I just signed up to this forum because I was enjoying reading about your project. Sorry for the mishap. It sounds like you are already well on the way to a full recovery.

 

Lin,


You missed what I pointed out, my hood did not have the safety catch at all. Since I never owned a Jag I had no clue there was supposed to be something there. Since it did not have any part of the safety catch and they did not fully secure the hood to lock the wind took the hood up and that force ripped the hood right off the hinges and both hinges are bent but I am sure they can be fixed.


What sucks is that hood was perfect and the replacement hood I found while original with no big issues has some waves that the body shop may not be able to get fully perfect This hood was the best of three I found, I wish they made new ones.... I hope it turns out decent. I know this is a daily driver but part of me wants it almost show quality....

 

Wow, so sorry. That took a lot of force to rip the bolts out of the bonnet. I hope your replacement bonnet turns out the way you want. Good luck.
Lin

 

So sorry about your hood mishap. As Lin was saying, you actually did have the safety latch on your hood, it can be clearly seen in the second pic on post 22. From the looks of it, the spring wasn't forcing the latch to catch the striker receptacle.


David

 

Thanks for that catch. All I know is that after we installed the hood I never had to move any latch to open or close the hood. I am not sure if for some reason after that picture the latch broke off or as you said the spring was not making the latch work? Either way I am going to super paranoid to make sure we have the new hood and latch working well. Do you think this old 50 year old mechanism needs another back up safety aspect or is this just a weird fluke? This was such a pain in the butt and could have been way worse. Curious as to anyone's thoughts of adding an additional something in the event the 50 year old latch acts up and we would never know until the hood flies off?

 

A lot of MK 2 Jags can be seen with leather straps holding the hood down. Maybe they have already learned the hard way./Users/trevorjordan/Desktop/Jags/Leather Straps.jpg

 

I am still waiting for a friend of mine to finish repairing my glove box but I just added my custom engine cover so here are some pictures of the completed car. Once I get the glove in I will post pictures of the completed interior.


The car drives smooth, starts every time, and pulls hard for a four door. I've been daily driving the Jag and fixing all of the minor items that I find and am very close to making it perfect. The car is quiet but when you want the power it is so fun knowing the horsepower is there. I smoked a Nissan 350 Z off the line which was a blast.

 

Primaz,
The car looks great and it sounds like you are enjoying it!
One though. The air conditioning evaporator is very ugly in the engine bay.
I am installing the same Retro Air system in my 64 3.8 MOD. I have wondered about making a light fiberglass or sheet metal cover (shroud) for it, and painting it black to match the heater or body color like your engine cover.

What do you think?

By the way, are you satisfied with the cooling provided by the RetroAir system? I wish my compressor was on the right side of the engine like your's to minimize the hose lengths. I don't like all of those hoses in the engine bay. I also have the hydraulic hoses for the power steering for the rack and pinion.

I am very envious of your progress!

Lin

 

Lin,


I share the same thought of the appearance but for me I did not want to bother as this is a daily driver and not a show car. What we did do is go to a shop to cut and redo the fittings on the lines so they are not as long as the factory lines provided. The AC works great! I bought the kit minus the compressor as the serpentine pulley system came with the same compressor just chromed as a package. I only did the fancy serpentine kit in order to get the narrow arrangement to clear all of the accessories but that gave the engine a show car type look but we only did fancy lines where I thought it was practical for performance like fuel lines. This car is so much fun as it just cruises like a new car but anytime I want to pass someone the power is intense and they are just stunned that this old car has way more power than their new performance car.

 

The parking lights that are stock are useless as far as contributing to night vision. I wanted much better vision to drive faster at night so what I did was remove the stock light and chrome trim piece and we mounted 2 2/3" PIA halogen driving lights. They fit with no cutting. The stick out slightly so that I can adjust it left and right or up and down easily. They look clean and they give more light output than my HID's

 

Here is the completed interior. The front and rear seats out of a Vanden Plas was used as they had the nice picnic trays, I wanted to add to that luxurious wood look with picnic trays for the rear and have a good head rest/back support for comfort and safety. I was going to paint the leather but since I put new upholstery on all the door panels, new carpet, new headliner, it would look half *** do painted the leather. All of the seats were redone with new leather. The rear seat was one foot longer so it was sectioned to fit.


Some of the cool features in the stereo are that no speakers are visible at all. There are front separates installed into custom kick panel enclosure using Porsche carpets made to allow full range sound to go thru. On the passenger firewall a custom box was made to house two long throw 6" JL Audio subs that kick like they are 10's! The rear also had separates hidden as well. The five channel amp is under the passenger seat.


This car is a daily driver but during the week the Jag is a mobile road warrior car. the trunk has a 3000 watt pure sine wave inverter that can handle 6000 watt peaks. That inverter is fed by two 6 volt AGM golf car batteries in series where the rear passenger side gas tank used to be. Where the driver rear gas tank was is now the new location for the full size starting battery. A Hell-Roaring battery isolator system is used to keep the two systems separated. A 140 AMP alternator is used to ensure ample charging capacity. The two gas tanks were removed as the car is fuel injected so trying to tie the tanks together would be unsafe. We used a 1965 Mustang gas tank as the shape was perfect for the cavity where the wheel well used to be.


The mobile office uses two industrial ball bearing rollers each able to hold 700 lbs of weight. A stainless mesh rack was welded with a frame to hold all of the electronics so that there would be easy access to use and reach everything. On the rack is a high quality off road refrigerator/freezer, a office quality color laser jet, and microwave. I will probably put my wire binding machine/hole puncher and high speed scanner instead of the microwave for more practical mobile warrior use.


I installed a RAM laptop mount with quick release base so that I can remove the computer mount easily in seconds for weekends, etc. when I am not using it as the mobile office. There is continual WIFI so the laptop gets up to date e-mail and internet access. USB wires were routed to the passenger seat so that I can print files. Also 120 volt power is run to the front to keep the laptop and other electronics fully charged.


Lastly there is a rear view camera and GPS rearview mirror unit which is a cool technology to add those modern back up camera and GPS to an older car without modifying the classic Jaguar wooden dash or console. My console is stock other than the two digital volt meters and the addition of two cup holders.

 

Amazing work!
Lin

 

Primaz, the car looks awesome - especially the interior. The ride height and stance look just right with the wheel/tire combination. I'm a little old school so most of the modern electronics are lost on me, but you did a terrific job integrating everything. I'm curious about the carpeted bumpouts in the front footwells - are these functional as footrests or are they covering components or both?

It sounds like you have some seat time so I'd love to hear more about the driving characteristics. If I remember you've uprated the engine/trans and reinforced the rear end to handle the power, installed a modern steering rack and coil-overs all around and uprated brakes. I know my goal with these old beasts is to approach the ride and handling of a modern performance car, so I'm curious how close you got to your target and if there are any further tweaks or changes needed.

Be safe, no tickets, happy cruising and congratulations on completing the build - terrific job. Perhaps we can meet in the middle someday and find out who's the quickest: )

 

Doug,


The front has custom speaker boxes that attach to the kick panels on both sides. These house two way component speakers (Focals). They look like they are wrapped with the same carpet as the floors but they not. They are wrapped with Porsche breathable speaker carpet which is a unique material that looks like carpet but allows full range sound to go thru unobstructed. This is used on a lot of high end car audio set ups to hide the speakers. Then at the passenger firewall are two hidden items. One is another custom speaker box enclosure housing two special long throw 6" JL Audio sub woofers. These subs are amazing as the really kick like a 10" and I know as I used to do custom pro audio when I was in college. The speakers have metal grills that are flat so no high heels will ever damage the subs, then they are wrapped with the same Porsche speaker carpet. Also in that area is a modern fuse panel with a wooden cover to hide it that is carpeted.


Yes I have started to drive it as my daily driver and most of the minor punch list items have surfaced and have been fixed. The car has very fast acceleration. I am using the free phone app "QMileT" and have made about 4 short runs at stop lights with 0-60 times of 3.91, 4.2, and 4.5 seconds; I am not sure how accurate this application is but I can tell you that I smoked an Nissan 350Z car with custom wheels and a big exhaust like he was in a Prius. These times might drop as I just noticed the car is running a little rich and at long say 2 hours of stop and go traffic the engine has run rough twice and almost died until I revved the motor for a few minutes to enable the car to clean out unburnt fuel. We will have to tweak the fuel mixture a little and lean it out I suspect. I think the motor builder whom now is out of business built it for high performance a bit too much as this I a daily driver.


The 245 wide tires really enable the car to track well along with the lowered height, better springs, shocks, and tires. The car definitely drives to modern performance sedan levels. I have driven thru the mountain roads comfortably 50% to 100% over the posted speed limits in 25-35 MPH turn signs. I am taking that part slowly as my crazy mobile office I have been unsure if that extra weight has affected the handling. Thus far it seems not to have caused any noticeable issues. The power steering works well and the car is very smooth and quiet at normal speeds. It does have the power to go very fast with ease at any speed and the motor is smooth an not loud at all. On freeways I typically drive around 65 to 70 MPH and when it is clear I have taken it to about 90 so far and it is smooth and I am sure can go a lot more but I will take that slowly. To get this level we did change the springs to heavier rated in the front and rears. We also added a few shims and have the front wheels slightly negative camber but very slight.


I would like to see if more shims can be added in the rear and front. My 240Z is set up as a street car with 1 degree negative camber and that car will pull over 1G and take a clover leaf at over 80 MPH with no issues. I think if more shims can be added to get it a little closer to 1 degree it would be very impressive but not sure if this old school shim design can do that? I searched for camber kits and have not seen any aftermarket parts like my Datsun has available? The one other item I will be adding is custom front lower control arms that are narrower yet retain all the stock geometry and attachments so that the steering radius can be increased. I might have miss-measured the offset a little in the front so at full wheel lock the rim scraped the lower control arm. I put a steering stop to prevent that which is why I am changing the lower arms to get a better turning radius. Once that is done I will feel more comfortable pushing the corners harder that I have done so far. I know if I changed to 225 wide tires in the front with a 8" rim it would probably not rub but I am focused on having the wide 245 on all corners of the car. The rears clear with ease.


Overall I am very pleased as this car drives smooth like my old Lexus but with better handling and way better acceleration. When you drive this jag, without trying to go fast I notice that the car just takes off and I look around all the time as all of the cars around me are no where to be found; that is just to me normal driving but the power and the smooth ride makes the car go to 50 on the street before you realize it which is such a blast. I have put about 3000 miles so far as I drive about 150 to 250 miles M-F each day. The GM aluminum block/head to me is a great power plant and it is definitely lighter than the stock 6 that came with the car, that makes this car drive so effortlessly and not feel unbalanced. One last feedback is that on a two lane city street that merged into one lane, I stomped on the throttle to overtake this car about 2 lengths ahead of me and it launched like a rocket and as I turned slightly the rear wheels spun a little and I backed off just a bit as I was well over 1/2 a mile ahead of that car I passed and that was an amazing rush for a four door car! This car can haul ***!

 

I just added blue LED lights that are tied t the interior map switch as that is so dim and lame to me. I think this is cool and provides plenty of light to see when it is dark.

 

can you get them in red and what was the total cost to do all of the lights?

did you have any problems with the starting of any bulbs ?

how about the pillar lamps and rear lamp ?

 

Jose,


What I have done on the lights are:
* first conversion is LED bulbs for the dash but left the bulbs stock on the pillar as the LED's seemed to harsh to me, all from Xk's Unlimited but I am not happy with them as the bulbs connections break off too easily if you tighten the bulbs a little too tight. I am upgrading the instrument bulbs and the rear brake bulbs in another week from bettercarlighting.co.uk
* Headlights are 240Z HID's about $350
* PIAA lights to replace small stock lights about $200
* I used a blue LED strip light under the top wood dash. You can get those strips in red, yellow, blue, white or get the ones where the LED strip can be programmed to change to whatever color up to 3 million colors of your choice as well as do pulsing, etc. The blue LED strip was only $85 installed. I just picked up and installed a under car LED kit that is also in the trunk and hood to show off the car at night. Most of those kits range from $120 to $350 and come with a controller and a remote. I will post some pics of that soon.... That kit has LED's that can be changed to any color

 

Here is a before picture of the stock setup on a 3.8s as Jaguar never created an adequate front valence to cover the ugly bits; they made one rarely seen but it leave most of the ugly bits visible. After trying 6 or so attempts and playing with design shape this simple one worked out the best. Anyone interested feel free to contact Dave at Market Auto, San Jose, CA This is a rubber valence so no rocks can chip it.


Did an upgrade to custom lower A-arms for better clearance and turning as well as after three sets of springs for the front, finally got the ideal spring rating for the ideal balance for my tastes in comfort but also high performance driving. I am really loving how this car drives now. It is a perfect daily driving high performance luxury car.

 

Its the small unnoticed things to the untrained eye that really makes a build complete, great job with the front, looks like it was meant to be.


Did you change the location of the ball joint at all or is the arm an exact replica of the stock pivot points, just strengthened and designed for more clearance?


Assuming the clearance is to suit the wider front rims on full lock.


Did you also change the shock mount position? Just thinking out loud here, but if you extended it further down, it would allow you a greater shock travel, I don't know what its currently like, with regards to shock travel, length off bump stop etc, but it looks like you've designed the new arm to make the centre piece easily remade, and if you gave yourself another 1" or 2" you would allow greater shock control.


This ^ is purely going off having never seen your car in person, not knowing what its like to drive etc, it's probably more than fine the way it is, and something you guys probably considered during construction of those arms anyway.

 

Yes it is not changing the stock geometry other than giving more clearance. I could get custom drop spinals made but right now I am pretty happy with the performance.