Very nice job. That should help the seller and buyer immensely.
Tell me more please wiggles
Thank you very well put together and very informative I learne a couple of things
On the open forum?
Always learning Larry …… especially about series 1 cars!
Bear in mind the OBL’s are nowhere near the production cars. They were hand built and each one has its own idiosyncrasies from one car to the next. Today they would all have been classed as ‘developmental’ and “returned to product” aka destroyed.
Jaguar used the 500 owners to help develope the car that was released to the public in October 1961.
David, are you sure we could say that beyond the first 500 OBL cars, in October 1961 the E-Type development was “completed”?
Straight rear bulkhead, bonded bonnet flanges and welded louvres, flat floors, etc. many substantial iterations still took place until mid 1962. So maybe still 2000 additional " 3.8 developmental cars…
The outside ?…… I always thought it was only the inside exposed like photo 80
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I ‘ve never heard of that before Paul……. Has anyone else seen that ….it’s not mentioned in any of my books…. But what is mentioned is the inner exposure and on very early cars the rim was without thumb grips and was thicker than the later type
After the first 500 cars Jaguar released them to the public (for understandable financial reasons) but development continued and with produuction experience there were over 100 changes up to 1964. After that the 4.2 cars had relatively few changes.
Arguably Jaguar used the 3.8 cars as test mules, the S1 4.2 cars as ‘work in progress’ but the S2’s were the ultimate E-Type.
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My Oct. 61 OTS has the alu rim of its steering wheel (that I believe to be genuine) only exposed on the inside:
See here a related discussion: [E-Type] Early E-Type steering wheel rims
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That is the original correct steering wheel. Do not get someone to confuse you.
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Interesting: my assertion is based on a discussion I had, a year or so ago, with the purchaser of my OE wheel, off my '63, who insisted the reason he wanted mine was its rarity, and that being the aluminum exposed at the periphery.
I do know the wheel was the original one: now I wonder if the purchaser was misinformed, and as a result, I was too.
There was a single cryptic reference to that, here…
Hi Paul…you need to post a photo if this “rare” wheel…there will be some explenation for it…what was the build date of the car…is it on xke data…are you sure it was OE from the factory…or from the distributor?..Steve
Hi,
Well, of course not. Any car maker and every factory would of course try to improve their product and make production more efficient and profitable.
For sure we know that in March 1961 Jaguar was committed to building 1000 E-types as that is the amount of body panels ordered in the first batch and those are the ”welded louvres” cars. OTS production got going first and the few (about 22) early coupes with OBL were used as demo/test cars and they were partly built by the experimental department, not the normal factory at Browns Ln. By September normal production of FHC and OTS got going and mind you, according to the factory records it was the 1st time at Jaguar that one model had it’s own assembly line. In 1966 there were two lines for E-types, one for LWB (2+2) cars and one for SWB (OTS & FHC) cars.
Cheers!
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Hello Serge. I’m slowly figuring out this new format for Jag-lovers, or at least I think I’m understanding it.
You sent this message as a PM and that’s why I didn’t see it in the forum thread, right?
Your wheel is definitely an original and the best I can tell from the picture is a beech rim. That will please those that think they were all beech.
Please let me know if I can answer any other questions you might have. You can email me directly at woodrims@gmail.com
Regards,
Mike Lempert
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woodrim/albums/72157713167455343
Hi Mike,
No, actually I had put your old thread in Jaglovers as a link here in the current thread, so that Jaglovers members could be enlightened by what was in that instructive old thread.
Thank you for the reply
Serge
Okay, now I’m catching on. The notion of a wheel with the metal rim showing on the outer edge is foreign to E-Type. If I can see a picture, there is a good chance I can identify the wheel or at least provide comment on what I see.
I will scrounge through my picture file and see if I can find a picture of the rim.
Everything I’ve seen indicated that the early cars showed the aluminum spider on the inside of the rim but not the outside. A description about the steering wheel fabrication on the E Type Forum UK talked about how the beech wood was formed first, then split and the pocket for the aluminum spider routed in the wood rim before reassembly and bonding. This is consistent with photos from various OBL:
From a Dec ‘61 Car and Driver review:
From a video from Chuck at Monocoque Metalworks, this completely original OBL shows the rim that had split off from the aluminum, and you can see the channel routed in the wood and how it wraps around the perimeter hiding the outside edge of the aluminum.
From #875169 restored. I’ve seen the car in person, and the wheel is paler color than it shows in the picture (the red upholstery makes it look reddish).
From 875132:
