Primaz,
Fantastic build. Love the interior.
Quick question, What is your hood clearance between the blue engine cover/shroud and the hood?
Thanks

 

Sorry, I am not sure of the distance as all I cared about is clearing the hood. I can say that there is a reasonable amount of room as my LS V8 is the aluminum block truck V8 with the much higher and larger intake manifold that is a number of inches taller than a stock LS V8...

 

Are you still running the truck intake?


Was that by choice or just what came with the motor?


My LSx knowledge is growing, but isn't the LS6 intake the choice of the standard parts to suit the LS1?


That is I guess only if you want more power though

 

It was how the motor I commissioned to be built as it was an aluminum block LS1 truck motor and those came with the bigger intake to provide more torque. I wanted a low maintenance, good power, daily driver engine. I initially also thought of adding the twin screw blower but opted not as the reliability was not enough to me as I drive a lot with this Jaguar.

 

This can always be added later on

 

Just like many of the new cars that have limited airflow I added a power steering fluid cooler and upgraded the lines with heat shield products along with Redline synthetic fluid and that made a huge difference...

 

Hi
did you have new bottom arms made?
and what steering rack have you used
thanks

 

I got the rack kit from Andrew at Jaguar Specialties in San Jose, whom is on these forum's; it is the same kit they is sold at XK's I believe but he provided better pricing.


Yes I had Michigan Metal Works whom specializes in custom A arms, etc. make narrower lower A arms and right now they are making me custom drop spindals to finish the suspension set up. Since there is very little high performance suspension parts I had them made but that is not that unusual as shops like MMW are available to make them.

 

Yes a V8 can fit in a Jaguar 3.8s or MK but heat can be an issue. I've done a few things so that heat is a non issue. One of the best items is the Heat Shield header armor. I could not apply it completely as recommended which is they show doing individual pieces on the down pipes then a large wrap over the rest of the headers. For me I did individual pieces and separates ones under the car at the down pipes due to the tight header clearances.
This by far is better than wrapping headers as full wraps will make the headers brittle and break. These only cover about 70% of the pipes so that heat is directed down and this does not void your header warranty.


I also used the MSD starter that is made to handle extreme heat of the death valley type environments and do so for big racing engines. This alone might have eliminated my starter issues due to heat but this along with the header armor seams like a ultra safer way to deal with heat. I also used Heat Shield hot rod sheathing around the power steering lines.


Before all of this you literally could fry an egg easily as the engine bay would be super hot! Now it is drastically cooler and the heat has been tamed. I should have done this earlier as I went thru two starters due to heat, several issues with power steering heat issues, and my air horn compressor failed due to heat. It is good to use Heat Shield products on the engine fire wall and tunnel which I wished I did but I think the header armor is great as it eliminates most of the heat at the source.


This Jag is now an ideal daily driven car. The car will do 0-60 under 3.9 seconds, is reliable, has all the modern luxury of AC, power steering, big brakes, back up camera, etc. I was shocked to realize I've put about 20,000 miles on it now; this car is driven daily and driven hard.

 

Are the headers ceramic coated?

My mate got his exhaust manifold Ceramic coated inside and out, along with his turbine housing and dump pipe and has done away with a turbo blanket and hose/wire shielding it is that efficient.

I'm tempted to get my 6boost manifold done on my skyline, its starting to look a bit old and its not coated, I have to run a turbo blanket to protect my fibreglass hood, and the inner arch paint is slightly burnt, 600hp produces a lot of heat though.

3.9seconds! That's impressive, obviously traction isn't an issue then, what brand tyres are you running?
How is the IRS setup holding up? Can these be upgraded just as easily as the later model jag irs that is used for the cobra kit cars?

 

Not sure if the headers were coated or not; having a running car now creates more limits as I do not want to take it out of commission that long. I know the header armor does not look as good as the raw headers but it works.


One of my next builds is to update my 240Z, the famous Primadonna Z car and plan on getting a 750-850 at the rear wheel HP engine/trans from RIPS Racing. Most of those engines seem to only have insulation at the turbo and many I do not think had any insulation so they must have that coating on it? I will definitely look into that coating for the Z car. I think on the Jaguars the issues are more the engine bay is narrow so while the V8's fit there is very little space around the engine. Unlike other cars with V8's where there are plenty of places you can see the ground unobstructed you probably cannot drop a tennis ball or may even a golf ball and always have it hit the ground. I have triangle openings on each side near the headers to enable more airflow which helps too.


So far the IRS has held up but I personally think the design is not made for off the line so I baby it right of the line a little to ensure the car is moving before I drop the throttle down. Yes there are parts or ways to strengthen the IRS that Cobra's use but for serious Cobra's they use the Watts linkage which I cannot fit due to the wide rear tires, thus I am fine with a little more care off the line. Heck even with giving that care I am still running 3.9 seconds. I would love to just floor it immediately to see what it will do but I am too worried about breaking something since this is the daily driver.


Right now the rear is Michelin Pilot Super Sports which are soft and sticky but once they are worn I am switching to what I have in the front the Michelin new run flats that have a polymer side wall that is not as stiff as the typical run flats nor noisy, mainly due to this car having no spare tire anymore. I will have to see if the 0-60 times drop after that? Also since this car has my crazy mobile office it has a lot of extra weight in the rear (60lb sine wave inverter, 120lbs of battery on the passenger rear, 65lbs battery on the driver rear, 8 extra gallons of gas, an off road refrigerator, my wire binding machine, a network color lazar jet printer, all on a stainless rack with 700lb rails that are at least another 50lbs+. My guess is somewhere around 500lbs extra on the rear tires.

 

Solid amount of extra weight you are hauling!

Yeah there is always limitations or compromises with a daily car.

The good thing about a 'toy' car is you can launch that bit harder, or whatever to see its limits.

Most any decent workshop these days will recommend ceramic coating, or some form of heat coating, its a neater job, cleaner, less fabrication required for shields etc, and very cost efficient too. I'd put money on it that RIPS do, they're quality is second to none.

PM sent regarding RIPS

 

Did you mean ceramic on the inside or outside? I checked and since I used a common LS V8 as the power plant, the headers we purchased were made for LS V8's with tight fits and are ceramic coated on the outside. I can tell you that with the tight fit that coating was not enough.

 

I had all the pipes in my XJ-6 exhaust system coated by Jet-Hot Coatings inside and outside, the heat-transfer difference is considerable, and the "Sterling" coating they applied lowers the temperature of all the exhaust system parts, for examply, the "Y" pipe under the driver's floor used to transfer a lot of heat to the driver's side floor, but no more.

Jet-Hot uses a coating formula made of ceramic and silver, looks like "nickel", a greyish-silver satin finish. They blast to "etch" your parts and then coat them. Not cheap but well worth the money. They also have different colors, satin, gloss, etc.

my next project is to send them the manifolds from my S type, the pipes don't need it because I installed a brand new stainless steel system from Bell Exhausts UK.

Performance Enthusiasts ? Jet-Hot

 

Jose,


Thanks!


Right now it can handle a 100 degree outside air condition but if it is stop and go I can have an issue running the AC so I am looking into a more powerful set of fans, my limitation is that the large cold air intake limits the space between 1/3 of the radiator on the passenger side to less than one inch so behind the radiator I can put a fan on the other 2/3 of the radiator. I think I will look into have them coat my headers on the inside and maybe their material is better than whatever coating came on the outside of my headers. The hassle is going without the car for a week.


Stoney85, is the coating Jose referenced similar to what you used, curious to know?

 

Yeah, that coating sounds pretty much like what I've seen used, definitely inside and outside of the parts got coated though, not just the outside.

 

The link Jose provided looks good so I will try to call them as they have a higher 2500 degree coating that looks interesting as it also has more insulating properties?

 

Here are the new headers coated with Jet Hot 2500 extreme on the outside and Jet Hot Extreme 1300 coating on the inside. Since heat is an issue in this tight application, we re-attached the Heat Shield header wrapped with stainless wire ties. The puller fan was upgraded to a 14" low profile 2135 CFM fan. I also used some of the Heat Shield Hot Rod sheathing on a number of the hoses to help reduce heat issues.






The engine bay is definitely cooler but until I test it in over 100 degrees with the AC on full blast and stop and go I cannot really put it to the test but I think it has solve the issue

 

Excellent build thread. Very thorough. Thank you for taking the time to document.

 

Here are some pics of my latest tweaks to the Jaguar 3.8s. Doug & Blue Rooster and others doing V8's you might think about these mods. What I found was after at least 30,000 miles driving it as a daily driver is that while all the improvements to cool the V8 were fine they did not address the venting of the engine bay for extreme conditions.


What I found out is that on a hot day of long driving my engine was at perfect temperature after all of the various tweaks previously but the engine bay temperature around the engine was not cool enough on stop and go after driving a good solid two hours or so. What I experienced was the engine was running off during that stop and go after two hours of hard running and it almost died. I might have fixed the issue with the header coatings and heat shield wraps and this situation might have been due to a small exhaust leak near the starter. Now I did replace the crank and another sensor after fixing the exhaust leak.


Since this is a daily driver I did not want to wait to find the exact cause as I need the car daily so in addition to the above I had my body shop create some ram air intakes. These are just low enough to scoop air both to the steering cooler yet are primarily designed to direct air around the engine/header more so the air can then escape the triangular openings on both sides of the inner fender wells near the firewall. This has greatly reduced the temperature in the engine bay. Now my previous mods of the header coatings and heat shield did reduce the engine temps but it was still a bit hot to me.


Lastly I also rewired the fans to that both the puller and pusher go on at 180. Before it was just the puller fan. I think I have finally solved all of the heat related issues now.


I will keep you posted on this and another mod coming up in the near future for suspension/brakes. Also you might notice the cool new headlights, these are the Vision X 7" LED and these are the best lights I have seen and definitely an upgrade for any Jaguar saloon, I recommend to go on Ebay http://www.headlightrevolution.com/V...xil-7rdkit.htm