Just make sure that the thick webs on the Jurid are under compression when the car is under power, otherwise you will experience premature failure.
My wife calls it black donut. so I dare say it is whatever you choose it to be in the end.
I took great care to ensure it went on the same way it came off, and checked with the workshop manual just to be sure. one of those things that look like a weakness but in fact is one tough cookie.
A bit of a slow day today, mainly because I needed to dig a trench for our electrician to put the wiring into the ne garden shed, and made the discovery that a lot of glass bottles are the landfill on this place, I am not happy about the find, but what can you do? this house has been here for over 50 years so it happened a long time ago. Anyway the thing I have been working on now is the engine mounts in a permanent way, and so I found some that look close to what I want to use, and with a littl massaging I reckon I could get them in, I sort of put myself in a bit of a stupid position by starting too many things at once, so the transmission mounts are coming along nicely, but I haven’t had the camera to show any progress. I am also working on the front engine mounts. I wanted a mount that would basically hold the engine no matter what position the engine is in. Most engine mounts let the weight of the engine do most of the work, and if you use the power a lot, then engine mounts can break, and then we have a problem. I decided a long time ago to use a bush type mount where even if the engine is inverted (roll over) the mount would still hold.
Here we have a clear view of the bushing type of mount. Pretty much a suspension bush used to hold the engine and even to a large extent hold the engine no matter what position the car is in, to me it would just be safer.
This is just about ready to install, I can make up mounts to put the engine into the car, but I am not permitted to change the chassis rail or structural parts of the body to put the engine into the car. Because of what Jaguar was trying to do about the Rover V8 engine, I had a lot of measuring and checking it all against the bodywork. Ford made a nice compact little V8 engine called a windsor. For the best part they were a small capacity engine, until they introduced the 351 version.
For my wishes to come true I had to do a little footwork, I never expected to be working on a Jaguar, mainly because I always saw them as a car that would never fall into my price range. Plenty of Holdens and Fords were available for very little money, I eventually decided I would like to do an engine swap, a personal challenge sort of thing, and it happened with an old series 1; 4 runner 1984 I think it was, and it gave me a chance to experiment on different cars and what the could offer if an alternative engine was used. I was offered 2 XJ40’s, in XJ6 guise, 1 was a 1987 british import into Australia in 1992, the other was a Australian designated vehicle in 1988. I purchased them both for $500.00, and they sat in the back yard as I tried to find out how much it was going to cost me to get one of them back on the road. I chose the import because it had by far the better body, the other was completely rusted out, but I was told the mechanics were sound ( that turned out to be a myth) the green one had a fairly good body, however the mechanics were far from being any good. It seemed the radiator got a leak and pump coolant into the transmission, and neither car had much of an interior, then found another Gold 1988 XJ40. This one was in Soveriegn trim and was running and it had a complete interior, and it almost took the green cars place to be the rebuild, until I had to get a couple of small rust holes to deal with. After about 4 weeks of cutting, welding, grinding, this car was showing me it was not the better option as the rust just kept coming. So back to the green one again, the gold car just stopped being worked on and left intact because I wanted to use the it as the donor car for so many other things that the other 2 just never had, and the gold car although running was quite smoky and got worse the more the engine ran.
I cannot lay claim to making thes engine mounts, they are actually from Castlemain rod shop, they were made to put a windsor V8 into an early ford Capri. So I am just modifying them to fit the Jaguar engine mounts that bolt into position on the K frame.
remember me saying I have my head all over the place at times, this is another example of that. I am trying to get the engine and transmission mounts done and I stuble accross the evaporator from my air con unit. I had to completely dismantle the unit because the rats have made a huge best in ther, and it did not smell good at all, and it was the only way I was going to be sure it was reasonably clean in there, the heater core needed to be thrown away it was in pretty bad shape and I have already ordered a new one, this however is not so readilly available, so I founf a car air con place and they said they would test it all out and see if it too needed replacing, so I am trying to have everything in as good or better than it was when it was new. Basically I will have a new 1988 jaguar with a few modifications along the way.
I know it looks pretty bad here, but it looked a lot worse when I took it out. I wasn’t sure if I could get another one (new) so I just kept it in case. but needed to get a couple of pictures because a few places said their unit fitted an XJ40, but looked nothing like this or the fittings were different.
So it has now been put into the air con shop to be tested, now I had better get back on track with the engine mounts if I can stay focussed enough, I just keep finding other things to do when I have a coffee break and look around my piles of parts, some of them have been placed in the junk pile then I decide maybe it can be saved, while trying in the back of my mind to say most of this stuff has to be thrown away becaus I am only saving one car and I have 3 of them.
Clive …,
Fortunately your evaporator is mostly made of copper and not aluminum (like the newer models) and not prone to failure. Odds are it’s going to be just fine. When I removed my evaporator years ago it was filty and about 1/3 of the fins were blocked with debris and old black foam …
I carefully plugged off both tubes and blew high pressure water from my garden hose over the fins to clean them. After that it looked pretty good but I still decided to soak it in a bucket of dishwashing detergent overnight. The next morning the bucket water was pitch black with more junk. Another high pressure stay and I was convinced It was “like new” clean.
To check the integrity of the evaporator I hooked up a vacuum pump with a manifold gauge to one pipe
while I left the other pipe sealed. The unit held a deep vacuum for hours, so I knew it was leak free. NOTE … This can also be done with the evaporator still in the car for those who are troubleshooting their system.
When you reinstall the evaporator it’s critical that it’s sealed around the edges against the housing. That keeps the incoming hot air from simply going around the evap (path of less resistance) instead of thru it. I used thin sheets of styrofoam to do this instead of foam which breaks down over time.
By thoroughly cleaning and sealing the edges of your evap, if everything else is done properly, you can expect factory cooling which you could never achieve otherwise.
I am hearing you, and my goal is to have it as good as new when it is done. The heater core did not do so well with the rats, and our local radiator repair shop quoted me $700.00 to have a look and try to fix it, I hunted around trying to find one, and pleasantly surprised to find that there were a few places selling brand new items. Every now and then an evaporator comes up claiming to fit my car, but the fittings are different, and some of them don’t even look close to being the same, But a automotive air conditioning workshop said they will gladly test it and at worse it would cost me around $75.00. The sounds pretty good to me so that is where my evaporator is for now, I only took it in on Friday afternoon.
Well another fairly productive sort of day, I managed to get the engine mounts finished. I am not allowed to paint them until our engineer has inspected them, and I need that blue compliance plate to get it registered. If all goes well I should have the transmission mount finished, and I can pull it all out again and start getting some paint on.
This is the drivers side mount, you may recognise the cone shape pedestal for the mount, and it looks pretty good to me.
This is the passenger side mount, very happy to have them finally finished, I am going to call it a day, and have my daily SCAN. Senior. Citizens. Afternoon. Nap.
Hi everyone, I have just finished the transmission mount today, so I am pleased with that, I will put it back on the floor, and I can get around the car again to a small degree at least.
Doesn’t look bad for my way of looking at it, it has been copied to a certain degree, but in the end the only things I didn’t change were the 2 only 50x3 E/A. The other guy used pipe and a peice of PFC.
I did use a Ford transmission rubber here, hopefully there won’t be any vibration coming from all of that.
I made up 2 of these, they are mounted at different heights for some reason, I even used the original holes.
Clive …
It’s really a pleasure following along with your restoration, especially with all the excellent pictures you provide. You are quite a talented an inventive craftsman.
The only thing I see that gives me a little pause is the rear transmission mount. Even though the plate is slightly curved at the ends which acts as small fillets I’m still concerned that the long distance between the mounting bolt and the weld will act as a lever and the weld may eventually fail. There is a LOT of weight on that area and it’s all centered on the mounting bolt that’s constantly moving (even though very slightly) up and down. A failure here while driving would be really bad news.
Yes, and the plate is very long for no reason.
Maybe add a second traverse in front ?
I did deviate from my original idea a little, my original idea was to use a 75mm x 3mm flat bar welded on top of the RHS, with a 25mm x 3mm flat barwelded to each side, when I found this bit of steel with a fold downward, I figured it would be a good idea to use it as it would allow water to drain away rather than hold a pool. I could still very easilly weld a full length flat bar on top, and maybe even use some 25mm square hollow section to give extra strength. I have even made a note in my diary about your concerns, my engineer may have raised the same issues. I may have thought about it some more when the days of painting had started, I really wanted to get started on the painting soon, and the only way that could even start was to get the car back on the ground. I have to get it all out again when it is time for inspection, so I can address those small problems then. I am thankfull that you have taken the time to notice this, and I can assure you it will be addressed.
very nice work!!!
Hi everyone. I am finally getting some colour onto the car, it has given me a headache for quite some time now, well today it finally showed and although I did’t get as much as I would have liked it was a start.
I just have to apply a couple more coats, but that will have to wait for another day. I put the gold pinstripes on and sealed it all under some 2K clear. Then it will all need to be sanded nice and flat before I consider anymore clear to be put onto the car.
I have removed the chrome cover plate and the join has been filled, I like the way it turned out so it is full steam ahead.
I have to shut it all down by this time, the sun has been covered and it is suddenly overcast, and I am not a weather man, so I am not taking any risks, give it a couple of days to get really hard, and then time to sand all over again. I am just thankfull I could get it all under way.
I pondered for a while about how to start and finish the pinstripe, then this idea came to me so I tried it out, and it is now part of car. I kind of felt the need to be different again, hopefully without overdoing it.
I know there is a bit of orange peel there, but I will sand that out later on, no time to do it today, and I think it is too fresh to do anything today anyway.
48hrs is good for 2 pack, by the 4th day, its super hard, and a real bear to sand,
hot sun hastens the cure, less than 48hrs it gums the paper
There I was feeling sorry for you and find out we have 50% more rain than Rocky
( and 100% more than London and Melbourne)
rain and humidity make good painting a bitch
Where abouts are you Tony?
Hi Clive,
South of Newcastle, in a NE facing sub tropical forest by the ocean,
so we cop more than the Newcastle average rainfall of 1240mm
Rockhampton 875mm
London 557mm
Melbourne 515mm
Colorado: 300 mm…in a good year.