I am ready to cut floorboards for my XK120, I cannot figure out why there are curved cutouts on the driver side. the one on the passenger is for the handbrake, which makes sense, but I can’t figure out why those cutouts when there isn’t anything there but the transmission tunnel? Thanks
I’ve recently done this job myself. My car is RHD. I found the best way was to keep offering up the floorboards and cut out reliefs just enough to prevent any contact with the gearbox, while leaving enough “meat” to have plenty of material under the flanges of the gearbox cover. My floorboards came without any cut outs. I used a bit like the ones you use in an old-fashioned brace and bit (but without the tapered square end!) in an electric drill on the slowest setting, and once the correct positions had been marked, I drilled a pilot hole big enough for the thickest bit of the threaded centre. You don’t want it trying to chew its way in. Then I used the large bit and kind of kept jabbing it up and down (it’s a slightly violent process) cutting the large hole part way through the plywood. Then I tuned it over and came in from the other side, ending up with a nice clean-edged hole. I overlapped the edge of the floorboard with the hole a little bit if necessary (you ideally want the hole to be centred on the screw) and cut the rest of the slot with a jigsaw. When I fitted the plates into their final postions located by their screws, I gave the edge with the gripping points a whack with a hammer to mark the wood, then I used a countersink bit to cut relief holes for the points so the plate would sit flatter on the floor and not be cocked up on one side like originally. This allows the carpets to sit better, too.
here is a question does anyone have a photo of an original ply floor for an XK120 roadster?
My old ones were home made replacements - pretty crude, and too thick as well.
I threw my originals out years ago and unfortunately didn’t take pictures. I sourced replacements fabbed using original patterns and material - 9 ply baltic birch 12 mm thick, painted flat black. As I recall they matched the shape of my delaminated originals. Inaccessible at the moment but remind me in a month or so if you still need pics.
@Terry_McGrath These are the floors that came on my car, not sure if they are original, but they look like it!
They look reasonably good what thickness are they
@Terry_McGrath they are approximately 0.5 inch. Do you know the purpose of the cutouts on the floors in the picture in my first post? I can’t make out what they are for!
The thickness of the original floorboards will be the same as boot floor panels and floor panels in the 120dhc and fhc and 140 and 150 floors.
This also matches the upturn on still with floor being level with top of still.
The thickness being 3/8 inch or 9.525mm
Baltic birch comes in standardised thicknesses measured in whole millimeters, starting at 3 mm up to 18 mm in 3 mm increments. The sheets are an oddball 5’x5’ size. The boot boards for my 120 are 9 mm, the floorboards are 12 mm. I do not think 9 mm floor boards would provide sufficient support for the weight of driver and passenger on their seats. Fwiw.
being good old English built cars all the measurements and thickness where in feet and inches
except bore and stroke!
the ply would only be 3/8 inch or as an exact conversion 9.525mm not a thickness now available or possibly 1/2 12.7mm
the floors are not really totally supporting the weight of the driver as the effectively sit on top of chassis rails the full length of the floor with a layer of felt underneath and then supported on inner section of tailshaft cover and at front with gearbox cover and down sills across battery box and across firewall with further bolts
If no one else has a better guess, I’ll offer mine.
The cutouts at the front are for clearance to the clutch shaft bumps on the bell housing.
The two pieces were cut out to be either LHD as drawn by Viart or RHD flipped over, and with RHD the cutout opposite the handbrake is for clearance for the speedometer cable.
The third cutout seems to be approximately where the u-joint grease fitting would be on a JL gearbox, so again would make sense if the piece was flipped over and used on a RHD car, clearance to reach the fitting. Trust Jaguar not to make different templates for LHD and RHD.
Yes, except the plywood used by Jaguar was Baltic Birch, which is not and was not manufactured in the UK. Baltic Birch plywood is exceptionally strong and stable, resisting flex and warping. Jaguar’s supplier would have sourced the stuff from NE Europe, most likely from Finland which was and still is the primary supplier. It’s more commonly used for fine woodworking. I’ve used it in cabinetry. While it’s sold in nominal 5’x5′ sheets in markets that still cling to the Imperial system, the actual size is metric, 1525 mm x 1525 mm. The thicknesses are also metric as indicated above, though the boards are often sold here labelled to their nominal Imperial equivalents.
@Rob_Reilly your guesses make sense, but the floor butts against the gearbox tunnel which doesn’t have these curved cutouts, which does not create a good seal. I am starting to cut mine out without the cutouts to see if they will fit and make good seal
Just cut and test fitted new floorboards, worked really well without any curved cutouts, I think this will leave a better seal than the originals
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Floor boards from James Lawrance - not a bad repro:
The correct screws and washers shown, too.
Tadek
What with BSF cheese head slotted screws?
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The grain should run north south ie up and down car material is stronger this way
Fairly basic question. Do the floorboards fit on to the gearbox cover, or does the gearbox cover fit on to the floorboards. I’ve seen both! Thanks for any clarification.
The transmission cover sits on top of the floorboards, on the OTS anyway. There are threaded circular nuts with small spikes on them which pull up into the wood from below when the bolts are tightened up. The mounting holes at the front of the cover should then line up with the captive nuts on the firewall. Here’s a pic of mine. I didn’t get round to taking pictures with the cover installed, sadly.
