Analysis of the true mileage (long-post-warning!)

[David Oslo]

I have a 1966 S1 2+2 showing 30,000 miles. Which of course can be 130,000 miles due to the 5-digit odometer.

It is a 2-owner car (matching numbers FWIW) with professional evaluation report from 1992 stating it had been dry stored since 1977 and was good condition low-mileage. Since 1992 it has only done 1,500 miles (dry stored until 2007) and only used on sunny Sundays by PO. I have original Bill of Sale from US and receipts from the 'out of hibernation' workshop visit in 1992, but otherwise no service records. Current US 'tax disc' shows the mileage that matches with the 1992 evaluation plus the 1,500 driven since then. I'm the third owner (but I do like to think of it as a 2-owner car)

So the paperwork and the PO (with his explanation of his purchase directly from the family of the deceased first owner) all say that the car is 30,000 miles. But I do wonder ... The PO termed the car as a "survivor car" as they say in the US. Everyone who sees the car comments on "time warp", however I sometimes wonder if a well cared for and pampered 130' car could & would appear just the same as a less cared for 30' car. To be clear it doesn't look like it's just driven out the showroom. But it does look like it's just driven out of the first storage in 1977

It's on original paint and only has a few car-park dings in the doors, no other damage (and I've really tried to find some). Scuff marks here and there and worn-through paint on some edges. I've pulled the carpets and interior and no rust is to be found. Front seats are dried & hard on the seat faces, showing what could be called patina. They have been doused with leather products by PO but I fear this has just hardened the leather. The rear seats are supple. Steering wheel, dashboard, switchgear are all spotless, and everything works. Headlining and sunvisors have patina, reckon that first owner was a smoker. Original Jaguar radio and single speaker. Heated rear screen still works. Exterior chromework shows some minor corrosion. Engine bay with all original bits, no bodgering. Half the hoses were still original. Heater and blower still work. Original wire wheels, even has original Dunlop 6.40 15" spare tyre. Jack & tool roll. Engine doesn't smoke and starts immediately. Shell bearings throughout engine are dark lead colour with no scoring on any of the journals. Original size pistons, no overboring or grinding of crank. Bearings at front of camshafts show some marking (due to chain tension). Chain tensioners barely show marks from the chain contact, certainly no tramlines. Front shocks are stamped Girling and seem original. All these things point to a 30,000 miler in my mind. I would've expected a 130' car to show a worn dashboard & steering wheel, door trims etc, loose door hinges, scuff marks on door sills, smokey engine and worn engine internals. The car first got sold outside of the first owner's family 25 years after her death. Which makes the car "dry-stored for 40-years"....

If the car really did 30,000 over the first 11 years then that is a measly 3,000 each year. It doesn't appear to have driven on the salty upstate NY road, rust is almost non existant underneath the car. And to be devils advocate, if the car did 130,000 then that is 12,000 miles a year just during summer, in a E-type. That's a huge amount, that is really long distance highway driving. So maybe it really was a summer car, it was afterall owned by a wealthy family (their house and garden is certainly big on Google earth) and used for trips to the Hamptons. I've tried to contact the family but they have moved house.

I would appreciate to hear of other owner's experiences with their cars, maybe there are some who have low mileage that can equate to some findings, maybe there are others with high mileage that can shoot things down. And vice versa.

[mgcjag]

Hi David......how much wear on the steering wheel and pedals these can be good indicators to mileage.....unless of course they have been changed...Steve

[mystery type]

A car with low mileage can still have lots of wear and tear if driven for only short journeys.
As the car seems to be in a sound condition, i wouldnt bother to much about the mileage, just try and add some more!

[David Oslo]

I forgot to mention the (brake) pedal rubber has negligible wear, and looks to be original. Metal accelerator has worn paint / surface coating. Steering wheel looks perfect, both the spokes, rim and horn push. I haven't found any traces of poor masking from say a sand & revarnish. I've studied the inside of the pedal box (looking upwards from footwell) and the aluminium, springs and arms look as if they came from the factory yesterday. No signs of the corrosion that I have seen on other cars doing the auto to manual conversion. I've pulled the entire column and all the U/J's and bolts and stuff were similarly spick & span. My modern cars (5 years old) show more surface rust on the underdash stuff.

And yes, I've already in 6 autumn weeks done more miles than the PO had managed in 6 years. Cars are to be used. Don't get me wrong, I am not bothered about the mileage. It's just that the inquisitive part of me would like to piece together the jigsaw puzzle. If I had no documentation and no history of the previous owners, then I wouldn't give two hoots. But given that I have the teaser of named 2-owners, dry stored for 40 years and apparently 30,000 miles (or was it 130....) then I want to follow up. It's like being told the punchline and not the joke.

To me the digging is just part of the enjoyment of owning and restoring. Right now there is thick snow on the ground, the engine is in bits in the basement, and the winter can be used for chasing clues.

[JEP41]

Hi David,

Bear in mind back in the 60's and 70's cars did much less mileage than cars of today even in the US, I would be willing to bet the 30k is probably correct.

[1954Etype]

I would be surprised if the car has 30k original miles. I have seen a number of cars with this type of mileage and none of them correct. (Not to say that they aren't out there though!).

Look for general grubbiness on the chrome, dirt in the wheel arches, mud is not generally cleaned from the bonnet air intakes so will rest on the top.

How many of the original features remain. Things like the plate under the oil filter. How chewed up are the screws on items that get replaced, are they original. How much dirt and dust in areas that are hard to clean, like under the seats. How much oil is around the engine bay, is it caked in dirt, how good are the spade connectors on the loom, are they heat damaged. Lots of little things reveal the character of the car.

[David Oslo]

I'm with you on being skeptical. As to the small little things, they mostly seem to be in order. Electrical spades fine and all electricals still work. Still on original relay for indicators, original alternator regulator, washer bottle, all that kind of stuff. Fan blower works and the heater box is solid and still on original felt seals around the matrix. Starter motor original and starts on the button. One thing I have spotted is the carb tags have been mixed around, so front is not front, and so on. Hence top covers have been off at one point. But cover screws themselves are straight and not chewed. The radiator top hoses have been changed, but not the lowers, or the ones to and from the manifold. Mix of cheney and non-cheney clips. Engine had a nice layer of black oil/dust on the sump and underneath gearbox, I wouldn't expect anything less :D Oil filter canister still in blue hammer finish, with a bit of surface rust on the downward facing area. The round plate for the end of the filter (P/N 6886) is missing.

I pulled the speedometer out of the dash, and in the process an equal amount of spring washers and knurled nuts came off. The knurled nuts were very tight and a pain to loosen given the confines of the space. The big o-ring had also sort of glued itself between the speedo bezel and the dash. My thoughts during the process was that this had never been out of the dash before.

Under front seats not much muck (but they are easy to clean under). Under rear seat bottom, clean, apart from a few 5-cent coins. Spare wheel well, clean no rust.

In terms of dust, muck, oil etc I wouldn't tend to rely on that too much. Did the owner live in the sticks with dusty roads, did they clean the car regularly, did the PO go over with a fine tooth comb. All that alters the picture. That's why I was trying to go off the mechanical wear items, engine internals, original shocks etc. Stuff that is not so easy to 'buff-up'. Oh, and if either of the PO were trying to pull a fast one, the first thing they should've 'buffed-up' was the footwell carpet and the hole just under the heel.

[MarkE]

There is one bit of evidence that points to it being a low mileage and original car....it's from the North-Eastern seaboard and it's rust free! I've only seen one UK car like that, and it's first owner was a very wealthy chap who used his 'interesting' cars very sparingly and in good weather only. The USA had many more wealthy folks in the 60s than we had, and cars like yours do turn up from time to time.

If it wasn't used in the winter as the owner had other cars, it probably wasn't used much in the summer heat either. An E type with a roof isn't a lot of fun to drive when it's 30 degrees C plus outside.

My S1 had 34k miles on the speedo when I bought it, which I also assumed was 134k. But upon stripping it down, it had 5 standard pistons (and one ill fitting non-original one!), standard bearings (badly scored from dirt in the oil) and the gearbox bearings were like new. The chap re-building the engine and box had worked on Jaguars since the 1950s, it thought it certain that it was original 34k mileage that had been almost totally neglected with regards servicing!

When you get the head off to do a top-end overhaul, look for standard sizes inside.

Mark

[David Oslo]

Thanks Mark. Head is off, actually engine is fully torn down. Sorry for the huge long rambling post at the start of the thread. Pistons are original size. No rebore. Shell bearings ditto. Shell bearings still nice & lead-grey. No scoring of journals. Still see cross hatch from honing in cylinders. Oil pump within tolerance on lobes and end-cap. Valve shims have indentations from valvestems, order of magnitude 1-2 thou. I thought I might have a stretched timing chain, so I measured the pitch between pins along a 10" stretch, it was on the numbers, so much so that I rechecked several times. (i.e. measured a multiple of links at once, not one at a time)

Without nailing it down specifically, the car is from the area around Norwalk Connecticut. Cold winters. Salty roads. Seems to be populated with rather large houses, i.e. an area with money. The first owner's family owned their own business designing & manufacturing world leading surveilance equipment, to you and me spy-gear.

Otherwise the thing that has surprised me most has been the bolts and nuts in general. All just loosen off (well, apart from one broken exhaust manifold stud). Even the bonnet hinge bolts, and the radiator bottom mount studs, which I would presume are some of the most exposed for corrosion. I am used to rock solid rusted bolts when working on cars of the '50 - '70s. Even on modern cars too.

[MarkE]

It sounds like a hot, dry state car not from Connecticut! Surely it has to be an original low mileage car with standard bores and bearings and no wear.

I can't imagine a 6 cylinder engine being like that after 130k miles!

[David Oslo]

Mark, not having disected any other Jaguar 6-cyl engine than my own, I would go with your logic. Thinking about it the Chris Rooke and Bill McKenna engines had rebores, regrinds, and warped heads before those guys got started. Can't recall their mileages, but maybe that is a pointer to a run-of-the-mill engine condition. Oh, my head has none of the corrosion around the water-ways that I have seen on others, and is still plane. My thinnest feeler gauge of 1.5 thou (inch) doesn't go between head and engineers straight edge. And when shining a light horizontally in from the side I don't really see any gaps.

Not sure if the Girling shocks are date stamped, will have a peek soon.

I'm not trying to build up the 30K arguement, and welcome others to be the devils advocates.

[David Oslo]

Trying to keep the thread alive....

Had a peek at the Girling shockers and they are crisply stamped with GIRLING and NFP 4054298EAHU and PATENT. No hyphens.

Access limitations prevented me seeing if there is other info on them.

Question is does this sound like a original item fitment from factory or a service item? From the info I've found on the net and forum I've seen NOS shocks with less crisp stamping of the letters and with hyphens and not with the EAHU.

Clutching at straws..... does the crispness of the lettering and the EAHU point to factory units ?