The bonnet in these pics are not showing you the colour very well so hopefully these will give you an idea about the colours I am using.

This green gets really nice once the sun hits it.

when you catch the sun it is hard to believe sometimes that it is the same panel, just a slightly different angle, otherwise you really don't get to see those colours.

 

Okay, a bit of hot weather now (I hate the heat). So it is time to tackle the boot, this will also be an area of modification. We all know that there is not a lot of room to go making up any sort of exhaust mods due to the lack of room under the car to change too much, so I have sat dow and looked at what can be done to make this work. I am going to be using a 5 inch grinder to remove some of the boot floor parts and drill out as many spot welds as I can.

I have already removed the floor here, but this is one of those places that limits us from doing anything to the rear of the car. I am looking to fit a twinn exhaust outlet, and the original boot floor makes this rather hard.

Here we can see where the original exhaust outlet is. Here I am going to make a cutout in the boot floor before I re install it. This should allow me to fit the exhaust I want to the rear of the car.

Here we can see the cutout i was talking about. The white section is a bit of sheet metal I had lying around, it is a tad heavier than the original metal, making it a little easier to weld.

This is the cutout before the sheetmetal was installed. I simply need to make this side the same as the other side and it will be ready to install into the green car.

With all the welds sealed with a bitument type of sealer, it is almost ready to be fitted to the car, the thing I will need to do next is prepare the car for the floor to be welded in.

I have decided that I will cut away the sheetmetal all the way up to the top of the rear section here, and then lighning up all the reference point I have (not clearly marked for you to see).

I have decided to drill out all the spotwelds I can, and then using a 5 inch grinder with a 1mm cutting disk remove the walls or this boot interior.

With all the spotwelds removed there will be a paint line that I can use as a reference to how far up the sides I need to come, and then fill in the holes where the spotweld were and seal it all up when I have finished welding it all out.

 

I think I am insane, I am working in the rain trying to get this job done today. I came out this morning and it was a bit cloudy but it wasn't raining then so I dragged some tools and the boot interior and started on the green cars floor. I ground the sporwelds this time so I had a bit of metal when I go to weld it all together, I quickly put the boot under the car and started to get it all ready to lift into place.

Here we can see how much more of the boot I really needed to put this all back together, it is starting to spit a ;ittle, I hope this rain holds off for a bit longer.

Here we can see the cassis rail for the want of a better word, nicely ground down instead of drilling more holes to fill when I weld it al together.

Here on the drivers side, we have the same idea as the other side was done. Now we are ready to lift this thing into place.

Here it is all jacked up and only 1 screw holding it for now, time to check the other spots and screw them down too. Then see what else needs to be done. I am getting pretty wet now, the bootlid is keeping the inside of the boot dry, but I still have to be outside trying to get this all into place

Here we see the cutout for the exhaust tips to come through, there will be a lide welded over the top so there will be no hole when done. I figured I only need about 10 screws to hold my fat **** off the floor when it comes time to weld.

Here we see the same as the otherside, starting to rain pretty heavy now, and I am not going to weld in the rain so this will be all for today, I did however get more done than I was expecting to get done.

 

Curious, where the floor panel meets the frame rails, or anywhere else for that matter, when doing a job like this should the bare metal be given a coat of weld through primer? And does this actually protect the metal or is it burned off when welded?

 

I would imagine this paint has been formulated to withstand the high temps the welding process generates, and I have found that in a lot of cases 2 things have been found. 1; the paint has made an insulated layer and has reduced the area the molten metal can adhear to, and has allowed the weld to fail. I have not used this product and therefore my answer is only what I have seen when opening these welds. 2; The heat made by welding causes the paint to melt a bit and seal up when it goes cold, but as stated before, open these welds up after the job is done, and you will often find that around 2mm from the heat affected zone, the paint has actually burned away. For me I have found that clean the metal and allow around 5mm past your weld join, then clean the weld with a wire brush, and then use a sealing type of coating, if possible get to both sides of the weld and really give that area a good coating to prevent moisture from getting in. If you can get this done before the weld gets too cold it will usuallystop the moisture from getting in, I have opened up many welds on cars and from the manufacturing these welds have been rust free, so this is how I do it. the cars I have worked have usually been quite old, maybe the newer cars have better success to the builds. I am a boilermaker, and most of my work has been 10mm and above, sheetmetal is a whole new ball game for me as well, so I am happy to be corrected by those who work with sheetmetal.

 

Okay people, time for a bit of fab work I have an idea of what I am looking for, but not real sure how it will look, so here goes. As mentioned before I am looking to fit twin tail pipes for the rear of my car, and in order to do that I needed to narrow the rear of the boot, I got that done and I ended up with a 20mm wide space to put the exhaust through. The opening I needed was to be 185mm, so that was rather easilly achieved with this size opening I will have 12mm all the way around the tailpipes. I will also need to make some sort of shape for the section protruding from the rear of the car. I have set my mind to giving it the width of a steel ruler, and with the magic os expanding foam and fibreglass, I can get a bit of a nice shape to finish it all off.

In this pic you can see I have finally put the lid on the cutouts, just need to seal it all up and it will be good to go. But there is a lot more to do just yet. Underneath the car there is a 200mm space to put my twin exhaust. With the exhaust end having a 2.5 inch inlet and 2x3 inch outlet, I made a pair of covers I suppose you could call them, made from 4 inch exhaust pipe, and 200mm long so I have plenty of metal to cut away to get the shape I am looking for.

Here I am tacking the part in place, the 2 halves of the 4 inch pipe and a flat sheet of 84mm wide I was able to make an oval shape to weld into the rear of the car on each side, these are going to have the twin pipe coming out on either side and with a little bit of length to get my pipes a little bit away from the body but still under the bumper.

I gave myself the width of a 300mm steel ruler to move the end away from the body, I have also made a filler panel so there will be no unexpected holes around this part. As you can see I still need to make another filler panel to finish the other side. Because this goes lower than the rest of the car here, I am contemplating making a bit of a skirt to go around the lower rear of the car.

This may look like a massive thing to be at the back of the car, but once the exhaust has been installed it will fill this up with only 12mm of clearance around the tailpipe. This is actually taken to where the chrome tail pipe extention starts, so it is not as big as it may first appear, I will also be putting a layer of heatshield around the inside so it won't make the fibreglass area too hot and stuff up the paint.

While I was getting the welding done and the shaping of the steel done, I managed to get a splinter of steel in my right eye, not real clever I know, but the sunlight is a bit bright for me to brave the elements to get the other side to match. I will have to wait a few days before I can continue with this part of the project.

 

They already have twin pipes

 

Twin pipes each side, maybe I should have said quad, anyway you will see what I mean when it is done.

 

Hi everyone, I have a couple of questions to ask; 1, for those in tropical temps please- How good is the factory air conditioning? the reason for asking this is I am rebuilding the whole unit of heating and air conditioning, and I am curious if the system Jaguar uses capable of cooling the inside in temps above 35 Celsius, or 95 Farenheit. We get these temps a lot here in sunny Queensland.
2, Can the X300 bumpers be fitted to the XJ40.? I am lead to believe that the X300 is a XJ40 platform.

 

Today was tail light day, I have gone through all 6 of them to find only 2 in good condition, and fortunately they were left and right, so I will take that as a win. I took the old lenses out, (they had to be destroyed) No saving the old lenses, and they were all in various stages of disrepair, After I got them out I cleaned the housings up and masked the reflective area and gave them a coat of adheasion promoter, and then gave them a couple of coats of epxy black paint around the outside edges.

The reflectors didn't look too bad so I didn't touch them up, I don't think they needed it, but it still got a good clean up anyway.

I was lucky enough to have been given a pair of brand new, still in the box clear tail light lenses, so just like the housings they got a coat of adheasion promoter, and a couple of coats of epoxy black paint around the outside edges, but I painted them on the inside, hoping for a better finish.

That worked out really well, I am really pleased the way they came out. I don't have any glue for them until tomorrow, so I sat them all together and I think they turned out great.

Well this is a bit different from the pinkish coloured lenses I had on them before, the one thing that had me worried at first, was the centre of the lenses had writing on the inside, and I didn't notice it until I put the coloured lenses in place. That writing made the lenses look as if they had been scratched or even cracked. A massive sigh of relief when I saw it wasn't damage. Anyway that is all for now.

 

Hi everyone today I am having a short day, I have not been very good at discribing what I am planning to do with my tail pipes, I have now finished the welding and a bit of shaping with the hammers and dolly's, then went over everything with body filler and have almost got it in the shape I am looking for In this picture you can see that the exhaust surrounds look massive and I did have my concerns a little in the early part of my thoughts.

Even in this picture it still looks like a gaping big hole, and I was still not entirely sure if it was the right idea.

These things are a tad taller than the underside of the car, so I had to make it curve down to the outside edge and even further on the outside as that panel is on its way uphill from the wheel arches. I placed 1 of the exhaust ends into the hole to see if it will look any good.

Well here is the final product I have been hoping like you wouldn't believe that it would be this good to me, I am quietly impressed.

Noe these I do like, they are only sitting in there for now so you can get an idea of what it is I have been trying to explain.

I am now quite sure that when these are painted, and the bumpers put back on, these will lookawesome.

 

truly looks awesome

Cheers
Steve

 

Not much to say about today, it looks like it is about to rain, and so I have primed the areas I have been working on, just to slow down the re appearance of rust later on.

I forgot that I did not remove this window, I cannot think why, not too worried about it for now as I have a couple spares. I am doing away with the dress trim, there is a rather unattractive join under the trim because the body is attatched to the roof. I have no intention of using them, so it will all be done as you see it here.

I am not a big fan of antenna, regardless if they are manually operated or electric, I have removed them. This will look so much better when the green is put onto it.

The tail has now been shaped and ready for colour, but it is about to rain, and I don't think I will be working out in the rain.

 

Well today I got out and finshed welding the rusthole in the floor and chucked some bitumastic paint on the floor for now, put another coat on tomorrow, and then put some rubberized mats on top of the paint, and then some underlay getting ready for the carpet.

All the wiring has been removed, and the floor pan had some rustholes in the passenger side. I cut the rust out and welded it all in, about 5 holes in the passenger side and only 1 in the drivers side. I hit everything with the wire brush, and gave it a damned good vaccuuming then painted the bitumastic paint.

That fixed that problem, just got to wait because tomorrow I will give it all another coat, before I do much more to the floor pans.

I will be painting a lot of this in epoxy paint on all the green stuff, then the ruberised tiles will be put as much as I can in before I put the underlay down, making it ready for the carpet.

 

Now I think it is time to consider the carpet to be put in here, I have a few ideas floating around inside my head. The original colour of the carpet does not appeal to me so I may as well put something different in there. I did think of black seeing as the top of my dash is black. I did think of camel, it has been a colour I have used in the past and I liked it. Last but certainly not least, I thought of a deep maroon. for me the colour I eventually decide on will also be the colour I will make the inserts of the seats, so it will have a fairly large impact on the interior.

All my timbers have been changed, but this colour is my interior as is apparent from the jaguars I have seen. The greyish colour of the carpet does not do anything for me, so I think it is time to start thinking of it as the interior is starting to come together, I am in the process of putting sound proofing and a bit of heat proofing. so far I have just welded patches into the floor and given the interior a good dose of bitumastic paint. After that some carpet underlay will be used. Then it will be time to start putting everything back. The body will also be painted before I put the underlay down. This picture was taken when I bought the car, and the seats were not visible with those sheepskin covers, and they were well worn.

This is the colour of all my timbers now, which is why I am considering the maroon colour. I can't tell you how many new things I have tried since I started on this project. I have learned about putting veneers onto ahe timberwork in the car, learning to do leatherwork on a few things, learning about making things fit when they were never intended for this car, however it has been quite a challenge and I am enjoying it all.

 

This is rediculous, a solid week of rain with no let up until tomorrow at least according to the weather forecast, I am going through withdrawal on getting work done to the old girl.

 

a shame indeed, cause I love this thread! let's hope for some days without rain!

 

Well today was a really good day for me, I finally got the car into the garage, so now I can work on it without worrying myself stupid about the rain getting into everything.

Got this thing fitted to the front air dam I suppose you would call it. No struts on it yet, no car to attatch them to for now.

Still considering putting a gold pinstripe around the outside edges, just not quite sure yet.

 

I tell you that this rain is becoming a real pain, yes the body is out of the weather. However it still needs to be pushed outside to do any work on it, just no room to get around the vehicle at all. Anyway I done some shaping and it started to cloud up so I pushed it into the garage, but moisture is still in the air, so I got a spot of surface rust, very light but still enough to make me sand it back again. I had to go away for a few days, and the weather was great. But when I got home I got it all sanded down again, and 1 only coat of epoxy primer, and we got a storm, with just under half a gun of mixed primer I now had to throw away. Because the job had to be sealed before the water got to the metal, I had no time for pictures, then another couple of fantastic days, and I am not here again, (out of town working). Woke this morning to a bright sunny day so I pushed the car out again and sanded it all nice and flat, laid down thw epoxy primer again, and I came inside for a cup of coffee while the paint flashes when I heard the worse sound I could think of. Yep! bloody raining cats and dogs.

 

Some days are slow, and today was one of those days, I just didn't seem to be capable of getting motivated, maybe just it is too hot to work right now.

I had a bit of a brain fart though, as I pondered the ideas about my filler point. I am loosing my marbles with the idea of making a new fuel cap rubber, and the underside where the cover control, if that is what you call it. Anyway; I welded a new plate over the top of where the flap use to be, and I removed all the mounts from underneath. The rust managed to make itself too much at home.

This seemed like a good idea at the time. so I decided to commit to the idea and cut out the hole for the filler neck to go through and marked and drilled ti 6 holes for the mounting bolts, none of which any pictures taken. just sat in place for the picture, 2 reasons; 1....the sun is so hot I can't touch anything on the car right now. 2....the paint is still a tad too green to put anyweight in it without the filler getting stuck in the paint.

For some reason I had visions of this cap being too small for the car, so I ordered a larger one as well, however with this one sitting where I intended it to be, just seemed to look alright, so it will stay, I may find a use for the bigger one on something else.