XJ12 with 4 speed/ overdrive manual

I wonder how many are getting about in this configuration and want to do a roll-call

I note that Edgar Marques has one, so does Baxtor, and some bloke Edgar knows in France

If you have an XJ12 with a 4spd o/d manual, please chime in

Marek has a 6.0L MOD E-Type. A guy in Australia ditto IIRC.

I’m in the process of building a S1. I have everything but the V12 needs a major rebuild so it’ll be a while.

RustfreeMike,

Are you planning on doing the work on the V12 yourself? Curious because I’m about to start work on my V12.

Jeff H.

Yup - gonna do it myself Jeff. The biggest problem is finding a machine shop that I trust locally to do the machine work. I live in the sticks - last Jag engine I did I had to rent a truck and take everything to the Atlanta area. I may have to do that again.

RustfreeMike,

Good to know. Please post as you go. This will be my first V12. The sticks…LOL I feel your pain. I live in rural NW Iowa…Three hours to a major city, 1.5 to Fort Dodge the closed “big” city.

Jeff H.

A guy I knew once explained how he learned of the N Florida mentality. He moved from an area where you’d hunt over grassy plains, had to use a scope to shoot critters from a half mile away. Here in N Florida it’s all woods, you’ll be within 100 yards before you see them, so a scope doesn’t work well. He took his rifle to a gun shop to have a sight attached to the end of the barrel, as it didn’t have one. When he went to pick up the rifle, you could just look at it and see the sight on the end was a bit cattywompus, a little off to one side. When he complained about the work, the guy said, “Over the length of that barrel, that little bit won’t make any difference.”

The other example he gave was when he was rebuilding an engine and took the head to a machine shop for skimming. When he went to pick it up, he was fishing for his wallet when he happened to notice a pretty pronounced step in the freshly-milled surface on the head. Like the whole thing must have shifted in the rig or something. Definitely something you’d catch a nail on. “Oh, don’t worry about that, the head gasket will seal that right up.”

After a while, this kinda stuff is no longer surprising. It is very frustrating trying to find someone who actually knows what he’s doing. You can’t go by recommendations; these people happily recommend these shops that can’t find their posteriors in the dark. You can’t go by experience, either because some of these morons have been doing terrible work for decades.

Saw a really nice blue Coupe V12 with 5 speed box on it at my mechanics shop. Something of sad story, the owner had the body and interior done professionally at great cost but then the engine had failed and he had been quoted the equivalent of $16,000 which was an extra cost too far for his wallet and his relationship. The car was in limbo for months ‘awaiting clients instruction’.

A posible good deal for somebody who knew what they were doing with the engine

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Exactly… It seems I spend half my time undoing other ‘mechanic’s’ screw-ups. I’d like to think that someone who works as a machinist has a better attention to detail than the usual clown but sadly it’s not the case.

I have an XJ engine apart now that was rebuilt by a so-called ‘professional’ and quickly failed. Among the many problems I found was that it was re-sleeved and one of the sleeves dropped - probably machined incorrectly AND they skimmed the block without skimming the front cover. That 25 thousands sticking up in the front apparently didn’t bother them because they bolted down the head anyway. Can’t imagine what someone like that would do to a V12.

I have a S2 XJ12 ('74 Daimler VDP DDS) that I placed a Supra W57 5 speed Manual into, it has an XJS clutch and Dellows bellhousing. It was my DD for 5 years. It transforms the car.

I was advised that a Jaguar 4 speed + OD, that the OD would not handle the torque of the V12

(mind you some people said a Supra box could not either)

(its for sale in the classifieds atm)

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Hi,

If the O/D gets rebuilt it can be done so the clutch surfaces are done to a spec that can handle it, like I believe @MarekH has done in his V12 E-type.

That would be one if my favorite combos, a SWB S1 XJ12 with carbs and a manual gearbox, made to look perfectly stock. I have a factory original XJ6C with MOD and 2” SU HS8’s and a high compression engine and used to have a Ser 1 E-type 2+2 that had been converted from automatic to MOD, for a bit over 16 years. With the current V12 OTS I sometimes miss the OD. But only in Germany where one can drive a bit faster. YMMV.

Cheers!

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The etype is a lighter car than the big sedan, so it will be less strain on the transmission, torque wise. Similarly, simply running at 60mph in overdrive is less of an ask than running it at low speeds and slowly getting up to speed.

The compact type-A overdrive is a drop in replacement for a s3 etype.

kind regards
Marek

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A great deal of my Dad’s and my business model: lucrative, but frustrating.

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