after years of financial and personal hardship, I may be back into the ability to play with the XJC, It is looking sadly forlorn in the California sun with its vinyl rood but a distant memory.
As the day approaches it seems when I can finally get the time, place and cash to replace the gearbox with the GM 700 and adapter stored for years, replace the cylinderhead with the Coventry West item patiently waiting on a shelf, get a well need screens off respray and panels alignment, and a 100 other projects that are queued up, I toy with fancies of wider wheels and arches just because why not.
I have been moving away from keeping the car hyper original, every since its own block was declared dead for good with every single cylinder wall crackedā¦
So, any one to advise on a thoughtful and elegant mod for a slightly wider stance (certainly not going to broadspeed extremes)?
With the price of XJCās only going up , I would keep the body standard , maybe lower it a bit , bigger wheels , keeping the body plain and standard !
great news you can get back at your XJC project! These are wonderful cars and certainly need not look like Her Majestyās tea table.
Still, much like Ian expressed, I would tend not to mess with the body and the wheel arches. As regards rims Iām afraid you wonāt be able to get some of these super wide super good looking super cheap things advertised for the Fast and Furious fraction of car buffs. Wheel hubs and (front) brake calipers will narrow your choice.
The easiest way to go would seem to me to look at the sports package equipment offered for the XJ-S. Not only does this car share a great deal of the series XJās platform and running gear, it only is the last Jaguar designed for the same set of tires as the series XJ (XJ40 was designed for TRX tires). There are pretty wide 16 inch lattice rims permitting 235/60 tires basically stock. As regards suspension you might also look at the XJ-S sport pack setup.
At the bottom line though, Iād most certainly shy off - it is a game of trial and error: You never know whether youāll really succeed in āimprovingā ride or road holding and - if not - you have to be ready to just do it all over again, change back those shortened and stiffer springs the sports shocks or the fatter anti-roll bar ā¦ It may be best to simply keep co-piloting in other peopleās cars and copy the setup you like most.
Thank you for this folks.
The XJS had I believe 15 inches wheels up until 1993 when they switched to 16 inches, am I right?
So it may be worth checking after market options for later XJS wheels. I quite like the lattice pattern.
May be one way to go about this is the find the right wheels and tires are then adjust the wheel arches only if needed, keeping the adjustment to the bare minimun.
John Larson runs 17" XJR (X300) wheels and slightly lowered suspension on his slalom-winning XJC. Also has black XJS front seats that blend superbly with the black XJC cabin.
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At some stage, Eric; consider ride quality with skinnier tyres. And at some further stage, wider front wheel may interfere with steering lock - possibly alleviated by increased offset. Which will increase suspension loads. I agree with Jochen and Ian; donāt really think the game you propose is worth the candle - āspecialsā may not be attractive compared to the originalā¦
