The origonal filler had the rubber surround with the drain hole which if blocked would allow water into the filler neck if it filled up. Happened to me once. Drain was blocked by a gumnut . This looks a bit nicer, as long as there is no tendency for the petrol to spill

 

The idea in this one is never try to fill it to so called capacity, I am working on a possible overflow idea, nothing has jumped out at me just yet. My seal looked in fair condition, but it was cracked, and trying to make a successful mold has cost me a bit so I have abandoned the idea for now.

 

Hi everyone, I have finally managed to get the body undercoated on the exterior, (I was wondering if that day would ever get here and it did). I had to get it under cover as we were suppose to get storms just after lunch, so ni pics of that one yet. today was suppose to be an overcast day so I decided to attack under the bonnet and seal it all up before loading the gun with the green.
![under bonnet sealing.
I put down some bitumastic paint to seall all the joins again, so hopefully they won't leak when it all starts to go back together again.

I will try to get this part done today, and weather permitting I can get some more paint onto the car, both inside and out.

 

Hi there, I am just starting to get into the try it and see phase. I have the old windsor sitting roughly where I want it to be, I will have to continue tomorrow as I put on a pair of head and try the exhaust positions, and see what needs to be modified.

While it appears to ave a lot of room in there, put on the heads and that room will very quickly be filled, and then comes the exhaust. When we get those all in place we will find out just how much room I actually have.

 

I have tried for quite some time to find out what the differences were between the XJ40 and the XJ81, and I have finally found it

This is my XJ40. this the early 1987 model, it took me ages to find an XJ81 to see what was different. It turns that not a lot needed to be done to rectify the problem. In this pic you will probably not see the things that were changed very easilly.

This pic is before I started cleaning the engine bay out. If you take a careful look at the chassis rails from the rear of the shock towers to the firewall, you will notice the chassis rails are very upright, and a reinforcing peice was welded on top and the brake lines were anchored to it, this is where the difference is.

Now take a look at the chassis rails from between the shock towers and the firewall. Notice how the rails are not coming straight up, but are actually angled. The reiforcing plate on top is no longer there. this may seem subtle, but if you remove that area that was changed and re fabricate it, you gain quite a bit of room.

In this pic you can clearly see the differences in the front assembly, this gives me quite a lot of room if I need to make everything I want to fit the Ford V8 engine.

 

Hi everyone, today I had a short blast of energy, I was looking for an automatic transmission to put behind the windsor engine. I figured it was not going to work out well if I didn't have one to make up the mounts for the engine and the transmission. Well it seemed the gods have favoured me this morning, I found one that needs rebuilding. That did not matter because I really just wanted a blank so I could get some mounts made.

Well here it is, I will be using one of these to put behind my engine, so as a blank it will be great for my needs for now, and if I feel like it. I can probably rebuild it as well.

 

I do have a question that I need to address as soon as I can, I need to replace the centre carrier bearing in my 1987 XJ40, and I was thinking about the idea of having a simple 1 piece driveshaft and I don't know anyone that has done so up to today. Can anyone shed any light on this subject.

 

Hi everyone, today was possibly seen as a slow day, and while I may not appeared to be doing anything, I am quite pleased with what I have done for the day, I have tried a few different things to get this engine to go into a place it was never meant to be.

From this angle things appear to be in the right place, sort of? anyway it has a questionable amount of clearance for an oil pan. I need to get one soon.

From this angle I can see some things working out, and others will need some time to ponder over what I have. I really don't want to move the engine any further forward if I can get away with it.

With the heads sitting in place, I can see if there will be enough room to fit the exhaust in this small place. I have some headers to try out but the 4 into 1 has a fairly large collector and it will not fit here.

Here we have the header pipe in place, however it is on backwards. The idea here is to determine if I use a different type of header I may be able to get away with it, there is almost an inch of clearance from the chassis rail and the pipe here.

Here the other side of the engine shows I am confronted with a similar problem, and the same sort of room to play with. I don't have the starter motor in yet so that will be another problem to deal with later on. Time to start looking at the different types of headers available.

 

Sometimes things can look pretty awkward, and in this case I figured things wrong, I have often found headers can save you a bit of room to move where an exhaust manifold can eat away any space you may have uder the bonnet of our cars. I found that to be untrue in my case. I had some of the engines original manifolds for this engine, no idea what car they were made for, but they fitted in better than the headers could imagine to be.
This may look like I am not getting a decent amount of room here, but it certainly surprised me how much there actually is.

I have plenty of room here and it is not fouling any part of the car, and the added bonus of not having to touch the chassis rails on the car.

This picture once again makes things look a lot worse than they really are. I am extremely pleased about the outcome of todays efforts. I do realize that the bolts are not all done up, this will only give me more room when they are done, also remember that there are gaskets to go into some of these pictures, and that both the engine and transmission are dummies for the want of a better word, better to damage these rather than the item I will be using in the end,
I am sure I would not be happy if something went wrong trying to make the engine fit, and it ended up damaging that beautiful engine or transmission, once all this is finished, it all comes out and the engine bay can be prepped for painting when I do the rest of the car.

 

The Gods are smiling for me it seems, I took the forward tailshaft and removed the Jaguar slip yoke, and sat in place a Falcon slip yoke in the transmission to see how much I would need to change on the shaft itself. The universal joint was left on the shaft and the yoke alone was on the transmission, it looked almost too good to be true, all I had to do was move the shaft forward about 20mm and it all sat in place beautfully.

Here at the centre bearing, the slip yoke here was completely pushed until it stopped, no force required. I had a feeling it was going to be close, but things were only going to get better.

Here we can see the centre bearing, it too will be replaced, no point in making sure the tailshaft is in complete working order, then skimp out on the centre bearing, the whole shaft will be biven a good going over.

As we move along the drive line, we ar near the output saft extension. Here the Ford slip yoke is completely in the transmission and looking very much at home in there. There is only a small amount of movement with the shaft, 20mm all up.

It really is a huge surprise to see how little I had to do to get this all to fit so nicely. The new universal joints are on order so it will be a fairly simple job of fitting the, and the centre bearing and Jurid joint, and the shaft will be done.

 

Some of you may consider these last few ics are only doubling back on myself, and it will happen from time to time. I am using this as a diary about the things I have done because I also have a tendency to forget what I have done, and I admit to forgetting what I have done and even doubled up on parts, so please be patient. These pictures are the completed tailshaft and all of it's components, also the slip yoke I used in the end did not have the damper ring on it. and I am also getting a few measurements for the crossmember to support the end of the transmission.
I got a bit lazy and decided to rebuild the tailshaft in my lounge room, (too hot outside for my liking). So according to the jaguar dictionary this is a Jurid joint, however if you read the BMW dictionary it is called a guibbo loint from memory, these are the only 2 that I have read so far. then as we make our way towards the other end of the tailshaft we will find the centre support carrier bearing, followed very closely by another universal joint.

Here we see the centre support carrier bearing. I will be able to rest assured that the tailshaft is at least rebuilt from one end to the other, and I am very happy with the results.

Finally the slip yoke for the front of the tailshaft, (goes into the rear of the transmission housing. Well that is what I am working with for now, I didn't take a pic of the complete tailshaft, so you will have to be content with your imagination. Now for the bit that we have all seen before, and like I said this is primarily for my use.

In this pic I took a shot at the yoke from the rear of the joint, the clean looking part of the yoke os only about 2mm inside the transmission oil seal. I had to assemble the whole tailshaft to get it all in place nicely, the next part will be putting the centre bearing into its place, and try and get it all to line up properly.

Here we have the drivers side (Australian model) where I will have to make up some transmission mounts. These are raised from the bodywork for some reason, I will be working on them next, the take them into the engineer to inspect them and make my file up for the mod plate. hopefully I can do the same as I did with the last car I put together. (Went through and passed on the first attempt).

these are pretty much identical just a mirror image of each other, and this side does not have any spacers welded into the mount base, it appears to only be about 10mm but it does make a very noticeable difference.

No sens in taking 2 pictures of the same thing in this case, you have probably seen so many of these it has become quite boring.

And finally the Jurid joint, that makes my tailshaft assembly now complete. Now it is time to take on the actual transmission mount, it looks fairly simple.

 

A bit of a slow day today, mainly because I needed to dig a trench for our electrician to put the wiring into the ne garden shed, and made the discovery that a lot of glass bottles are the landfill on this place, I am not happy about the find, but what can you do? this house has been here for over 50 years so it happened a long time ago. Anyway the thing I have been working on now is the engine mounts in a permanent way, and so I found some that look close to what I want to use, and with a littl massaging I reckon I could get them in, I sort of put myself in a bit of a stupid position by starting too many things at once, so the transmission mounts are coming along nicely, but I haven't had the camera to show any progress. I am also working on the front engine mounts. I wanted a mount that would basically hold the engine no matter what position the engine is in. Most engine mounts let the weight of the engine do most of the work, and if you use the power a lot, then engine mounts can break, and then we have a problem. I decided a long time ago to use a bush type mount where even if the engine is inverted (roll over) the mount would still hold.


Here we have a clear view of the bushing type of mount. Pretty much a suspension bush used to hold the engine and even to a large extent hold the engine no matter what position the car is in, to me it would just be safer.

This is just about ready to install, I can make up mounts to put the engine into the car, but I am not permitted to change the chassis rail or structural parts of the body to put the engine into the car. Because of what Jaguar was trying to do about the Rover V8 engine, I had a lot of measuring and checking it all against the bodywork. Ford made a nice compact little V8 engine called a windsor. For the best part they were a small capacity engine, until they introduced the 351 version.
This is just about ready to install, I can make up mounts to put the engine into the car, but I am not permitted to change the chassis rail or structural parts of the body to put the engine into the car. Because of what Jaguar was trying to do about the Rover V8 engine, I had a lot of measuring and checking it all against the bodywork. Ford made a nice compact little V8 engine called a windsor. For the best part they were a small capacity engine, until they introduced the 351 version.
For my wishes to come true I had to do a little footwork, I never expected to be working on a Jaguar, mainly because I always saw them as a car that would never fall into my price range. Plenty of Holdens and Fords were available for very little money, I eventually decided I would like to do an engine swap, a personal challenge sort of thing, and it happened with an old series 1; 4 runner 1984 I think it was, and it gave me a chance to experiment on different cars and what the could offer if an alternative engine was used. I was offered 2 XJ40's, in XJ6 guise, 1 was a 1987 british import into Australia in 1992, the other was a Australian designated vehicle in 1988. I purchased them both for $500.00, and they sat in the back yard as I tried to find out how much it was going to cost me to get one of them back on the road. I chose the import because it had by far the better body, the other was completely rusted out, but I was told the mechanics were sound ( that turned out to be a myth) the green one had a fairly good body, however the mechanics were far from being any good. It seemed the radiator got a leak and pump coolant into the transmission, and neither car had much of an interior, then found another Gold 1988 XJ40. This one was in Soveriegn trim and was running and it had a complete interior, and it almost took the green cars place to be the rebuild, until I had to get a couple of small rust holes to deal with. After about 4 weeks of cutting, welding, grinding, this car was showing me it was not the better option as the rust just kept coming. So back to the green one again, the gold car just stopped being worked on and left intact because I wanted to use the it as the donor car for so many other things that the other 2 just never had, and the gold car although running was quite smoky and got worse the more the engine ran.

 

I cannot lay claim to making thes engine mounts, they are actually from Castlemain rod shop, they were made to put a windsor V8 into an early ford Capri. So I am just modifying them to fit the Jaguar engine mounts that bolt into position on the K frame.

 

remember me saying I have my head all over the place at times, this is another example of that. I am trying to get the engine and transmission mounts done and I stuble accross the evaporator from my air con unit. I had to completely dismantle the unit because the rats have made a huge best in ther, and it did not smell good at all, and it was the only way I was going to be sure it was reasonably clean in there, the heater core needed to be thrown away it was in pretty bad shape and I have already ordered a new one, this however is not so readilly available, so I founf a car air con place and they said they would test it all out and see if it too needed replacing, so I am trying to have everything in as good or better than it was when it was new. Basically I will have a new 1988 jaguar with a few modifications along the way.

I know it looks pretty bad here, but it looked a lot worse when I took it out. I wasn't sure if I could get another one (new) so I just kept it in case. but needed to get a couple of pictures because a few places said their unit fitted an XJ40, but looked nothing like this or the fittings were different.

So it has now been put into the air con shop to be tested, now I had better get back on track with the engine mounts if I can stay focussed enough, I just keep finding other things to do when I have a coffee break and look around my piles of parts, some of them have been placed in the junk pile then I decide maybe it can be saved, while trying in the back of my mind to say most of this stuff has to be thrown away becaus I am only saving one car and I have 3 of them.

 

Well another fairly productive sort of day, I managed to get the engine mounts finished. I am not allowed to paint them until our engineer has inspected them, and I need that blue compliance plate to get it registered. If all goes well I should have the transmission mount finished, and I can pull it all out again and start getting some paint on.

This is the drivers side mount, you may recognise the cone shape pedestal for the mount, and it looks pretty good to me.

This is the passenger side mount, very happy to have them finally finished, I am going to call it a day, and have my daily SCAN. Senior. Citizens. Afternoon. Nap.

 

Hi everyone, I have just finished the transmission mount today, so I am pleased with that, I will put it back on the floor, and I can get around the car again to a small degree at least.

Doesn't look bad for my way of looking at it, it has been copied to a certain degree, but in the end the only things I didn't change were the 2 only 50x3 E/A. The other guy used pipe and a peice of PFC.

I did use a Ford transmission rubber here, hopefully there won't be any vibration coming from all of that.

I made up 2 of these, they are mounted at different heights for some reason, I even used the original holes.

 

get rid of that super pro crap for your engine mounts the steering wheel will vibrate like hell. Rubber all the way

 

Legend has it when jaguar were designing the '40 they deliberately made the subframes close together so that leyland could not possible put a 3.5 or 4.6 alloy v8 in it and had to stick with the 4.0 and 3.6 straight six. They did manage however late in the run to shoehorn the v12 in which I believe had a narrower v than the ex buick rover v8.

 

I did manage to eventually find out the differences between the early XJ40's, and the later ones that allowed the fitting of a V type of engine to be fittied. The differences were quite subtle and very effective as it really opened up the engine bay.


Not a good example in this shot, however take a look at the framework from the shock tower to where the evaporator hoses go through the firewall. Again on the other side, from the same place the shock tower this time to where the heater hoses go through the firewall. also take a carefull look at the chassis rails themselves, they are upright as they narrow the engine bay all the way to the rear.

This is an engine bay of the XJ81 (later XJ40's) Now take a look at the same places as before, you will notice there is no reinforcing on the top of each side. The shamfered edges on the tops of each chassis rail, and you will also notice the chassis rails themselves are also angled fairly low on the rear. then take a look at the width of the engine bay at the rear because of these almost un noticeable changes.

 

Hi everyone. I am finally getting some colour onto the car, it has given me a headache for quite some time now, well today it finally showed and although I did't get as much as I would have liked it was a start.

I just have to apply a couple more coats, but that will have to wait for another day. I put the gold pinstripes on and sealed it all under some 2K clear. Then it will all need to be sanded nice and flat before I consider anymore clear to be put onto the car.

I have removed the chrome cover plate and the join has been filled, I like the way it turned out so it is full steam ahead.

I have to shut it all down by this time, the sun has been covered and it is suddenly overcast, and I am not a weather man, so I am not taking any risks, give it a couple of days to get really hard, and then time to sand all over again. I am just thankfull I could get it all under way.

I pondered for a while about how to start and finish the pinstripe, then this idea came to me so I tried it out, and it is now part of car. I kind of felt the need to be different again, hopefully without overdoing it.