Aluminum doors trunk lid and hood and a shifter that does not exactly match the shifter that is shown in the Jaguar Service Manual

XK
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My Brother and I have a 53 XK120 with aluminum doors hood and trunk lid. It also has a shifter with extremely short throws. The shifter is somewhat different than the one that is shown in our 53’s service manual. Does anyone have an idea about what we are looking at here?

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Welcome Grant.
Aluminum hood, doors and trunk are completely normal for all XK120s.
There were a couple of different shift levers depending on whether you had a radio or not, and the picture in the manual shows the shifter for the Mark V saloon, which was longer, not XK120.

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Thanks. There is a lot of misinformation out there about XK 120s. I was told that the aluminum doors hood and trunk were unusual as well as the really short throw shifter, which according to 1 source is a “Strling Moss” shifter. I have learned to take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt, unless you can add credence to any of this.

Thanks

Grant

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maybe Stirling Moss touched it…he could have !! Welcome to this foirum where you will find the REAL XK120 info and experts…come back often, ask anything…do use the search glass upper right to search past topics., you will find a lot. Are you / your brother proud NEW owners ? or have you had it a while. These cars are awesome, can be great for drives and shows…They do take some care and a bit of knowledge. Photos of your car will be gladly viewed. The numbers on the cyl head, engine, body, chassis will be of great interest as well, should also be on a data plate on firewall which may or may not match all the other places.
Many changes were made thru the production run, so year and those numbers will tell what applies to your car.
Nick (53 XK120 OTS SE)

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And I realize I gave out some misinformation. Not quite all had aluminum doors. A very late DHC 678419 from June '54 has steel doors, but aluminum hood and trunk.
Here is my shifter. My car is FHC 679187.

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IMG_20200328_0848545401078×606 116 KB

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I think someone may have been getting confused by the term “Moss box” for the 4-speed gearbox. Some were made by Jaguar themselves, some by Moss Gears (but in no way connected with Stirling!)

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