Hi All,

I am trying to help out my old man. We are trying to appraise a vintage jag motor he wants to sell.

Short story,
Old man bought wrecked mid 1950's Jaguar XK when he was a kid. He pulled the drivetrain, had the motor professionally bluprinted and rebuilt by Jaguar of Canada in Toronto. He then put the engine and transmission in his Austin Healey. The healey frame eventually twisted up due to hard driving and my old man cut the entire drivetrain out of the healey frame and all.
Currently it is all still sitting bolted to a section of austin healey frame with some castors bolted to the bottom. Its been in his garage the last 30 years or so.


Its a DOHC 3.? litre XK straight six with twin SU carbs bolted to a stock jag 4 speed manual tranny. It is absolutely complete and
everything on it is OEM jaguar. Its buried at the momement but it has 3.5 liter casted on the block which is confusing our research a bit as we would expect it
to be a 3.4 liter motor.
Where do we go to get something like this appraised?
Does anyone know what this would be worth?

 

Well, it's not going to be worth a huge amount of money, but it will be worth something ! Much depends on the overall condition of the engine and gearbox; I assume it has not been touched since your father installed it into the Healey.

As the car it was installed in has long since gone, it could be attractive to somebody rebuilding an XK 120/140 of that era, but clearly standing for 30 years means it has to be completely dismantled and overhauled.

I am UK based so am not familiar with US prices for this kind of thing.

 

I agree with Fraser, it has value because it's an early 3.4XK lump, here it's worth £500, if you can get it to bits for rebuild. B type head? If it's a blade type tensioner it's not worth much, if it came out of an XK140 its the value mentioned ($800ish) pore oil down the bores after getting the plugs out and see if it turns, then pop it in Hemmings.....

 

Thanks for the comments. I have confirmed it has B type heads and its turns over freely, nothing is frozen. Will look at advertising on Hemmings.

 

I would not be so concerned with the length of time it sat. It sounds like it was in dry storage. And I hope you did not turn it dry but squirted something in the spark plug holes before you turned it. You can overfill the block with oil so the crank is covered, pull the valve covers and coat the cams with oil and turn it some more. Drain it and refill to proper levels. Given that, you might try to start it. Do a compression test as well. If it is running and has good compression you just added considerably to the value!

Carb seats might be stuck and fuel will run out the overflow tubes, sometimes you can gently tap the carb and they will reseat. Clutch might be stuck but all it will do is turn the tranny. There may be some other issues but you just deal with them as they come up. Good luck!

- Bill

 

Do you still have this engine. If so please contact me.
Ed Howey
704 363 5638
deh1001@comporium.net