1974 Jaguar XJ6L - Terribly brown

Good work getting the old girl back on the road. Seen(and sometimes participated in) a lot of bodgery before, but CONCRETE!?! That's a first for me

Your description of the bodges sounds like they worked harder than if it had been fixed the right way!

Good to see the car back on the road😎

Thanks for the replies. andyg16v, I certainly agree, it must have taken someone hours and hours and hours to do such a terrible job!

Where was I... Yes. Drive it day 2018. So the car is now successfully through its first MOT test since it was last on the road in 1983 and I am feeling splendid about the whole thing. The morning of drive it day arrives and I have a 60 or so mile drive to Bicester Heritage from my house, avoiding motorways. At this point the longest journey I have made in this car is to the MOT station and back again, some 15 miles round trip and so, I am feeling a little anxious about covering so many miles with only a simple selection of tools that I had prepared and carried in the boot and no breakdown cover but I didn't want to miss the show, and I was really interested to finally find out after 2 years of owning this thing, what it was actually like to drive!

I set off nice and early and had the local roads to myself, as I joined the first main road of the journey, all seemed well... In fact the first 30 miles are just perfect, all is fine, I am getting used to the car and it drives exactly as I had hoped, really smooth, softly sprung and just gliding over surfaces that would upset my modern daily runaround. Engine sounds good although oil pressure seems a little on the low side (more on this later!). The information I have for the car suggests an oil pressure figure of 40psi at 3000rpm when hot. My engine was producing no more than 30psi. I decided to keep marching on as at this point I was now nearer to Bicester Heritage than home and well, it was an old engine in a bodged car so I wasn't expecting much.

Around 40 miles in and the first sign of trouble appears. A bizarre and intermittent squealing noise that coincides with a feeling of drag, as if the brakes are being applied. My first thoughts are around transmission problems but in any case thought it prudent to pull off the road and take a look and see what I could find. My roadside investigation revealed nothing, gear oil a touch low but still above minimum and doesn't smell horrific, everything underneath and in the engine bay looks ok too. I let the car cool for a minute or two and then got back on the road. Within a few miles the intermittent noise returns and the same 'brakes on' feeling comes with it. Now 10 miles out from Bicester I just keep pressing on, bound to have a better chance of fixing whatever this is there than at the road side!

I join the queue to enter Bicester Heritage, it's crawling along quite nicely at just above walking pace and I can see chaps in high viz coats off in the distance so I knew I had more or less completed my outbound journey. If you can remember drive it day 2018 it was a remarkably warm and sunny day, I had been crawling along in the queue for a couple of minutes when I notice the water temperature gauge slowly but surely creeping off towards the 'H' for hot marking. "No problem, just another minute or two and then I can park up, shut the engine off and let it cool off for a few hours" I thought. Having never been to a Sunday Scramble event before I was unaware that as I was driving something old and it was early on in the day, I would be directed to park in amongst the old hangars, right in the centre of the action. Panic set in as marshall after marshall kept beckoning me ever further in to the maze of service roads. When I finally pulled in to a parking spot the car was boiling over. When I shut the engine off, the overflow pipe on the coolant expansion tank fired most of the contents of the cooling system over the now white hot exhaust manifold. I put on an impromptu smoke show which was as dramatic as it was embarrassing. I locked the car and walked away in a hurry.




If you've never been to Bicester Heritage, you really must go, the Sunday Scramble events are brilliant, the variety of vehicles there is unparalleled, Ferrari 250s rubbing shoulders with Green Goddess fire trucks, great stuff!

Anyway, I spend a few hours wandering around and chatting to a few friends. In this time I have managed to get hold of an empty 2 litre plastic bottle and found a workshop with an outside water tap on free vend so that I could refill my cooling system! I also purchased some gear oil and gave the gearbox a topping up too. I have a good look and prod about but can't see anything immediately obvious that would have caused the screeching noise and the dragging feeling so, nervously I depart on my 60 mile journey home.

It was as I accelerated out of the Bicester Heritage site on to the main road I heard a thunk and notice I had shed some small parts rearward, looking in my rear view mirror, the mint condition MX5 behind seemed to be giving me a very large gap. Seeing as my car was still running fine at this point, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just keep going. It wasn't until 40 miles in that I pulled over to check out what had happened. Upon opening the bonnet, it became immediately obvious that the roll pin, special washer and securing bolt that holds the viscous fan unit to the water pump had fallen off, the large metal cooling fan had then fired itself at the radiator, miraculously not damaging anything and just parking itself in between the fan cowling and the radiator. I plucked the fan out of the engine bay and stuck it in the boot, chuckling to myself about how comical that scene must have been to passing motorists.

I made it home! Oil pressure when on idle now virtually non-existent but decided that was another problem for another day. I took a look at the viscous coupling for the fan and it had partially seized, the intermittent screeching noise I was hearing was the viscous unit locking up then letting go, the sensation of dragging was the load of the fan being placed on the engine. The massive overheat caused in part by having no cooling fan (also the waterways in the block were absolutely chock full of gunk but we don't find this out for a whole other year at this point!)

Wow I have written A LOT! Stay tuned as I have a whole lot more disappointment with this car to tell you all about!

 

So I've brought you all the way along from 2016 to 2018 and so far, we have got the car through an MOT test, took it out for a long run and it wasn't without incident.

I had never bothered too much with the engine on this car since it arrived, it ran ok and that was enough for me up to now. I had already serviced the carbs and replaced the automatic choke for a manual conversion. I also replaced the very tired distributor for a new one with electronic ignition. To give you an idea of what I am referring to, this is what the engine bay looked like in early summer 2018:


You'll notice the previous owner had got handy with his paint brush in here, painting the thing gold to mimic an E-Type engine I assume.

I had changed the engine oil and filter and the oil pressure situation seemed to improve marginally so I thought I would use the car as much as I could, finally able to put some miles on and enjoy it over the summer of 2018 and then review what I wanted to do with the car later on as at this point I had spent quite a bit more than the car was worth. I just can't stop tinkering though you see... I could hear a little top end ticking, I stripped the cams out to measure and adjust the valve clearances and fit some tappet bore hold down kits too (it's a Jag thing - particularly on the exhaust side, the pressed in bores that the tappets travel in can shift, get smashed to pieces by the cam and worst case, cause catastrophic engine failure, a hold down kit eliminates this risk.) I measured the exhaust valve clearances and they were all way too tight, I had a little trip planned for the Jag so I had a friend in a machine shop surface grind down my tappet shims to wafer thin items - I actually winced when fitting these as they were so wildly out of spec. haha.

Little jaunt completed, I couldn't use the car with a clear head knowing my wafer thin tappet shims were in there so I took the cylinder head off and sent it off to Coventry Classic Engines for a full overhaul, my thinking being that the bottom end 'seemed' ok (more on this later) so with a refreshed cylinder head, I'd have a reasonably healthy engine, which I could use and then could sell the car with a clear conscience. I had told the guys at the engine shop that I was in no rush for the cylinder head (two other project cars on the go at this point as well as getting married and changing jobs!) so months now pass with no action at all.

You now join me in January of this year. I have booked on to the Hagerty drive it day tour on April 28th 2019, I booked this so I was forced to have some motivation to get the car back together and working again. Cylinder head comes back from the engine shop and is absolutely beautiful, better than new. I refit it and run the engine up, all fine, sounds great. I take the car to the shops for a little shake down run. I start the engine in the supermarket car park and can't help but hear a distinct low thud from the engine on a regular frequency that increases with engine speed. By the time I get home it sounds like this:

Instagram video

Great! First thoughts are to push the car in to a hedge and set fire to it.

Instead of doing that, I decided I would try to source a running engine that I would fit to my car whilst I remove and carefully rebuild the original engine at my own pace, this would allow me to get a summer out of the car and attend the drive it day tour. Seemed like a great plan to me at the time. I scour the usual sources and eventually on eBay find a reasonably priced engine in north London described as 'running when removed, only removed from vehicle due to excessive corrosion, the engine was fine'. 

I have the journey from hell to pick the eBay engine up, going after work on a Monday night, hitting London at 9pm and then enduring motorway closures on the way back, what was supposed to be a 2 hour return leg took over 4 hours. I was pretty much crying at one point and finally got home past 1am. Still, the chap selling the engine was nice enough, we chatted about old jags for a while and he helped me load the engine in to the back of the van I had borrowed.

Next day I got straight to work and loaded the eBay engine on to my engine stand for what was supposed to be a quick look over before I fitted it to the car. I removed the sump plug and emptied out a thick, light green coloured emulsified paste... Not the best start. I started taking the cylinder head off, got to one of the cylinder head nuts and found the stud that it was attached to had snapped. I assume this was why this engine was removed, I can even imagine the frustration of whoever had snapped the stud, it looked like they had just refitted the cylinder for some reason or another and this must have been such a disappointment, it certainly was to me! Trouble is with these later XK engines is that the cylinder head studs are secured towards the bottom of the cylinders so about 6 inches of the length of the stud sits in the water jacket exposed to the coolant, a neglected engine ran with little to no glycol will get enough corrosion on this section of the stud to the point that they can't take the torque of the securing nut and shear off, below the deck of the block, making a repair at home very tricky (I would need to have made or got hold of a drill and a tap set with each component about 18 inches long).

I now had 2 knackered engines, no desire to spend any more money on this project and about 2 months before the drive it day tour.

I spent a few days away from the garage just cursing the car and looking at modern automotive toss, dreaming of warranties and service plans. I soon came to my senses and ventured back in to the garage, completely stripping the eBay engine to find a crankshaft in good order, oversize pistons and rods that would certainly go again and many fixings that are always good to have on the shelf. I stuck the block out of the way and am still deciding what I might do with it.

Good pistons and crank from the eBay unit

I then removed the original engine from the car and began stripping that to see what the cause of that awful noise was and see what I might be able to reuse. I found that the block was in decent shape but 3 of the pistons were toast, really badly scored. The cylinders weren't looking too smart either and the crank journals had some marks on them. I think what happened was with the less than ideal oil pressure, the little ends had started to get hot and get tight, the noise was the piston on the worst cylinder making a row when it changed direction in the cylinder. I was hoping for some gruesome scene of twisted metal but there was nothing like that, all quite boring really.

As luck would have it, the pistons from the eBay engine were in good order and were +.020" oversize, my original block with scored cylinder was still standard size. I took the block off to Coventry Boring and Metalling and had them overbore and hone to +.020" and to my delight, the bores cleaned up perfectly.



I cleaned everything up and started reassembling the engine, I spent a great deal of time removing sediment from the water jacket, at first with a pressure washer, and then brake cleaner and an airline, I had removed a huge amount in the end (when I refilled the coolant system I had gained a whole extra litre of capacity!). I got a good deal on new parts from various sources, got an absolute bargain on new cylinder head studs as a set from David Manners Group, definitely worth shopping around as the difference in pricing was substantial.

We're still a few weeks out from drive it day at this point and progress is slow but steady:


With a little less than two weeks to go, the engine was rebuilt and back in the car. I wanted to get it running and prove it out before I felt confident to carry on with the drive it day tour.



I painted the block but didn't have time or inclination to do much else. It matches the car looking a bit rubbish anyway!



Next shot is on the first test run, feelings of excitement and anxiety ran pretty strong here. Went for full bonnet off Roadkill style:




Oil pressure good, sounded great, quietly pleased with how this was turning out. Big test of drive it day tour now just days away.

Right I'll stop for now. This has been quite a cathartic process so far this evening, remembering the highs and the lows that this project has delivered so far. If you want to skip to the end, and see another project of mine, have a look here: www.instagram.com/MRFLYNNS.MACHINES/

Until next time.

This is a great read.
Looking forward to more chapters.

same here...great read....glad to hear we are not alone in trials and tribs......

wish I had the confidence to tear into an engine....

nice work!

JP

Love old Jags and love this thread. Very well written as well!

Look forward to more!

Well and truly bookmarked, what a great read and an awesome car.

Good evening all, glad to hear you've enjoyed my ramblings so far.


adam73bgt - I am happy to recommend the places I mentioned, particularly Cov boring and metalling, they turned my block around in just a day or so and were competitively priced.



So, engine is rebuilt, back in the car, it runs and I have done my initial running in procedure of thrashing it around some local hilly roads but I was keen to put some more miles on prior to the drive it day tour which was now just days away. An opportunity to take the car out to visit my mum (40 mile round trip, nice quiet roads) presented itself and so I jumped at it, not only would I get a few more miles in, I would also have my first ever drive in this car at night time, I would finally find out if those headlights I bought 3 years ago were worth it!



The car drives over fine, I have a nice cup of tea and a sit down at my mum's and then it is time to go again. I set off for home and can't help but notice something of a flicker from the headlights - couldn't be totally sure though as I was on a brightly street lit section of road at the time. As I pulled off from the main road on to the rural roads near home the headlights had more than a flicker and simply shut off, leaving me on a pitch dark lane with only the sidelights operating. "Now that's interesting" I thought as I went over a bump in the road and suddenly had headlights again. When I got home I found a dry joint on the headlight dim/dip relay, a simple removal, clean and replace sorted that. The headlights are actually first class, better than my modern daily runaround.





The morning of drive it day arrives and I am quietly confident of the Jaguar's ability to complete the journey today, based on the fact that at this point I've either repaired or replaced most of the mechanical components on the car so there wasn't really anything left to go wrong! The tour I had booked on to was organised by Hagerty Insurance and this year the route was going to start at Tuthill Porsche near Banbury, which is about 50 miles from home for me and interesting personally because many years ago, I did a couple of days work here and there when a friend worked there full time, so I was interested to see what the place looked like these days. I set off nice and early and in stark contrast to drive it day one year previous, had an incident free and enjoyable drive there! I even made the Hagerty Insurance Facebook page, I suppose from a reasonable distance away, this car does look quite presentable!



When I arrived, I was pleased to see Tuthill Porsche has gone from strength to strength and are now sporting a brand new, very impressive workshop and office facility on the site of what was once a large derelict green house. I signed in, had a good nose round the workshop and then waited for my friends to arrive in their cars before we set off on a 70 mile jaunt on the back roads to eventually end up at the Sunday Scramble event at Bicester Heritage. The Jag behaved all day and finally it felt like some of my work had paid off, the car - although aesthetically awful - is just what I want from a classic car these days, in that it is practical, comfortable, not slow and driving it makes me smile.



The picture above was taken in full smug mode, having completed around 200 miles that day.

I have glossed over an awful lot of work that I have done to this car because it would take me too much time to write about it and most of it was rather dull. I think a better way to visualise what I have gone through with this car is to cast your eye over the itemised list of costs that I have incurred with this car since purchasing it 3 years ago. I won't include the prices (way too painful and if my wife ever found this thread it wouldn't be a fun conversation!).

Enjoy:
Purchase

Delivery

Brake caliper Front

Brake caliper Front

Hose kit

Wiper blades

Track rod ends

Steering rack gaiter kit

Shock absorber bush

Roll bar bush front

Roll bar link kit

Ball joint kit

Wishbone kit

Steering rack mount kit

Upper wishbone bushes

Shock absorber bush

Bolt

Nyloc nut

Caliper bolt

Bolt

Balljoint bolt

Various stainless fixings

Brake pipe

Bolt

Bolt

Bolt

2 Monroe front shocks

Front brake discs

Anti rattle springs

Upper bump stops

Lower bump stops

Front hub dust cap

Brake hoses

Header tank cap

Brake hose

Brake discs rear

Radius arm bush small

Radius arm bush large

Oil seal - diff pinion

Handbrake lock tab

Handbrake return spring

Radius arm bush small

Bearing inner pivot

Fulcrum pin

Ignition lead set

Distributor Cap

Air filter

Mount centre bush

Brake hose nut

Clip pipe

LHR brake caliper

RHR brake caliper

Nyloc nut

Fuel tank RH

Fuel tank LH

Fuel tank sender washer

Fuel tank sender lock ring

Seal

Fuel sump filter

Fuel filler neck seal

Sealing washer

Fuel sender unit RH

Fuel sender unit LH

Propshaft mounts

Mounting grommets

Nyloc nuts

Headlamp dim/dip relay

Heater valve with bracket

Temperature sender

Heater hose

Heater hose

Heater hose

Gearbox mounting

Bleed hose

Breather gasket

Cap assy header tank

Gasket

O Ring

First stab at an MOT test

LH outer sill panel

Wheel nut

Small chrome hub cap

MOT - PASS!!!!!!!!

Bolt - viscous coupling

Plain washer

Slotted spring pin

Tappet guide hold down kit

Radiator from a series 1

3 new tyres

Cylinder head overhaul

Stainless exhaust + fitting kit

Chrome dome nut kit

Exhaust Man. Stud and nut kit

Carb service kit

Headlamp upgrade

Rear hubs rebuilt

XJS master cylinder

New viscous coupling

New vacuum advance pipe

eBay second hand engine + fuel in works van

Overbore and hone block +.020"

Full engine gasket set

2 x new engine mounts

Second hand (and wrong type) flexplate

Lock tab

Lower timing chain
(waaay too small)
Timing chain tensioner

Big end bearings +.030"

Piston rings +.020"

Circlips (gudgeon pins)

Crank pulley bolt lock washer

Oversize thrust washer

Main bearing +.010"

Oil pump assembly

Oil filter

Throttle return springs (wrong but using them for now anyway)

Micro adjuster plate

Lower timing chain (the right one this time)

New cylinder head studs

10L 20W50 engine oil

Millers Pistoneeze 20W50 - 10L

Engine oil filter


And that brings us right up to today, I have just this week bought a replacement starter motor - the solenoid on the old one was knackered, I could find a new solenoid for £170 or a whole new starter for £100 - that is the world we live in now I suppose, not complaining! I am now at a point of having to make a decision with this car. I have put a lot of money and time in to it and I now have a usable, fun old car to knock about in but the next job would have to be smartening up the body work which would be even more money and it simply isn't worth doing and for me at least, doing so would lose some it its charm. I might keep it on for another year and do a few more long trips in it, I have family based in Germany so that could be a good road trip! Soon time to move this on though I think, so many more cars I want to have a go on and life is short!