Econo Jag MK2 1967 2.4 Auto

Your toasty warm feet may thank you in the future.
Good perseverance / bloody mindedness.
James

I do love a bit of lateral thinking, invention and fabrication.
Yes, it has been a complete pain in the a*s* BUT you are going to have a better heater than you would have and you did it all by yourself.
Excellent work Sir!

It does look good! Hopefully it lasts for you.

I'm still bitter about mine sagging after only 18 months. Make sure you're happy with the glue you're using... I was recommended a glue but clearly it wasn't up to the job.

Thanks for this, great info.  Unfortunately there is nothing quite right available locally and the shipping kills the idea of getting something imported.  So, I have ordered some steel and will make something up.

To get me started, how high from the ground is the centre of the pivot? And did it work ok with the Mk2?

And then what is the distance from the pivot to the mounts on the car (the angle irons with the series of holes)?  Was it balanced ok?  

I've been doing a bit more work to the car and have been spending money, lots of money which isn't good for the Econojag Budget.

Firstly I went to the Jaguar Spares day earlier this month at Stoneleigh, unlike previous ones it was a total let down and there were a lot of traders noticably absent this time that were there in october.

I didn't get much but bought a foglight with a better surround, a carpet for the boot, the chrome base for the mirro and a few other minor bits and pieces and in the end including the entry fee only spent £85 which is low for me.

I've also bought the paint for interior doorcards so I can recolour them from the orange/tan colour to dark blue to match the seats I bought.

At the last Jaguar Spares day I bought some dark blue vinyl to remake the interior trim panels that are just flat without any patterns on them (parcel shelf etc.), I sent a sample of this off to a company called Technispray in Birmingham who colour matched this and supplied me with a litre of Vinylkote which is an amazing product that you spray onto any vinyl panels and it makes them look like new. I used this on the last MK2 but that was just the same colour, this time I wanted to change the colour.

First thing was to strip the door cards down and remove the armrests and other sundries and then take the old damaged backing boards and make new ones out of 3mm hardboard.

Jumping around jobs a bit I needed to do something indoors so have been looking at the veneering. I'm a complete novice at anything to do with woodwork, certainly anything that needs to have a detailed finish. I can knock a bit of 4x2 together with some 6" nails but fine woodwork is not something i've ever got into, mainly because it doesn't really interest me and probably partly because my dad was very good at it so when I needed anything doing he did it for me.

First thing was I made paper templates of each piece I needed to veneer so I could work out how much veneer I needed.

As its a natural material the veneer sheets come in different sizes and the MK2 jag uses burl walnut which doesn't generally seem to come in very big sheets because of where it is within the tree, therefore for anything big like the dash top rail you need to use two sheets and join them like a mirror.

To achieve this you need sheets that are all cut from the same tree and match and this is called book matching as the sheets are like the pages of a book, i've come across the term before for interior laminated doors on commercial buildings.

I bought my sheets from a vendor on e-bay and they seem really good, they cost me £110.

The woodwork in a MK2 jag was originally veneered all over with one type of wood (possibly boxwood although opinion is divided) and then burl walnut was applied to the centre of the piece. The boxwood (or whatever it was) provided the edge cross banding.

I spoke to someone who veneers woodwork professionally and he said that they don't do this now and instead veneer the edges in one type of wood and then the centre in burl walnut. To do this and to make it easier I bought some iron on strip, this is real wood not plastic as a plastic edging could be sanded in the way it needs to be. The edging was walnut and was about £20 for 25m on e-bay.

I had a go at a piece which I didn't photo and it came out reasonably well, I made a few mistakes and have tried to rectify these and i'm quite pleased with it.

I've then started four more pieces and this is what I did.

This is some of the kit I used, don't tell my wife about me using her best iron :-)