1952 Jaguar XK120 restoration

Agree with Mark ^ and was going to post the same comment! I’ve had two classic Fords where the axles rubbed on one side but never the other. When I tore into my Anglia, obviously I had to do a lot of measuring, and basically the mounts had been welded on about 4-5mm out at the factory. Your Jag is far more hand-built than mine so it doesn’t surprise me that it was probably fettled a bit on the production line, to line everything up!

Looking forward to seeing it finished...

*On the Beach!


OVIMOR

The diversions continued.
Another little project was to attempt to make a door catch. I had one that was pretty rough but probably fixable, the other was broken in two.







The problem with these is they are made of pot metal. I tried to tig weld it with aluminium filler rod and while it seemed to take, it was a bit iffy.
So I thought I would have a go at milling one from steel.
I literally found this chunk in the paddock a while back and thought it might be useful one day.




After spending most of the day on the mill, it had turned it into this.













To be truthful, that’s after polishing and plating with nickel. I don’t have a picture of it straight from the mill.


I was pretty chuffed at how it turned out..
 I thought the second one would be a breeze, but I stuffed it up completely and had to start again. The third was ok.

They can be bought for about £50, so that’s my hourly rate sorted then.

Any comments and queries welcome.

Cheers

Garry

..... Yeah, sadly the one he chucked out was a 'little short' ha ha

Excellent workmanship here


OVIMOR

Thanks for the kind words.

Okay, so still waiting on the bits to repair the bonnet hinges. I started stripping the chassis.
Here’s the left hand front suspension on the bench, ready to be pulled apart. Lots of bits to clean, paint and plate here.




Lower control arm laid out so I can work out how to put it back together.




After blasting and stamping with an L so I know which side they came from.






And ready for paint. I used Hirsch Miracle Paint. Brush on a thin coat and when it’s tack free spray a fairly heavy coat. Very pleased with the result, looks like powder coat, but not as thick. Also very tough. No affiliation etc. Hopefully I’ll be as happy with it in 10 years...







And the finished bits.




Rear springs were pulled apart, cleaned, reassembled and then painted with the same stuff.







That’s all for now.
Any comments or queries welcome,
cheers
Garry

The bits for the bonnet hinges finally arrived. I wanted to rebuild the hinges so that the bonnet would close into the same place all the time. It was hopeless trying to position the guards if the bonnet ended up in a slightly different position each time I closed it.
I don’t have a photo of the hinges before the paint was removed. This is one that has been pulled apart and some broken spot welds repaired. The pivot pins on the left in this photo are what have to be replaced in order to take the slop out of the hinge.



The idea is to drill out the existing hole in the side plates to 8mm. (They were approximately 6.5mm so not a huge increase)
Then replace the pins with a piece of 8mm stainless rod and a spacer made of 8mm id stainless tube. Like this:








Here is the hinge bead blasted and ready to zinc plate:




Plated and ready to assemble.





The stainless rod is really hard. It’s off ebay and quite cheap but beautiful stuff. (I think it is used in printers etc for things to slide on).
It’s very hard so I heated the ends in the hope that it would make it a bit softer and easier to peen over. I also drilled the ends to help with this.









Pivot arms attached.





Complete.





And then there were two...






That’s all for now, pretty much the end of the diversions. Back to bodywork.

Comments and queries welcomed.

Cheers

Garry

Why thank you.

Just kidding. Yes they are a hell of a design, though they can be a pain to adjust  if they have a bit of wear.

Wow, what a project...

And as Mark said about the symmetry of old cars, he is absolutely right.


A buddy of mine did some accurate measuring on his Mk1 Escort racecar, and found that the front shocktowers were more than 1/2" out, from left to right.

I measured about 1/4" of twist in my Fiat 600 based racer.

And those ( the base cars ) are assembly line produced ( admittedly with their own histories before we got them ).


Hand built cars were much worse.

This was common knowledge.

But these days with easily available laser measuring equipment, etc, people tend to go great lengths to get them straighter than they ever were...

As my Dad didn't say to me;

Never put off until tomorrow what can be done the day after, or the week after that...

Job avoidance is my speciality.