Absolutley this unless you want to restore the car as a project then its almost always better to buy a good one that to restore one (assuming it is a good one of course!) as the cost to restore a car is huge.

My 2.4 MK2 project has just exceeded the original budget I set in 2018 of 10K and it needs around another 1-2K to finish it and at best it might be worth 15K on a good day. As i've done everything myself apart from shotblasting it gives an idea of how much a professional restoration would cost when you add in hundreds/thousands of hours of labour.

When looking for a S-Type don't discount its sibbling the 420 (not 420G although of course there is nothing wrong with those if you want to go back or go home as they say!) or the MK2 and its Daimler V8 250 variant.

 

talking about the 420, there is one in Pennsylvania for a reasonable price. Car is not running. Owner claims it has no rust.

 

As long as you stay well away from San Francisco's salt mines. You should have no reason to go there. San Francisco certainly has it's attractions e.g. the Museum of Modern Art but at the end of the day it's an old Industrial City. It's even emblazoned on the hillside in white stones. Over the golden gate bridge you have Marin County which is George Lucas country ~ where I lived for a while (the local pub sells a beer called "Breakout Stout") ~ & over the next bridge you have Richmond where we have a research centre & base oil refinery & San Quentin State Prison & in the bay on an Island you have the remnants of Alcatraz.

Why we moved to San Ramon.

Nina & Frederik performed a song about it. "Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962

Little Boxes Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes, all the same

[Verse 2]
There's a green one and a pink one
A blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same

etc. etc.

 

Kind of opened up Pandora's box Glyn, and I don't mean Avatar.

nina and frederik little boxes - Google Search

Nina and Frederik too, my Dad has a recording of them in later years, I didn't think anyone know about them _ sort of long forgotten.

 

Would you prefer "performed by: Jeff. They were best known for it. I have duly corrected. Do you prefer my correction? "Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962

Nothing wrong with accuracy ~ I have no issue with being corrected. That's how we learn.

BTW ~ we even make a special grease for the tram cables that crawl up & down the steep hills.

 

What ever wording you want, I was just surprised to hear their names mentioned.
I wasn't criticizing anything you wrote.

 

My late Mum liked them so my sister & I got dragged to matinee performances as kids. They came to SA multiple times.

 

I guess this is contemporary to the Mk1/Mk2 time. All I can remember of them was that they seemed pretty awful, but suitably inoffensive (and probably inexpensive) to be on TV (in black and white) around 6pm, which was probably close to my bedtime in those days. I think I preferred Lonnie Donegan and his skiffle band.

 

Me too!

 

The discussion of costs made me look through some of my Mk2 parts expenditure. It does pay to buy in advance (especially 40 years in advance). A few items I bought in the 1980s:
Pair of Jaguar factory original leaf springs from David Manners - £34
Front wheel arch repair section from Ken Jenkins - £ 4

At the time I bought the springs from David, I thought they were fair value, but I recall another customer complaining that he'd obviously bought these for a few pounds ten or twenty years ealier and was making a huge profit. David's reply: well you should have bought a load of them and stored them for twenty years as well.

 

I saved a fortune buying many things 30 years ago. Some of the items I thought expensive at the time are a joke now. And our Rand was 1,94 to the Pound Sterling. Now it's 21,55 to 1 as of yesterday. Mid market rate XE.com.

It's probably my imagination but my 30 year old wire wheels that were still sprayed with preservative in their shipping crate from MWS ~ but I could swear the chroming was superior then ~ and MWS still does a superior job now. And they still run straight as a die.

 

I have seen dozens of Jaguars with my over 50 years involvement in the marque.
What strikes me again and again is just how good the early chrome was in contrast to later cars.
I have seen badly rusted out MK7,8,9, and MK1s where the body mouldings and grille chrome are still quite good even if the bumper bars are rusty.
The same generally applies to MK2 and S types however later date cars don't seem to have stood up so well eg XJ6 S1,2 and3
I wonder if that is due to the big spurt in metal prices that started in the late 1960s. Nickle prices got extremely high.
From 1969 I was involved in providing flight charter services to a nickel mine 100 miles west of Townsville, Australia which had a purpose-built railway to the coast with a processing plant on the coast Some really big money was involved
One might assume that vehicle manufacturers would cut back on the amount of nickel being used in their cars.
Anyway, that is my theory.
Cheers

 

Also, over that period, there was probably more Mazak and less brass and also less nickel in the Mazak. In the last few years, chromium plating has been increasingly regulated. Chrome's another area where car and bike restorers differ. Bike people are very fussy about what's underneath the chrome, perhaps because their exhaust systems have a lot to endure, and will interrogate platers on the layers of copper and nickel they apply; with cars we seem to be happy that the final product is sufficiently shiney.

 

My 30 something year old chrome wires look great. (some messing around by my neighbour in B&W).

 

I recently had a set of Mk2 door handles replated by Wizard Chrome Plating from Narangba in Qld. Australia. This company does a lot of work for hot-rodders and restorers from all over Australia and the southwest Pacific area
They have a process of removal and treatment of the typical diecast corrosion and then heavy copper plating followed up with the nickel/chrome plating. Typically, they quote 2 months to restore diecast items.
Came out nice but had to remove the heavy copper plating on the interior of the handles as the press buttons were too tight on the interference fit.
Also had to carefully clean out the copper in the holes for the 10-32 studs and gently find the old thread and clear out with a tap
Total cost for the four handles was A$320. That is still a lot less than buying new handles
Restoration is not cheap but there are ways to keep costs under control.
Cheers.

 

During my restoration my bumpers needed re chroming. The old chrome on the rear was not bad but the front bumper was rusty and had a small dent plus the inside of the bumpers were rusty making it difficult to remove them from the car without cutting the mounts off. I contacted a chromer in Bristol who quoted me £1500 plus tax at 20% for the chrome work and any repairs ie the dent and repairing the mounts would be extra so the total bill was going to be around the £2000 mark.
I found an advert for a company called The Harrington Group who at the time were making stainless steel bumpers for the Mk2, E Type and a lot of other classic sports cars. I contacted them but unfortunately they did not make the S Type bumper even though they made the Mk2 slim front bumper which is identical to the S Type. After a long conversation I convinced them to make the S Type rear bumper but I had to send them a good set of S type bumpers they could copy. Luckily for me in my box of many spares I had a spare set. The next problem was getting them to The Harrington Group as they were based in Vietnam. They asked if I could get the bumpers to an address in the UK and they would then put them in a container and ship them to Vietnam. No problem I said thinking £50 in courier fees would be OK. The address they gave me was three miles from my house in Paignton Devon!!!! I supplied them with the S Type bumpers, a set of 420 and a set of 420G bumpers I happened to have lying around and three months later I was given at a very reduced price a full set of S Type bumpers in Stainless Steel with all the over riders and fixings. Superb quality and unless you knew you cannot tell them apart from the chrome bumpers.
The Harrington Group are selling the S Type bumpers for £1729 which is still cheaper than getting your old bumpers re chromed. In fact they have an offer on at the moment for the bumpers at only £1530. https://groupharrington.com/product/...-type-bumpers/
Mk2 bumpers are only £1489 for the deep bumpers and £1345 for the slim bumpers. https://groupharrington.com/?s=Jagua...t_type=product
Jaguar 420 bumpers are £1460 https://groupharrington.com/product/jaguar-420-bumpers/

I have no affiliation with The Harrington Group but I just think that these bumpers are a great quality, less impactive on the environment than chroming and probably more durable than mild steel chromed bumpers. They are definitely cheaper than having your old bumpers repaired and re chromed.


My original bumpers.

Stainless steel bumpers from the Harrington Group.

 

Cass ~ have you moved your overiders yet or not bothered? Front to rear & vice versa? The average person would not notice. It's only us fussy old farts.

 

Bill. I rechromed everything including seat armrest mechanisms. Multiple copper dips with polishing in between. NOT a cheap exercise. Fortunately Peter Posniak, owner of African Electroplating restores cars himself & has set up a divided classic car section in his business. Shopping trolleys etc. don't get the same attention.

 

They are not interchangeable front to rear due to the mountings and the only reason I noticed the difference was when I parked up next to a friends S Type. For those not in the know it appears the shape of the over riders is slightly different from front to rear and they made the front over riders with the fixings for the rear and vise versa. I have a set of original over riders which I keep meaning to send them so they can produce the correct orientation for the future and supply me with replacements but covid kicked in and I have yet to do it. It is not the end of the world as to look at the bumpers without a comparison you would never know it is just a very slight angle difference.

 

Understood!