I've been out of town for the last few weeks, but now that Fall is getting closer I decided to replace the right-hand fuel level sender. It would measure full for about 75 miles of driving then drop to empty, even though there was still about 2-3 gallons left in the tank. So I bought a new one from David Manners and set out to remove the old one.
The sender has a cover over it, held on with a nut.


Remove the nut, the cover, the foam seal ring, and the wiring connections and you have access to the sender.
Removal is easy - just tap one of the three tangs counter-clockwise.


After removing the lock ring, the sender can be removed quite easily.


Even though I have a new one, I pulled the cover off the old one It actually looked like it was in pretty good shape.


Using some emery cloth, I lightly cleaned the wiper and the wire tracks. I used just enough pressure to clean off the old corrosion.


Before replacing it, I hooked up the electrical connectors and while operating the float, made sure the gauge was indicating the correct level. I decided to re-use the old sender and keep the new one for a rainy day.

 

Nice gloves ! who makes / sells them ? I'm new to mechanics and just dipping my toes into DIY fixing up.
Schmitty

 

I . They're not cheap but they hold up to gasoline really well so I only use them when I need to.

 

Great job. Lucky it was the sender unit. The trouble arises when a small hole rusts through the pickup pipe & you lose suction & cant use the fuel in the tank below that level. More common than you may think.

 

I stuck my borescope camera through the opening and was happy with the cleanliness (and lack of rust) in the tank. But I could see the problem you describe causing a lot of frustration.

 

Yes ~ In a low use car it pays to keep the tanks full. My boroscope camera found the hole in the left tank pickup tube. I had 2 donor cars & thew the spare tanks away that I now regret.

 

My car came with foam air cleaners (not K&N) on the SU's, and while I love the way they sound, I want to eventually get back to the factory air cleaner set up. I found an original cleaner and bracket on eBay UK and had it shipped over.
It was pretty crusty and while I am really trying to keep myself from over-restoring, I couldn't in good conscience put it on the car looking like that.


I threw it in the blaster cabinet and removed the old paint and spot rust.

Here's the end cap after coming out of the blaster


And here's the rest of the filter housing after blasting and 3 coats of hammered silver paint.


I also picked up the air horn assembly that someone spent some serious time polishing up.

 

Great ~ Colour is right. Don't forget to put the plastic/rubber/nylon drain tubes onto the 2 nipples on the bottom of the Plenum chamber. They should hang into the air-stream under the car to drain excess fuel should you flood the carbs. It's a safety measure against under bonnet fires.

BTW Gaskets/seals 4 are built into modern elements. Rubber collar No 20 is unobtainable. Alan Wiedie had some made but I think they are all gone. People make do with pieces of Tyre inner tube etc.

 

Intake hose bracket complete that bolts to front of engine. Circular bracket is upside down in this pic but it's all I've got & I'm not stripping mine again.

 

I'm about a month out from a 2,000 mile road trip from Chicago to Fairhope, Alabama for the South Alabama British Car Festival. I'm planning stops in Starkville MS to take my niece and nephew out to lunch and a stay in Biloxi MS to see a good friend.

I've been debating cruise control and have been holding off on it because I really didn't want to have an obvious control panel in the car and I didn't want to clutter up the under-hood area. I think I met both of those requirements.

I thought about using a Dakota Digital cruise control kit driven by a GPS sender. I put one in my MGB and it works well enough, but I honestly didn't want to spend that much money on it. I had a couple Audiovox CCS-100 cruise control units on my shelf. Those were my go-to cruise control solution for the last 2 decades and they work really well in manual transmission cars. They read the tach signal and hold the engine to that speed - meaning you don't have to come up with a VSS signal or GPS solution. The only problem was I didn't have the wiring harness for them - so I made one. Here I am about 1/2 way through wiring up the control panel switch.


Control panel switch completed and loomed up to the point it goes through the firewall.


Here's the cruise control end of the wiring harness safely and securely attached to the cruise control unit. There's a cover that seals where the wire enter to keep it dry.


I mounted the cruise control in the front right fender next to the vacuum reservoir tank. It's out of the way of the wheel even on full lock and full compression of the suspension.
I used a Delphi/Weather-pack connector to make it easy to remove the unit if I ever need to.


I spent a lot of time trying to decide where I wanted to hook up the actuator cable and went with the simplest approach. I made a small bracket and bolted it to the crab bracket. The cruise servo pulls up on the throttle arm to increase speed.


For the switch panel, I wanted to make sure it was unobtrusive and out-of-the way until needed.
It's neatly tucked between the front seats and you can't even see it.


When you want to use cruise control, you pull the panel out from between the two seats.


Close up of the panel.
I planned on buying some original style dash switches and putting them somewhere on the dash, but I think I'm going to stick with the simple approach for now.

 

That's an interesting device. You're fortunate to still have roads where cruise control is useful. It's on three of my cars as OE and I've switched it on one or twice to to check that it worked. The only times that I've made genuine use of it have been in the US.

 

What's the old saying? In the US 100 years is a long time but in Europe 100 miles is a long way?
I'll never use it in the city. It only comes into play on long interstate drives where being inattentive to speed has its downsides.

 

It's been a busy week. Last Thursday I went out for lunch and on the way back I took a rock to the windscreen. It's pretty bad but what's worse is that I called a few glass places and no one wants to touch it. So I ordered a new windshield and seals and will replace it myself.


My parents came up for the weekend and Dad drove the Jaguar to Coffee and Classics. He's a Mopar guy but really enjoys driving my Jaguars.


We took the Jaguar to dinner Friday night and right when I pulled into the driveway the headlights quit. I dropped the gauge panel and checked the fuses and they were fine but the fuse was hot. I'm guessing my halogen lamps pull more amps than the old sealed beams. I hooked up an ammeter and the low beams were pulling 12 amps. That's no bueno and I've been meaning to put in headlamp relays so that got moved to the top of the list. I like to start my wiring at the battery; here's the harness I made to go from the + post on the battery to two 30 amp circuit breaks (one for low beams, one for high beams). 12 gauge wire rated to 38 amps should be fine.


One relay for low beams, one relay for high beams. I'm crimping and sealing the connections with heat shrink tubing. Amp draw through the factory low beam wiring went from 12 amps to .14 amps after adding the relays to the circuit.


Now I wait for the UPS guy to bring me some 14 gauge wire to wire up the headlamps.

 

Shame about the Windscreen.

 

That's a nasty spider web from the rock, the all the glass is tinted since the car originally had A/C. Where did you order the windshield from?

 

Wow!

Nice thread- just picked up a restorable one, looking forward to catching up to you!

D

 

The windshield came from Moss and I was glad to see it survived the shipping process. I'm trying to decide if the dash needs to come out for windshield replacement. I really hope it doesn't but I can see where it would make life easier.

 

If you did wish to remove the dash it would only need to be the top dash which in the 420 is the big padded section across the top and this is held in with four nuts easily accessible from underneath. Having said that to fit the screen you should use the string method which basically is that you fit the rubber seal to the aperture first. Then you feed a piece of thin rope or Para cord into the rubber seal before sitting the glass on top of the lower section of rubber seal. With someone slowly pulling the rope out of the seal whilst a second person gently pushes the glass into the seal the glass should ease into the rubber. Use lots of soapy water. If done this way then the dash can be left in place as the screen is sat in the lower section of rubber seal before you begin from the outside before using the rope to pull the sides and top of the seal into position.

 

Thanks for the advice! Years ago I replaced the windshield on a W116 Mercedes using the string method and I was surprised how easy it was. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

And seat the bottom corners properly first or the rubber pulls back from the body. The seal will seem too large. It isn't.