Factory original. This is a beautiful restoration. Interior colour Cinnamon. One of the final cars built at Browns Lane. South Africa built the final 420. The HVAC was the genuine Jaguar Delaney Gallay Delanair unit.

 

See edit above re HVAC unit.

 

Unfortunately the metal stamping dies were worn out at Pressed Steel by this time hence body fit not perfect. If you blow up the picture so that you can see the top of front door clearance you will see the dilemma they find themselves in.

To achieve this sort of fit & finish would be a major operation as it was on this car. The best S Type I've ever seen restored in Germany & now in Japan despite Japan being RHD. Jaguar never built a car with this standard of body fit & finish. They don't even today. AL = Altena, North-Rhine-Westphalia.

 

Jaguar did not "manufacture" cars as per modern practices including robotic systems and tolerances down to a fraction of a millimetre.
Their employees 'fettled" them together as assorted bits were sent to the assembly line.
The idea of proper door gaps and body panel fitting went out the door with the demise of the MK7/8/9 series. I think some of it snuck back in the XJ40s around 1987.
But we are still enthralled with older vehicles which could and would show a clean set of heels to just about any other vehicle in its day and to quite a few today.
So we accept the less than acceptable and enjoy the experience of driving as per our parents and grandparents may have experienced it.
Cheers

 

Glyn, That misalignment at the B-post is fairly common even on earlier cars. It's often exacerbated by rot at the bottom of the A-post especially for the Mk2. My feeling is that it may be as much the welders who assembled the pieces together as the pressings themselves, though they were variable. The lead loaders at Brown's Lane did some nice work to hide the body production misalignments. Through careful jacking prior to welding the door posts and inner, intermediate and outer sills, it's possible to eliminate much of the problem that's due to rust - anything original from Pressed Steel is more difficult. I remember a car I saw a a Dutch restorer where the front door was about 2 cm lower than the B-post and they'd also visibly sheared the front edge of the window frame to allow the door to close. I don't know how they are these days, but the cars that Vicarage restored in the 1980s had incredibly good gaps, far better than original. They used quite a complex body jig.

An old colleague had worked on side frame jigs at Ford in the course of his apprenticeship in the 1960s. He reckoned that setting them up was about the most difficult and skilled activity in car body construction. If it wasn't easy at Ford, it must have been a significant challenge at the Presses Company. Fortunately, it's no longer required with side frames made in one big pressing.

Fitzee's fabrications has some interesting ideas on shut lines in his last couple of YouTube videos.

 

Agreed Peter ~ I'm not talking about the B pillar. But I have to say when I see the crap Jaguar sends to SA nothing much has changed. The rear door tip curl & front door issue on the 420 is die wear. Clearance to front fender but tight at the top.

Example in picture above & here at rear door tip:

 

The bodies arrived from Pressed Steel for our era of cars fully & badly assembled. They then fixed major errors & degreased them.
They removed bonnet & boot lid & propped them up for treatment & painting. They used huge spray guns with the widest pattern I have seen. They then removed the painted doors for easy access to the interior. Finally much polishing & fault correction took place that had not been noticed when they arrived from Pressed Steel.

I come from a country that produced many cars that could give Jags a good go & frequently a spanking. You guys had the Holden Monaro as probably the only alternative performance wise. Our Alfa plant produced some really fast machinery as an example ~ you could buy one with stage 3 cams & 45DCOE Webers straight off the showroom floor. Our Ford plant produced vehicles that would spank any Jag. Jags were not considered unusually high performance cars here. Rather old men & Jewish Doctors cars (they would not touch a Benz for obvious reasons). In 1965 the total sales of vehicles in South Africa was 127,898cars. That year Jaguar's market share was 0.33%. We were given broad license by the OEM's as to what we could do to cars like the hot V6 Cortina's & Capri's as an example. Bobby Olthoff's awsome Ford Galaxie 500 won most races. Ford was happy. The man in the street could buy one. Much as I love mine, Jags were considered troublesome vehicles in our conditions. Many had to be towed to the agents. Jag here fixed the overheating problem very early on by fitting Silverton tropical radiators. Silverton became the OE supplier under the local content program.

Now that we know where the troubles lie we fix them in restoration.

 

I was pondering this last night & looking back through old racing books from the 60's. I don't think a Jaguar (especially 3.8 Mk2) ever won a race here or even it's class. They were too heavy with suspect handling (Mk2 ~ no IRS). An Alfa would clobber them.

 

"Much as I love mine, Jags were considered troublesome vehicles in our conditions."

I was a teenager in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s; believe me Jaguars were considered "troublesome" here too (in much milder conditions), but people loved them anyway...

I can remember we pressed out noses to the glass at British Motor Car Distributors admiring the E-types, but also noting that each one had a drip tray underneath the engine to catch the inevitable oil drips. We used to call them "Jaguar nappies". As a side note, the BMC showroom had hard surface flooring, while the Mercedes showroom had carpeting as a new Benz does not leak...

 

Same here. Yes the Bay Area has a very similar climate to Cape Town. I lived in Marin County for a while.

When my Dad owned his new incontinent Jags (He had an S Type followed by a 420) ~ he had a long metal catch tray made at work that covered from diff to engine under the car to keep fluids off of his spotless garage floor. Fortunately I inherited it although my car is at present dry underneath which took huge effort ~ (Thank you Yamabond). The last thing to leak was the O ring on the speedo drive. It took my Mum buying herself a Chrysler Valiant for him to learn what trouble free motoring was all about.

I grew up in a family where to buy British was to buy better ~ when all indications were to the contrary.

Look at British Motorcycles ~ they all leak. Why the Poms could not build things that did not leak I simply don't know when you consider the technology that came out of that little island with foul weather. Anyway Honda showed them how ~ electric starter & all. I mean who would want an electric starter on a motorcycle was the British attitude.

As you say "a new Benz does not leak..." Neither do Million Km cars from Mercedes today. The worlds upmarket Taxi is proof enough. A friend in Malaysia who works for our oilco runs a fleet of Benz Taxis from the distant airport to KL's Hotels. Runs them all to over 1 million Km's trouble free with servicing to the book by Cycle & Carriage ~ the agents. Just lots of tyres & brake pads.

Got to love the "Jaguar nappies".

 

I thought the leaks on Jaguars were built in from the factory as an underbody rust inhibitor.

 

LOL!

 

The local mechanic, back in the 1960s, always sprayed the underside of his customers cars with some of the oil that he'd drained from their engines.

 

I have a friend who sprays old engine oil into all the nooks and crannies of his classic cars as a rust inhibitor. He says it is better than Waxoyl as it runs into every corner. Does give his cars a rather unique smell.

 

Waxoyl doesn't smell very good to me and is a bit messy. XCP, Lanogard and Dinitrol are relatively inoffensive and work well. I've had a few litres of Waxoyl hanging around for decades, while the other brands are used up ... .

 

That's why I like good old Valvoline Tectyl. It creeps. It skins. It does not drip out of the bottom of doors on a hot day. They are the small opposition to our company but it has a fine track record a mile long. It's odor dissipates quickly. Our product works well & will do a permanent job unless you have a crash repair but it does not skin. Big failing.

 

I'm surprised to learn that any German car is reliable as that certainly hasn't been my experience with them. I owned an Audi A4 Quattro (B5) that left me stranded on the side of the road several times for various and sundry reasons as well as an Opel Manta that leaked oil incessantly.

On the odd occasion I had to work on a Mercedes, I always found them to be needlessly complex to the point we'd call it the Führer's Revenge. And yes, they leaked engine oil and coolant as well.

 

I'm a Super Moderator and Ambassador on MBWorld with 20,000 posts & your comments about Benz are extremely suspect. We have the largest single audience of MB owners around the world & your experience is not common at all. We are the Jewel in the Internet Brands Automotive crown followed by Audi. Benz vehicles do NOT commonly leak anything. I don't care if you are "TECH CERTIFIED". Standards must be low for such a claim. The fact that you find Benz vehicles "COMPLEX" says a lot about you & your lack of knowledge. The only time that Benz vehicles give trouble is when incompetent people fiddle with them. Just keep the bonnet/hood shut & drive them. They will give you adequate warning of impending trouble on the dash which has never happened on my last 5 vehicles. The 6th one I had forgotten to close the boot lid adequately. Having traveled the world 230 days a year for decades in the execution of my job your comments are unfounded.

 

@Glyn M Ruck, I can only speak from my experiences, and I apologise if I've personally offended you in some way. I have no doubt about my mechanical abilities, and have the career to back it up.

I must also say that I truly enjoy your posts and depth of knowledge of the various classic Jaguar models, as well as the exceptional restoration of your own vehicle.

 

And I have no doubt of my technical abilities ~ read my profile. I'm retired and have a very long career to back it up.
Thank you. BTW ~ do you have a passport for other than holiday reasons. One would doubt it. I too have racing experience both bikes & 3 F1 teams where I handled all Tribological affairs quietly in the background. Tribology is a broad subject. Anything from racing engines, any components in motion with one another & the prevention of wear by lubrication to the lubrication of prosthetic joints by bodily fluids.