Heater inlet finishes

I am refurbishing the fiberglass heater inlet on my 1967 FHC and it appears to have an original black wrinkle finish (under some layers of paint). The Series 1 Judging Guide says: “HEATER INLET Black Fiberglass- black or body color oval washers. NOTE Body color on the heater inlet was common on the first cars.”

The guide says nothing about a black wrinkle finish and looking at the cars on XKEdata built near mine the photos appear to show a black wrinkle finish. Why would the guide leave this out?

My bolts are black oxide, but the PO painted the oval washers a medium blue (along with part of the heater inlet). What black finish is correct for the oval washers? Black oxide or black paint?

Thanks for any help,
–Drew

I believe the wrinkle finish is correct.

Thanks John. I think so too so I’m leaving it the wrinkled black.

Wrinkle black on my ‘68. Cad plated bolts and semigloss black oval washers, all refinished from what I determined to be what was there originally.

Drew,
The guide has gone through a number of updates as new information etc becomes available and the 2009 update covered the smaller heater inlet with vin numbers and finish.
Bob

Thanks Nick and Bob. I guess Bob would know the complete status of the guide since he wrote it. :slight_smile: My coarse thread bolts are black oxide so I left them that way. Nuts are cad so they will left as is. I have cleaned the washers since they were covered in various paints and will make sure they are black when I put them back on.

Appreciate the good info.

–Drew

Hi Drew My 67 coupe, manufactured in Aug/66, appears original in this area. The inlet is a fine wrinkled flatish black, the bolts are marked “Bees” and they and the washers are a semi gloss painted black. The paint is typical of unpolished lacquer that they used for everything black in that period. The washers used are the long semi oval type they used on body panels. They used a “wire” type split lock washer - that is it’s very thin horizontally. There is no washer on the bolt that is top inside on the left side - as you face it. It’s the bolt you can’t see unless you bend down and look up to it.

Thanks Terry. Very helpful information. I didn’t get to see your 67 coupe when we were at your place for the happy hour after the Oil Leak three years ago, but did get to see your beautiful house and wonderful garage. Interestingly, my car has only nine of the oval washers and I assumed one of them had been lost. Guess not. I feel better. :slight_smile: All the split lock washers were missing though.

–Drew

I did a photo survey on XKE Data.com on the first 1000-those that had photos. Some of the early outside bonnet lock cars had silver paint, some had body color, some had black. Later cars had either body color or black, a few had grey/silver and two had white though their car color was not white. Those that had the inside of their bonnet painted black also had black heater inlets. Many had been “restored” so the question is did they just repaint the bonnet with the heater inlet installed? Did they buy a new replacement inlet(comes in black) and just not paint it? Many seemed to come in gloss black, I could not tell about crinkle black. Saw photos for an early car and same photos for a car 400 numbers later. Some supposed excellent restorers did not bother to use the oval washers on the inlets. Same goes for sugar scoops. Early cars were supposed to have body color while later had silver. Found many early with silver. Later cars after the first 500 or so had color, even black cars so I think restorers assumed the silver and painted them on cars that should be body color. Hard to see any pattern by build date otherwise. oval washers were either silver/plated or body color. Bolts/screws all looked silver with some black…
Most rare photos, on the site plus in all the restoration books are pictures of the underside of the bonnet. Frustrating.
Also of note as I spent 3 hours doing this survey while watching a golf on tv yesterday was that many early rare outside bonnet lock cars have “owners” and are accounted for-if only by either a submitted body number or engine number and nothing else-with no pictures. No full registration plate numbers given. Once the car number is past the outside bonnet lock cars, around 400 something, the number of non registered/missing cars on this site goes up dramatically. Anyone could find a missing number, buy a picture frame and stamp it with such a number and Viola a missing car appears. Not that anyone would think to do this…

And if the fraudster hit onto a legitimately titled VIN from a car not registered in xkedata and tried to pass the car off as legit he’d be in hot soup, as they say. Now, if you have a complete bitsa E-type and can find a rusty picture frame and/or a legal title, that’s another matter. What it would cost to make the thing either period correct or a high-end resto-mod would likely exceed the payback. Otherwise a good reason to register your car in the xkedatabase.

Well, I remembered that almost entirely wrong. This is how I finished that part of the car:

wrinkle black scoop but body colour GKN bolts and oval washers.

Makes one wonder if the bolts and washers were originally painted with the bonnet then removed to place the scoop and then put back.

Case in point - there’s a FHC on eBay right now which is described as a '62. The seller states that it doesn’t have it’s original engine and gearbox but has another set from a '62. To be fair to the seller, nothing is hidden. There are photos of all the numbered parts (engine, Gearbox, picture frame, body tag and even crayon’ed numbers in hidden areas). The problem is that if you look up the engine, gearbox AND BODY numbers in xkedata to find out where they would have been produced chronologically, they are most likely all from a late 1963/early 1964 car. Other clues (e.g. the material used for the console) suggest that what we have is a late 63/early 64 car with a 1962 picture frame, and nothing more (except the data plate of course). Sound suspicious?..

-David

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I believe that is exactly how mine was done. The paint is original:

You can even see that the oval washer on the lower left was crooked during the paint process, leaving a patch of unpainted metal once it was correctly in place with the installed snout.

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At Jaguar, quality was… some job, sometimes…:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Ah, jeez, David, how cynical can one get…:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Interesting. Maybe my washers and bolts were originally painted body color (Opalescent Maroon). They are all black now.

–Drew

Thats a lot of research, Jim. I primarily use XKEdata and the Mueller/Haddock book to confirm originality – plus other sources when they have something. I am not making my car into a concours car, but I do like to have everything as original as possible.

–Drew

I just twigged on your above statement: was there no primer under the paint?

Looks to me like the bolts & washers were in place for both primer and paint - thus when the one that was crooked was repositioned as the intake was installed, bare metal was revealed.

This could be confirmed by removal of the intake to see that lies under - but I won’t be doing that anytime soon.

It’s one of the sweet mysteries of E Type construction. Similar to the question of whether the bolts holding the frame to the body are painted. If the bolts and washers holding the fiberglass heater intake were body color when the intake was always black wrinkle finish it seems Jaguar would have to either mask the inlet - no evidence of that, or paint the bolts and washers body color as a separate item, both of which seem completely unreasonable, and pointless…