At 16, I began to learn to be a gear head. Read, read and then got a car that did not run. got it to run and drive.
Dyke’s Automotive encyclopedia !! Pal Billy and I devoured it… A lister had a spare e recently. Gave it to me. Utmost thanks for the memories.
Read, read… Kirby Palm’s encyclopedia,
And, for general nut twisting. G to you tube. Not here in my early days!!
I’m still learning! Watched a guy get an old VW beetle engine to run. Others had deemed it hopeless . Zero compression in all holes.
How, I’ll not tell at this time.
Another rescued a derelict compressor. Valuable lessons in how they work and also the relation of pulley sizes…
Swapping in a new filter. Good idea. Basics.
How much did that cost? Around here the hourly rate is about $125 the last time I looked. Possibly, even more, now.
So extrapolate. Hours and rate to add a turbo and seats!!!
What tools do you have? And what space in which to work ?
That one compares with a line I remember from somewhere in Kirby’s book about the dimness (i.e. poor quantity of light) of the headlights on the pre-facelifts (European rectangles?) … Maybe it was Ed Sowell (?) who opined something along the lines of there being merely “a suggestion of light in front of the car” by means of them …
Kirbert
(Author of the Book, former owner of an '83 XJ-S H.E.)
24
I think it was “a vague impression of some light”. I think it was the facelifts being discussed, actually! The US DOT Carellos suck!
Maybe that was it, Kirby … Yep, seems like the quad lights NEVER had that issue! In fact, if I weren’t a bit lazy at my age, I’d have Superblue retrofitted with the quads …
Best thing I ever did with my ‘92 XJ40 was to change the bricks to a set of quads (with 100w off road use only bulbs)
Kirbert
(Author of the Book, former owner of an '83 XJ-S H.E.)
27
The DOT quads suck, too – but they can easily be upgraded.
Kirbert
(Author of the Book, former owner of an '83 XJ-S H.E.)
28
The other option is to replace the US DOT-spec Carellos with E-Code Carellos. Presumably a bolt-in swap, but a tremendous improvement in lighting. The challenge is getting ahold of a set of E-Code Carellos.
Are they legal in the U.S.? I see so many people driving around with those Xenon bulb headlights anymore and, IIRC, those are not legal “for road use”. I guess the inspectors look the other way ($?) when it comes time for inspection …
On a related note, I had posted a thread earlier about switching the interior lights to LEDs. I got to thinking too about upgrading from the “standard” halogen bulb headlights to the “silver” or even “gold”-grade premium $ ones. A few questions, though:
(1) do the higher grade bulbs use/require more watts of power than the standard grade ones? If so, does this higher wattage requirement impair (i.e. overload) the charging system in any serious aspect, or does it just have a negligible effect on things? (2) the packaging with the higher grade bulbs show the beam path to be a bit wider and extend out a bit further than the path made by the standard bulbs. What I’m looking for is not so much that, but that the area which is lit by the bulbs is BRIGHTER than it usually is … Do these higher grade bulbs actually make it brighter, or just extend the area of coverage? and, finally, (3) are the higher grade bulbs really worth the 2x+ $$ for them, or is it pretty much just gimmick sales hype? (I think they also claim to last longer than the standard grade bulbs - true or false?).
Kirbert
(Author of the Book, former owner of an '83 XJ-S H.E.)
30
The ads for expensive bulbs are a joke. The only thing the bulb can possibly do for you is give you more light, which enlarges the visible range in general. But the DOT-spec Carellos are so bad that supposedly all you’ll get is more of lousy light. The E-code Carellos use an H4 bulb, much better arrangement for actually seeing where you’re going.
I don’t believe anyone cares about the legality of headlights unless you blind an oncoming cop with 600W aviation landing lights. There are so many varieties of headlights out there I’m sure they can’t keep up with what’s legal and what’s not. Don’t go with colors, though; every cop knows that headlights are supposed to be white.
Early last year I put an Amazon special Xenon kit in my suburban, which is a four bulb system. Part of the work was rewiring so that the high-current was handled by relays near the headlights vs. the headlight switch, which is always a good idea and should be step one in any headlight-improvement effort.
I am super pleased with the results. My XJS has the single euro headlights, and I will do the same upgrade to it at some point. You can get all kinds of stupid (my opinion) colors, I went for the whitest light I could find.
Regards
Bob
Kirbert
(Author of the Book, former owner of an '83 XJ-S H.E.)
32
Oh, yeah, relays are essential for good visibility. However, I think the facelift comes from the factory with such relays. The earlier XJ-S did not, I had to add them to my '83.
One other thing that improved the visibility noticeably was replacing the Lucas alt with a CS130. The Lucas charged at 13.6V. The CS130 charges at 14.4V when cool, decreasing to 13.6V as things get hot in the engine compartment. My engine compartment ran pretty cool – especially after dark – and the additional voltage did wonders for the brightness and the whiteness of the headlights.
Skip the turbo. The compression on your engine is already high enough to require premium gas, and you would have to change the engine internals to get it to handle the extra. Also, the exhaust valve positioning greatly limits the amount of air that flows through the engine, limiting the power. You would also have to find a way to redo the fuel map in the ecu, as the wide open throttle settings are hard coded (they don’t change with changes in air flow sensed by the ECU) and you’ll melt your pistons running lean.
Get a better alternator. If you want to add anything electrical, better charging is a must. My car is fairly well gutted (water leak and previous owner mods have caused me to yank most of the interior) and I have swapped out the belt driven cooling fan for an electric one and the (small) GM alternator the the PO upgraded to still doesn’t like to keep the battery charged all that well when it is running. If you want to put more power accessories in the car for comfort, you’ll need more power.
When you upgrade the alternator, add a larger diameter cable between it and the positive posts on the firewall, otherwise all your charging will be through the tiny wires (I work in electrical engineering, I’m used to working around 2/0 and larger, so they are tiny to me!) that run from the alternator to the starter.
Upgrade the transmission and rear end. The TH400 is a beast of a transmission, and I recently estimated that I got around 16 mpg on a week’s worth of driving to a remote job site. Now, had I had the newer version with overdrive (a 4L80E if I remember correctly) and better gearing I would have gotten better lower end response and better fuel economy. As it stands the 2.88 gearing in the rear limits low-end acceleration, but it helps the 3 speed TH400 get something approximating decent gas mileage.
Do what everyone else has said about the cooling systems and all the rubber on the car, or risk the inside flooding while the engine compartment overheats and catches fire from leaking fuel lines and a plugged radiator.
Oh, and Kirby, I wanted to mention an additional project I was taking on that, much like all my other projects, I am unlikely to ever finish. I hope you don’t mind, but I am going through my pdf download of your book and adding bookmarks to everything outlined in the table of contents so that it is quicker to find. There are so many good points in there that I’m having trouble keeping track of them all.
What this guy is talking about makes no sense at all. We all know that you can’t suddenly become a captain after boarding a ship for the first time. When you have guy talking about turbos right out of the gate as if he was a Bradly Smith. Chad Bolles and people on that level don’t even talk like that. The contributors of this forum need not piss their knowledge into the wind on someone who admittedly can’t change a fuel filter. Are you kidding me!!!
That yes but why be that harsh. We established that charging is not feasible, and why, but the rest seems reasonable enough.
Besides some overly enthusiastic approaches got many here in the first place.
Scam? Come on. Why this.
I hope that @NotAMechanic hasn’t been discouraged and returns. We may have struck him as a bunch of conservative sticks in the mud. JL’s strength is the range of knowledge and experience we’ve all collected. We’ve got engineers, purists, tinkerers, modders, stylists, bodgers and everything in between. On top of that I suspect that for some reason the XJ-S is the model which is most often modified.
I don’t doubt that one could turbo an XJ-S at all - but I would suggest that the best starting point is a well sorted car, the fabrication skills and an understanding of the engineering required.
Yep, seems like the quad lights NEVER had that issue! In fact, if I weren’t a bit lazy at my age, I’d have Superblue retrofitted with the quads …
