1969 Jaguar E-Type 2+2 "69er"

Refurbished gearbox mount jacked back into position and bolted in.

New exhaust stuff

Yep, added to both downpipes so I can check the fuelling.

Wrapped this afternoon. Just drying out then a top coat of heat paint.

New engine mounts last night. New mounts needed a different bolt thread but luckily found a suitable pair in the my bolts box. Engine had dropped about 8mm as bushes had collapsed

Some oilite bushes and some nylon tube to take out the excessive slack in the "floating steering rack" arrangement. Basically the rack fully floats on a rubber bush/pad - no clamps etc. Jag engineers designed "failsafes" at each end so that if the rack ripped off or delaminated off the rubber pads, the failsafes would catch the rack. The failsafes allow movement - drivers side allows left right movment with passenger side allowing fore-aft play.

Even with new rubber mounts, there is still a lot of free play, which in my books isn't desirable. E-types have been described as "over rubbered".

The mounts are the original "metalastic" factory brand. they've not sheered but have gone very soft. they'll be replaced but thats fairly involved job and i've got more pressing things to fix first. Poly mounts (£70+) still allow some movement then its fully solid competition mounts (£200+)




Movement "before" with just the drivers side done. Was even worse prior to these going in. was a decent 2" of waggle at the steering wheel. also you can see the upper arm bush play. all factory, 51yo 59k mile rubber so fair play.


Then with the passenger side done. There is still some play as i've used nylon liner to allow some movement.


Cost was £12.

fitting the slimline fans frees up a lot of space between the rad and the engine. Looking closer, its clear there is a lot of weight in front of the engine, which includes the forth bridge alternator bracket, the alternator, the double belt-double pulley system and the fans. I'll be fitting a lightweight nippon denso style alternator in the conventional location. Guessing a 15kg weight saving....?

New ceramic (standard) coated rear header bolted in tonight. Studs were good so had already nipped those up but used some new 5/16 unf brass nuts (slightly deeper too for more thread engagement). Jag never specified a torque for these header fixings but torques can be found on the web for generic sizes, so for 5/16 brass is about 10-12 ftlbs. I cross tightened all the nuts then torqued up the top 4 nuts (wrench set to 10ftlbs) that I could get the wrench on. Then hand did the lower ones based on "feel".

Decided to leave the dipstick bracket off. I'll have to think about how that is remounted somewhere else.

That seems quite a low torque. I usually do 20-25NM on M8 which is roughly the same size.

Ah, didn't think to take the age/quality of the ally into account I'm dealing mainly with modern stuff which are generally much higher quality