1985 Jaguar XJ-S V12 HE

It's always fun when you take a car in for its first MOT in your ownership. Doubly so when you really haven't had time to check anything beyond that all the lights work. Though I did forget the fog lights.

Never mind when it's on a 35 year old British motor and the test is effectively six months late thanks to COVID (granted the car was off the road for the bulk of that time).

Anyhow...in we went.



Twenty minutes later:



I'll take that.

Usual issue noted with the daft steering rack mounting bushes meaning the whole rack can move, which I was already aware of. Might look to sticking some improved bushes in there at some point. That didn't go on as an advisory as it's more of a stupid design than a fault due to wear or age. Only other thing noted was a tiny bit of play in the lower pins in the rear hubs. Nothing major and I've always told my tester I'd rather he told me of any issues rather than just issue an "easy" pass.

Tester admitted to being pleasantly surprised by the overall condition of the car and was complimentary of the standard to which the usual welding repairs had been done.

Then straight back home to start hauling bits of felled trees into a skip. Right across the area where the patio used to be but is now a giant clay pit. In the pouring rain. I lasted about an hour before my arms and legs were utterly useless. Now resting up for a bit, will see if I feel like having another bash at it in an hour or so. Just seems sensible to use as much of the skip as possible given it's here until this evening and the contractors dealing with the bamboo only used about s third of the capacity. We did check and it was fine for us to throw anything in there.

Congrats on the pass with this big cat! I love them! Have followed your story with interest!

Finally. Only taken me the best part of a year to actually get some photos of the Jag at sunset.











Still irked I didn't spot the streetlight in the front on shots until I got home. I know it would only take me ten minutes to edit it out, but I shouldn't have missed something that obvious when I was framing things.

That's ok, I didn't recognize it as a street light.

Nice moody "back of the brochure" pictures too. Congrats on the pass, that's a really small list!

Phil

I worked for a BL/Jaguar/LR dealer in the early 80's.
Jaguar did a brochure photo shoot in central Milton Keynes using some of the public art as backdrops, the one I specifically remember is next to the 'Infinity' or 'Octo' statue over from the central church near Ashton House.
You should try and replicate it.......

Glad it's of use, I always found the parts book a great referance, as you say half the time whatever you are trying to fix is impossible to even see let alone understand! (Especialy as Jaguar seemed to often have their own over complicated way if doing things)

I've got a similar one for he tr7 but I rarely use it as everything is pretty simple.

Result.

Once you have gained a reasonable amount of practical experience, and know which end of a spanner to hold, a parts manual is often more use than a workshop manual.

There are some classics in here! I'll need to grab photos of a couple.

-- -- --

The windscreen wipers on the Jag have been becoming increasingly glitchy of late. Normally a sharp thump on the scuttle would get them working again - until last time I needed to go out in a hurry when they decided to play dead entirely. The behaviour seemed to suggest the motor wasn't making it quite all the way to the fully parked position (which is slightly further over the screen than the normal wiping range).

Given I knew the drains had been clogged for goodness knows how long the motor had most likely spent some time under water so I was hoping it was going to be a simple case of dirty contacts or dried up grease in the linkage.

Figured it was worth pulling the grill over it off and seeing if I could see anything obviously amiss. Looked like it would be a simple case of pulling the wiper arms, undoing a couple of bolts and lifting it off...right?

Of course not, because Jaguar. Having unfastened everything I could see it still wasn't interested in budging more than a few millimetres.



Peering under the edge it became obvious there was a load of hardware attached to the underside, with no obvious way to detach it. Attempting to get a wrench into the bolt only resulted in me dropping it into the void under the grill.

Eventually I figured out that the whole wiper assembly remains attached to the cover and you just have to sort of wrestle it out through the not-quite-wide-enough gap.



Those spindle gear boxes look suspiciously like the same ones used in the Invacar...given the amount of BMC parts bin hardware in there it wouldn't surprise me.

Nothing hugely obvious amiss, though the whole drive assembly and spindles were really dry. So everything was drowned in penetrating oil and I then splodged as much grease as I could be hand into the spindle boxes (pretty easy as they're not sealed) without pulling things to bits any further as I was being mindful of having to go out pretty soon to collect groceries.



I'm under no illusions that I won't be back in here, most likely I'll need to dismantle the motor gearbox itself to give it a thorough clean and re-grease as the original lubrication has probably long since turned to plastic. As it is though the wipers now move at about twice the original speed and appear to be playing ball...the issue has been intermittent though so only time will tell.

With everything back together I headed for my grocery collection slot, via a fuel station (again).

Stopping at the first junction after that I noticed the dash lighting seemed really dim.

Um...yeah, that would do it.



The alternator appears to have lost interest in charging. I legged it home and switched cars. Further investigation revealed no working ignition light either...so either bulb has gone or we've got an issue with the brushes most likely.

Of course when I went back to the car half an hour later to park it it behaved perfectly again.



Yep...sticky and/or worn brushes methinks.

Won't that be fun...the alternator is one of the nice easy to get to things...



Oh...no I actually meant the other thing. You can barely see the thing. I changed the belt for it a couple of months ago and that was a full day's job pretty much!

Never a dull moment...

I did finally get a bit of time to start putting the basic text for a website update together (first time since 2017!), got a ways to go but have made a start at least. Decided to use something lacking in distractions to assist in concentrating on what I was actually working on.



Really do like the keyboard on this too. It's definitely physically the same board that Acorn used in the Archimedes range (A3000/3010/3020 at least), which was always my favourite to type on of the machines from that era. Amiga wasn't bad...Atari ST came miles behind with their horrible mushy mess. Funky shaped function keys couldn't even redeem it. No idea when I'll actually get the update finished and uploaded, but at least I've made a start.

That’s actually pretty smart, the way everything bolts up to that panel. The wheel boxes look like generic Lucas ones.