The 'E' Type Forum

Hi All,

New member, Jag enthusiast since 1973. I've finally sunk my teeth deep into a 1969 left-hand-drive OTS that has been sitting on the concrete floor of my barn/shop since 1998. The engine seized sometime during the early 1990's after a less-than-successful incomplete attempt at a restoration by the previous owner. It took two months of my spare time to finally get the head off the engine! I have most of the pieces ( I think). And plenty of service manuals. I'm hoping to get some help on suppliers for the engine parts, including upgrades to DSI and EFI.

Welcome aboard, Mike.

The search feature will dig up threads on EFI efforts (some currently in progress). Interesting stuff. The search will point you to commercial offerings as well. As to suppliers it would be good to specify where in the world you are as the "usual suspects" will vary by region.

Jim

Thanks, I updated my profile to include roughly where I live and work on our little planet. Now to start mining the knowledge gems of the forum! That's a nice Series 2 LHD OTS in your avatar.

You're welcome. And thanks, someday it will be nice. From memory, in the States we have:

Comprehensive

• SNG Barratt
  XKs Unlimited
  Terry's Jaguar Parts
  Welsh Enterprises

Pricing, shipping and inventory varies dramatically so for any part you're wise to shop them all. If you buy several items at a time you may be able to save in shipping costs.

Specialty

• CoolCat (primarily cooling-related parts)
  ClassicJaguar (a lot of special items likes 6-speeds & webers. Great blog)
  MonocoqueMetalworks (better than OEM sheetmetal parts. Superb blog)

Probably others. Hopefully others will share. Enjoy the warm beer, flickering lights and diminishing bank account!

What are your "restomod" intentions?

My desired modifications list is very long:
1. As an absolute minimum, the whole car is getting rewired. I was trained as an electronics technician and the mess that Lucas foisted on Jaguar "burns my noodle" every time I work on an E or XJ. Since the interior was removed, the engine is almost out and the top of the dash will be removed to replace the windshield, all of the electrics will be exposed. Vitally important to my re-wiring will be that ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTIONS will be hidden under the rugs, behind structual compoents or just out of reach under the intake manifold! (I've repaired S1, 1.5 and 2 electrics. The one S3 I was asked to help on, left me with an injured hand from trying to force my fingers to reach the white/red wire that had slipped off the braket on the back of the starter.)
2. Conversion to DSI. There are some nice kits that have been discussed in this forum.
3. Conversion to EFI. This will be the most time-consuming one. I have a whole pile of cast-off XJ (Series III) engined parts. Including a head or two and at least 1 intake manifold, computers and most of a harness or two. That is if the XJ Manifold fits the E-Type head. I have my doubts because, if it did, the kits would have been available since 2000.
4. Make the car appear as close to a Series 1 as possible: Lower and enclose the headlamps and redo the instument panel (I LOVE turning the key a 1/4 turn to turn the systems on and then pressing the starter button!)
5. The car had a mechanical oil pressure guage installed. I'm keeping that and replacing the water temp guage with a mechanical one as well. The volmeter will be an undamped unit. The fuel sender and guage will be left stock, but I will set them up properly.
Also part of the electrical rebuild will be conversion to the commonly available (read: cheep, Chinese copy) volage regulator and rebuilding (new brushes and bearings) the Lucas alternator.
I'm thinking that as long as I'm making the sealed beam headlights near-useless, I'll install a pair of HID lamps towards the back of the mouth to actually throw light ON the road.

Yes, this is a big project. I've listed what I know I can do.
There is still the professionals I will have to call in to totally rebuild the interior (I have the seats, but the ulpholstery and foam are shot) and I have most of the steel and cardboard that gets covered in vinyl to trim it out.
The bonnet was disassembled previously, so I am going to need LOTS of help getting that back together.

I will also have to send the car out to have the bodywork gone over. The car was primed back in the mid 1980's, so God-Only-Knows what has soaked into the 'finish' in the past 30 years!

Somewhere in the piles of parts is a convertable top frame. (I hope!) There's a bunch of hours getting that back to rights and then covered properly.

Of course the biggest decesion is way over the horizon: Do I restore the factory paint (Pale Primrose), a different Jaguar color or go custom?

Oh the joys of Pale Primrose. That's what mine currently is. Apparently second best selling colour on the S1's (or thereabouts) and best selling on the S2's (or thereabouts). Sure, it's a nice enough shade of yellow. And sure, I can see why it was popular in the 60's and 70's. But now in modern times, the colour stands out, and maybe not in a positive way. I have a few dings here and there, and the sticky number plate has lifted an area of micro dots. So I have an excuse for a full bare metal respray. Cough, cough......

I reckon I'll be going to Opalascent Gunmetal on mine.

I found the official color charts and agree that Opalescent Gunmetal is a nice conservative 21 century color. But it's an E-Type!!!! The medium blue would do nicely to stand out without being ostentatious.

I owed a 1987 Mazda 323 SE that was Conneticut Blue. It had the nicest hint of violet. It's early, but that is what I envision for the finished car at this point. There is also the possibility of painting it gold with metallic to match the spark plug gallery. But first is pulling the irs cage, disassembling it and replacing every piece of rubber. And the steel hydraulic brake lines. Did I mention the car has been sitting for 20 years?

As you're going non-original you might as well paint it whatever suits your fancy. There were 70k+ built and you won't headline a Barrett Jackson with a series 2 regardless. There are threads on the XJ heads on e-type blocks. There are water passage differences and the XJ intake manifold will hit the bird cage the engine sits in. Like you said, if it was easy... :D

mike837go wrote: the mess that Lucas foisted on Jaguar "burns my noodle" every time I work on an E or XJ.

Do , please, enlighten us . Just what was " the mess" that Lucas foisted on Jaguar ?

The "mess" I refereed to was the contract Jaguar had with Lucas. In that Jaguar was responsible for the warranted repairs on Lucas components. There was no incentive for Lucas to produce a high quality product. As a 'colonist' I prefer cold beer and wires that conduct all the power end-to-end. Not lost at a connection buried under the rug or a relay that checks good on the bench.

During the last 25 years I've restored, owned and used a selection of Lucas vehicles from the 50's 60's and 70's, they have been stored outside in damp and cold conditions, and I must say hand-on-heart that they have never let me down due to the electrics.

I'm not a supporter of the old-joke 'Lucas invented darkness'

I will agree that Lucas electrical failures have never left me stranded, either. Just confused and frustrated when something minor turns into a day-long project.

For example, I had a car with one tail light is dimmer than the other and turned out that the 4-way connecter (using only 3 points) tied to the bulkhead separating the seats from the boot, accessible only after removing all the wood and cardboard liners was the problem. After 3 hours of swapping bulbs and confirming good grounds and that the spring in the socket is good and the Bakelite board is not faulty and...

At least the Nips put the connections only at the ends of the wire runs. I also agree Lucas didn't invent The Darkness, they just perfected its unexpected delivery.

It's 2014 Mike, most people have moved beyond the use of historical racist terminology, I don't believe it has a place here.

Ian

As I never tire of pointing out to people, the first half million miles of my 1.5 million miles motoring career was spent exclusively powered by Lucas. I did not have a single electrical failure in that time apart from 1 or 2 bulb failures . I agree that 50 or so years on, the connectors used have now seen better days ,( hence the fact that I have a large bag of new ones and replace them as a matter of course ) but it hardly seems reasonable to expect the electrics on cars which had a service life of say 13 years still to be working perfectly50 years later

christopher storey wrote:As I never tire of pointing out to people, the first half million miles of my 1.5 million miles motoring career was spent exclusively powered by Lucas. I did not have a single electrical failure in that time apart from 1 or 2 bulb failures . I agree that 50 or so years on, the connectors used have now seen better days ,( hence the fact that I have a large bag of new ones and replace them as a matter of course ) but it hardly seems reasonable to expect the electrics on cars which had a service life of say 13 years still to be working perfectly50 years later

I completely agree here, I have owned 13 Triumphs and have never had an electrical failure in any of them. I have had plenty of other failures mind but none that can be laid at Lucas' door :-)

Ian

Thanks for chipping in guys. Whilst I don't have 1.5 million miles (wow !) I do have 20 years working in the automotive industry and I know that the car company's engineers do the wiring schematics, pin ID, routing of harness and placement of connectors and earth points. Those details get released to the suppliers, who then use their parts bin and manufucturing know-how to produce to a competitive cost & quality.

That's how is it now (me and my colleagues have knowledge of small scale (Lotus), medium scale (Saab & Porsche) and high volume (Ford, Rover and GM) and I have no reason to doubt it was the same back in the day. So any slagging off of Lucas regarding hidden connectors should really be directed to the Jaguar engineers.

Oh, and standard design life (when selecting components and performing durability testing) is 10 years / 100.000 miles. Across the board. Today.

First I will apologize if I offended anybody with the derogatory form of the word that the Japanese use for themselves.

I have owned, maintained and repaired cars made in North America, The U.K., Japan and Germany.

My 1999 Honda Accord was probably the easiest car to repair. The 1995 Lincoln Continental, the worst. With dozens of other cars, trucks and tractors in between.

In my experience, Jaguar E-Types fall slightly to the harder than average side of things.

mike837go wrote:First I will apologize if I offended anybody with the derogatory form of the word that the Japanese use for themselves.

You didn't offend me. What people do with their colon ist their own business. I just think Lucas get a bum rap sometimes.

Cheeks. Sorry, Cheers

Pete