Original rear hatch chrome on Ebay

No affiliation, but there is a buy it now auction on rear hatch trim just listed on Ebay. If you need trim that will fit, the price seems very good to me. Needs re-chrome, but it will fit ! If I needed trim it would be mine.

Early, or late?

IMS, the windows/hatches were slightly different.

IIRC, the series 1,2,and 3 hatch trim was the same, except for a few very, very early series 1 cars.

1 Like

Awrighty! I knew the hatches on early cars was different, wasn.t sure about the trims.

Hey, I’m just SWAGIN on this.( Scientific Wild Ass GuessIn’) I know some of the hatches were different, but I have no idea about the trim.

Trim was different too. I knew of several very early cars, perfect except for the missing trim. There is even a comment in Porter’s “Original Jaguar E-Type” pg. 12, that notes the car shown in the book is missing its trim which is unobtanium.
pauls

Now I dun feelz so stoopid…:wink:

Interesting. So why the interest in the old trim vs new? I ask because the FHC I bought (3 weeks ago today !) has new trim installed, with the old trim in the garage. It is decent but the chrome is tired…

I was thinking of trashing it. Apparently that’s not a good idea??

Thanks!
Robert

Heh, no need to feel stoopid :slight_smile: The first few hundred cars had a whole bunch of small differences. I have no idea what all of them were but that one I remembered because a friend had one such car with missing trim. Tried to find one, that’s how I found out.
pauls

Right you are Paul! The windshield trim on the OTS’s were changed from wide to narrow just before the OBL’s were deleted. The very first FHC’s had the wide upper trim that only appears in a couple of early factory it is not mentioned in either the parts manual are the spares bulletins. When I restored our 64 the plating shop that did our work would not even consider rechroming the hatch trim because of the possibility of the polishing wheel “grabbing” and destroying it. I ended up buying several sets before I found ones that fit to my satisfaction.

Hi Robert,
One of the very first rules of E Type ownership is Never, ever throw away old parts!
Cheers,
LLynn :slight_smile:

1 Like

I re-chromed my original rear hatch trim and it came back out of shape and doesn’t fit as well as it once did anymore. So beware…

The FHC body was comprehensively redesigned in about June 1962 - from 860479/886014 - with over 100 new parts, including the complete body, glass, trim and some chrome. Spare Parts Bulletin P60, which runs to six pages, refers. The rear screen chrome finishers were indeed changed to BD20159/1 and BD20159/2.

Trying to restore an early FHC is a nightmare as repro parts will not fit!

David

1 Like

I had mine re-chromed and they came back perfect, and fit perfect. I started this thread because I had read all the complaints about repro pieces not fitting, So I guess it could go either way.

1 Like

I owned one of these early Coupes and found out about these these differences the hard way while I was restoring it, My hatch trims were vandalized when I shipped the car to Canada 40 years ago so I bought new trims from Jaguar at the time, only to find they didn’t fit. I ended up repairing the unobtainable originals and I still have the NOS lower trim somewhere.

There were numerous major differences on these early Coupes, mostly to do with the rear end including the roof, the hatch and the wings. The gas lid is an immediate giveaway because it is rectangular rather than trapezoid as the later ones, and smaller.

There have been some notable early coupes restored by major outfits recently (OBL etc.) and some were in such dilapidated condition that many of these unobtainable parts would have needed replacing and I wonder how many of these cars ended up with the later parts instead.

I absolutely agree with Lynn. Never throw anything away. I have all the old parts stored in my garage (including old seals) and have either used them as a reference or refurbished them for other cars. I am amazed how often I dig through them.

–Drew

1 Like

Ok… I see that. But why the interest in the old trim when new is readily available??

New doesn’t always fit as well as the original. After a couple of hours of futilely trying to fit a rear hatch chrome the idea of having the old one re-chromed by a competent shop (you will want to get refs from other JL folks) starts to seem very attractive and far more attractive than an I’ll fitting piece of trim.

–Drew

1 Like

What is the link?
My coupe is absent the rear chrome around hatch window and looking to add. Do they sell an aftermarket or replication?