand tacked to new wood tack strips inside and out. 

It is hard to see what is involved with these cantrails, but they have a piece of chrome trim that is almost impossible to push into place.  The experts at BAS did a masterful job.

These door pulls are new and the boot-lid hinge and latch covers are covered inside and out with a fuzzy material

·         Engine block finished

In my last post I showed a photo of the engine block back in my garage and painted black.  I did a little more work on it since then.  I highlighted the JAGUAR lettering on the side with gold to match the gold paint that will be used on the cylinder head when it is finished.  Then I painted the inside of the block with Glyptol. A red paint used on the inside of electric motor housings to prevent corrosion.  It is a tough paint that matches the red paint used on the inside of the Jaguar engines at the factory.  Some say it helps seal the cast iron block from the danger of loose foundry sand coming out of the iron and it supposedly also helps crankcase oil run more quickly down the walls of the block into the sump.  I don’t believe either of those reasons really justifies the trouble of painting the inside of the block, but they did it at the factory and so, in deference to those old Jaguar engineers, we still do it today (I have never painted the inside of any engine I have built, and I have built dozens of all types and sizes, with the exception of a 1927 Model T Ford engine, and I don’t know why I painted that, Henry certainly never did!)

         Here is the block with red Glyptol paint on the inside, for what it's worth.  Hope it won't peel off!

                    And here is the gold lettering: JAGUAR  and 3.8 LITRE.  Not original, just for fun!.

·         Diesel generator purchased

This has nothing to do with the Jag restoration, but it occupied a bit of my time this winter and will yet occupy much of my time in the next month as I connect it up to the house.  I have long wanted to have an emergency generator for my house and finally felt sufficiently motivated to pull the trigger on that purchase.  Perhaps the current pandemic crises had something to do with it, I’m not sure.

·         Internal spaces painted

In the process of disassembling the car and removing the undercoat I came across some spots of rust that had advanced through the sheet metal leaving holes.  The problem is not too severe and is confined mostly to the corners in the bottom of the boot area and under the floor stiffeners in the same area.  The enclosed spaces under the door sills were also rusty as I discovered trying to remove the screws that held the front space frames to the firewall.  There are no holes yet but I know there is rust in there.  This prompted me to try to spray a rust-converting paint inside all the enclosed areas of the body.  I ordered several cans of “Internal Frame Paint” from Eastwood Supply.  This paint is formulated for spraying inside of closed spaces through a long flexible tube with a special nozzle on the end that sprays the paint out radially in all directions, coating all over the inside of the closed space.  All you need is a hole into the space that is large enough to get the nozzle and tube through.  A 5/16 inch screw hole will do.  I found a good flexible tube at my son, Josh’s garage.  He used to own a body shop and has lots of supplies and tools like this still around.  So I gave it a try and the stuff actually works!  I sprayed the inside of the doors where you can’t reach with conventional spray or brush, and then did the insides of every enclosed section of the body that I could get into.  I even drilled a hole through the sheet metal in one section so I could insert the paint tube and nozzle.  It seemed to work pretty well, although it takes a lot of paint as it comes out fast.  I would like to do one more area inside the rear fenders before I’m done.  There is one pinhole of rust coming through and I want to coat the inside rust to at least slow it down if not stop it completely. 

    Here is a view of the left-rear wheel well with the internal frame spray tube going into the enclosed box behind the seats.

This is what the nozzle on the end of the tube looks like; four little nozzles spraying radially outward like the spokes of a wheel. Does a good job of spraying all of the internal surface and hopefully stops rust. 

Here is the tube going into the stiffening box in the floor next to the center tunnel.

And here the insides of the doors are being painted.  All openings are taped off to prevent the paint going everywhere outside of the doors.

·         Cut out rust – weld patches in

The rust found in the boot area had progressed through the sheet metal and needed not just paint, but repair.  My approach was to cut out the rusty metal, as I did with the foot wells, and then cut new sheet metal patches to fit in the cut holes and weld them in.  I ordered new floor stiffener pieces for the boot floor as the original pieces were badly rusted.   As can be seen in the photos I have not finished welding in the new patches, but have removed all the rusty spots and will soon finish welding in the new.  This is a very frequent step in any early auto restoration.  It is surprising how little rust there was in this car.  Living in California all its life has its advantages; no salt on the roads!

This is what some of the rust damage looked like in the floor under the spare tire.  It is only accessible after removing the stiffener rib by cutting all the spot welds.

Three rusty strips cut out of the floor, all from water sitting under the stiffener ribs.

Rusty spots cut out under the gas tank.  Steel sheet of the same gauge will be cut out and welded in to these spaces.  Should be as good as new when it's all done

Rust cut out in the corner next to the spare tire.

Same spots as above but looking from the bottom with the car turned upside down.  Much easier to work on this way.  Hooray for the rotisserie!

·         Undercoat stripped

Removing all the original undercoat from the bottom of the car with a torch and a putty knife was a smoky, highly disagreeable job, but I got it all off (there is plenty more in the bonnet!).  The benefit of all that undercoat is that there was almost no rust where the undercoat had been preserved.  The next step will be to sand blast the entire bottom of the car and then repaint it.  Undercoat is a good idea in the wheel wells but I won’t cover the entire bottom of the car with that stuff again. 

Here is a not-so-clear photo of the bottom of the car with the undercoat stripped from the bottom and the wheel wells.  The stuff must have been sprayed on at the factory.  Do they salt the roads in England?

·         Paint stripped

The next time-consuming and tiring job was to strip the old paint off the body.  The original paint was really very good quality and well applied.  At the factory the body had been first coated with a white sealer, which also filled sanding scratches in the bare metal.  That sealer had been sanded smooth then it had been primed with a red primer.  The primer had been sanded and then painted with a single-stage color, green in this case.  All these layers were hard to get off!  I used a dual-action sander set to single spin only with 80 grit paper disks.  These were a compromise between slow but un-damaging removal, and fast but surface-scratching removal.   The green and red have all been removed but patches of white are still everywhere and they are hard to remove.   I’m going to use a less aggressive method to finish cleaning up down to bare metal.  I will sand blast the firewall area and the complete inside of the car including around the windows and door jams, then there are some small dents to repair and then finish sanding and grey Epoxy primer for the whole car, inside and out.  This will probably take till the end of summer.

This view is similar to the above photo showing the paint being stripped with a dual-action sander.  A long, tedious job.  The final cleaning is done with a less aggressive vibrating sander, also with 80-grip paper.  The result is a pretty clean, smooth surface.

·         Carbs rebuilt

For some reason, probably because the paint grinding was so messy and physically tiring, I felt inclined to tackle the carburetors.  These had been sitting in plastic crates for about two years during which time I had never even looked at them.  I thought I would check one out and see what condition they were in.   I was pleased to discover that, although somewhat pitted from sitting for 30 years with moisture in the bodies, they cleaned up just fine.  The throttle shafts were tight, which is unusual for such old SU type carbs, and all the pistons and covers were in good condition and certainly usable.  I cleaned all the parts, carefully bead blasted the aluminum castings which were corroded, cleaned and re-zinc-plated all the small steel and brass parts, ordered three new gasket kits and reassembled the carbs.  The tops still need polishing but that can happen later.  Except for the polishing the carbs are ready to go back on the engine.

Here is a view of all the parts to carb No. 3.  Everything is cleaned, re-plated, and ready to assemble

This is carburetor No. 3 all finished.

This is a mock-up assembly of all three carbs on intake manifolds with fuel line, overflow pipes, choke linkage and throttle linkage in place.  Nothing has been lost and all fits together just as original.  With the piston covers polished all will be ready to mount on the engine.  

·         Aluminum polishing

Lastly, for this post, all of the aluminum parts that require polishing were gathered and cleaned up in preparation for sending to a metal polishing shop, Metal Masters, in Salt Lake City.   The cam covers and carburetor tops were pitted pretty badly, and lots of scratches had to be sanded out ( I started with 80-grip paper) but they will go to the polishers in good condition which will help the result to be a desired mirror finish, much nicer than the factory finish.  Many will call this an example of over-restoration but I don’t really care; the objective of the project is not to win prizes, but to be fun for the restorer, which it is, and I like things shiny where they are supposed to be shiny.

These engine parts, along with the carburetor piston covers seen above, will be sent to the metal polishers in a couple days, if they are still open.  They will come back with a mirror finish worthy of the beautiful Jaguar engine.

So I continue to make progress.  It seems slow because there is so much to do in a complete restoration like this.   But I believe the end will come.  I don’t see any show-stopping problems ahead.  I think I have discovered all the problems and they are solvable.

The body will be getting all my attention from now until it is in primer, then the bonnet will take center stage.  By my next post the body should be ready for paint; it may take a few months.

Until next time,

Best to all,

Perry