On a 1954 xk120 rdstr where is the speed plaque mounted and what is used to mount it? I have seen alot of different locations and pop rivets to screws to mount it. What is correct?
According to Philip Porter, in Original Jaguar XK, they were attached by four coppered finish, round head, Type U drive screws (No 0 x 3/16”).
The info on size will be from factory records and you can still buy these certainly here in OZ called drive pins
Alloy body
(I looked in hardware but did not find a better description)
Steel body
(no fastener listed)
philip will have got his info from the production schedule which are the very detailed sheets that describe every part of the car and its size dimension thickness etc etc.
I do have full sets of all of these
How do these fasteners work? They do not appear to have screw heads, yet they are mounted on an aluminum panel covered with leather.
they like the name I use drive pin have a reverse corkscrew for want of best description and effectively you press/tap them in to a slightly undersized hole.
The same pins bigger size hold airscoops on early XK120 backing plates.
Three steel ones were used to attach the famous inverted triangular patent badge to the alloy timing cover of hundreds of thousands of Triumph motorcycles.
They look like knurled solid round headed rivets and are one grade harder than the blind hole substrate - steel into alloy in Triumph’ s case, brass into wood for the XK, alloy into plastic in a few electrical items.
The side parts where the speed plaque attaches on 120 OTS are actually the end parts of a full width aluminium panel. Only the centre part with the instruments is wood.
I used to write such things for lab equipment, and would be very interested to see these. Can you scan and post them?
They are also known as screw nails or drive screws. McMaster-Carr has them.
Photos of reproduction Speed Plaques seem to show fairly large holes punched in the four corners. With no guidance from the Spare Parts Catalogue, this may explain why so many Speed Plaques get attached with giant screws, rivets, etc.
Thanks for all the information about screw nails attaching the speed plaque. Where on the right side was it positioned, centered under the grab bar??
On my November 1953 car, the left side of the plaque is 2.5 inches from the offset for the center instrument panel. The bottom of the plaque is about 1/4 inch above the bottom of right side panel. I don’t believe my plaque has ever been removed since the car left the factory.
From what I’ve seen, the positioning seems to vary a bit. Perhaps there was no hard and fast position, and it was up to the factory worker on that particular day… Urs Schmid shows the plates attached in different positions on what look to be exceptionally original cars. The most common position I’ve seen is below the grab rail but quite close to the centre instrument panel. However, it was sometimes more centrally placed, too. There are two visible screws on each side of the panel which attach it to the sheet metal supports behind them. The plate would necessarily need to avoid those.
Chris
There were 17 countries where XK120s were delivered with the Replica Plates as long as the cars were OTS and were equipped with 8:1 compression engines. The U.S. was one of the 17 countries.
Heritage Certificate says delivery to Hornberg Dist. in CA. It has a white steering wheel. Is there a chance it was ordered without the plate for some reason? Car show?
Mitchell:
Never mind mine doesn’t have one either! When initially installed bragging rights for fastest production car were legitimate, by 1953, maybe not.
Chris.
Maybe if it was an SE with dual exhaust and wire wheels it would not have been considered an “Exact Replica” in the period sense.
It would be interesting when and why they did install them. We’ve had a recent thread on this and it’s still not clear, although we were mostly discussing repops and the different signatures available.
Is there a definitive list of criteria for when and why these plates were attached? My March '53 OTS SE (white steering wheel), CA car didn’t get one.