A couple of ruminant animals and you are probably ok
I refurbished one of my mowers the other day
I doubt any of you understand just how fast grass grows in a temperate to sub tropical climate when we get the rain we do (Sydney and Brisbane posters probably excepted)
weekly mowing is needed in peak season
Yes, I saw the terrible flooding in Auckland, paid attention as we have had massive widespread flooding across the Country. Many rural properties are not insured against floods. Once water has gone through a house well above the power outlet level, you will be lucky to get it repaired in less than 1 year, a lack of skilled tradesman in anywhere but the largest cities being a big obstacle
They have decided not to rebuild in parts of Lismore, as it is inevitable it will be destroyed again, its the most flood prone city in Australia
we got 150mm (6") the other night, bought down a power pole at 5.30pm,
so dinner wasnt great, we also had a shortage of candles, torches and batteries
Too much of a chance of rain today, so I decided to start the insulation of the car. The foil backed stuff is a sound deadener, I will be giving as close as I can to the entire car being covered with it. The black stuff on the roof is also a sound deadener, but it was formulated for the inside of roof skins, so it got a double layer. There is a second layer and it is a second level of accoustic barrier.
I know it shows blue skies in the early pics, but it did start to rain as I tried to complete the front section of the floor. I am glad it wasn’t paint today as I am sure it would have been stuffed if I did.
Hi everyone, I have just taken on the idea that we can make up a sunroof seal for our XJ40’s. The only way to make sure it would fit was to buy one and try it, here is what I found.There is a S3 seal available to us in Australia, I am sure other coutries would have the same. I found the seal itself is a bit too big, which is good news. We need 2 of these seals to make this. A really sharp knife or shears. A really good rubber glue, don’t get the cheap stuff on the glue, and make sure it glues the seal we are working on. The flange around most of the seal fit nicely to the retainers, remembering the flat side up for the retainers, so time for the layout. You can use your screws in the retainers to hold the seal in place when you start the cutting and glueing., or some light claps will do as well. Place your outer sunroof on the floor, on carpet if your paint is good. then place the 1st seal around the sunroof. Now we cut the seal, in the same place on both peices.
The groove you see in this pic shows you where your retainer will hold the seal to the outer part of your sunroof. This is the top of the seal, we will be discarding the section with no flange. Now remove the ramp block from the sunroof and make note of how it came off using the front retainer to hold it all in place as you work your way around the sunroof.
Wow!! No apologies need to be offered for a process that’s going to be handy to a lot of people.
That is brilliant reverse engineering.
I wasn’t sure if it would work, no pictures mad it a gamble to buy things only to find the sizes were wrong, but good fortune allowed the sizes to be right, and I wasn’t real keen on putting an old cracked seal under new paint, especially when it could be seen, I found a XJ40 seal (new) but it was going to cost me around $450.00 and that seemed a little bit steep for my likeing, so this was my attempt at making it possible a little more affordable.
That is what we got in a few hours in 2019. The lower part of the house got wet. It’s is all repaired now, but I still haven’t managed to reclaim the garage. Half of it is still full of boxes. 
Today was forecast to be raining for the rest of the week, however that did not eventuate and it has been a beautiful day today so I squirted a bit of clear around. I have run out now so it will be back to pulling the wiring harness out of the gold car and start putting it all into the green car. I just have to get the front seats out and I can then get the rest of the harness out and the time consuming job of re installing it all, I hate electrics but it has to be done I suppose, sorry for no pictures today, but that green is truly an amazing colour.
Well I have the clear ordered, so I decided to start removing the wiring from the gold car, these pictures are mainly for me, so I know where they go when I put them all into the other car.
I think you will find this is the firewall positive terminal.
Well that could certainly do some damage if I go putting them to Earth, thanks for the heads up, may be extremely handy when I chuck the battery in the boot.
Hello everyone, it has been a while so I had better do something again. I had a bit of a change of materials, and I am not sure it was a good idea, but I am now committed and so I must push on forward, no other way to go really. I was using a product called car builders for a few sond deadening on the floors of the car, and the roof, and I used the whole box to do a little more than I thought it would cover. I ran out and funds being a little tight right now I tried a different company, each of the tiles were similar in dimention, and these were almost triple in thickness, nowhere near the weight, and not such a good product but I am not going to waste it, after all I bought 36 sheets of it. Anyway I did start to put some paint down, and the first coats were looking pretty good, but when I tried to lay the second coat of clear things went South on the right rear quarter panel, I sanded it all down to get rid of some of the orange peel, gave the whole car a good going over with the prepwash, then hit it with a tack coth, gave it a good blow dry with the airhose. But for some reason the left panel repelled the clear like I was trying to paint an oily surface, so I stopped waited for a couple of daus then sanded it all back, and today had another go.
Hello everyone, I do have a question for the electronically minded people, as many are aware, I am going to use a Ford 302 Windsor engine in my car, and I may not be on the right path here. I have looked over the schematics of the ECM, and the way the injectors are wired, it almost seems as easy as just adding 2 more injector wires, and the distributor will run the spark, then doing a bit more reading I have some mention a reflash to run the V8 engine. I am not interested in why would I do it? It would be cheaper to do? and all the other comments, I have chosen to take this path, and I am sticking to it. If you haven’t worked it out by now, This is certainly not a subject for the purists, this is my project and I am looking for geniune answers please.
Clive,
In case you mean running a V8 with Jag’s original 6 cylinder ECM, my take is that the injector pulse is triggered by the CPS, not the spark. I may be wrong, but you can use the ECM, but it will just need to a flash to recognize the right teeth count.
I took (but it was all pre-programmed for me) that route as well in my Mini, running a 16V head on an ECM designed for 4, 6 and 8 cylinders with no change. It runs perfectly on the same hardware, but you need to tell the ECU how to associate CPS teeth to injector pulse.
Edit 1: In case I am right, and you need to flash the ECU, the challenge in a 87 will be finding the way to access the EPROM, I am not sure it has a k-l line protocol, and certainly no OBD → You will need someone that can read and reflash (unlikely) or a new EPROM. I have never been proficient at this, but with Bosch/Motronic units (and the one in the XJ40 is based on a Bosch design), there are specialists doing this.
Edit 2: When you do this, there will be a trial and error fiddle, as you will need to adjust at least:
At least the first will be different than the 6-cyl. plots.
Best,
Ll.
LLuis, thank you for your response you are correct. I am just playing with some ideas for now. So the next question is, Is there anyone here know how or know of someone who knows how to reflash this 1988 AU unit. It all gets confusing because the car itself is a 1987 UK version, however I am using everything from a 1988 AU, including the harnesses in case there is a difference from XJ6 to Sovereign models.
The pro’s are clear to me: it’s cheap and you have the wiring (minus 4-wires for two injectors). The Con is that you will be in trial and error in terms of injector pulse vs. TPS and correction factors for temperature(s) -coolant, and air, and in your case, also AFM… (which will impact your intake manifold design, as you will need to use Jaguar’s AFM).
I think (but would really hate to put you on the wrong track) that the ECU is a Motronic-architecture, marketed by Lucas. So it’s an old Bosch EPROM. In principle it should be possible to find a car tuner with Motronic experience, also in Australia: all BMW’s of the era had the Motronic 1.3.
NO WAIT:
I put you on the wrong track SORRY. While it is true that injectors are fired by the TPS, they are fired in two groups, not individually in an ECU of that generation. My Mini, with individual ITB’s is a totally different animal.
You can use the 87-88 6 cylinder setting without any modification, as the injectors are NOT fired individually but in two groups. I am almost sure it’s (135) and (624) OR (123) and (456). Either case it does not matter, with some skill you just need to associate one additional injector to an even cylinder and one to an uneven.
It will work, perhaps not optimally, provided that the fuelling (the pulse) is adequate for your engine. Which it will probably be, and which wou can probably adjust anyway with the fuel pressure regulator. No need to fancy flashing.
Thank you for that, I think from memory there were 2 sets of 3 injectors, I was going to ad 1 to each of the sets, good to have a little bit of information, so if I put all the odd firing on one side and the even on the other, it should work.
