I am sorry that my offer of free parts for your "Restoration" offended you. Since I have the identical car. Some things are easier to replace than to try to fix. No one is trying to "thread jack" anything. Good luck with your restoration.

 

no offense taken elsewhere in Florida!

 

Okay, thanks! That's really good information! It'll really help! And as clarification, I can plug the hole with anything that will work?

 

@denraden1: I would also like to apologize. I read your post wrong, and after rereading it, I am actually interested. I've had bad experiences on my times on forums all around, so I would like to formally apologize.

 

If I remember correctly a 9/16-18 bolt will sort of fit (tightly) without reinstalling the helicoil... It's not the correct thread but it's close enough to fit. I'm about 90% positive the helicoil is 1/2-20. But yeah, just plug that sucker. At fist mine had an intact helicoil and I just put in a 1/2-20 as a plug. Recently I took it out because I needed to see under the heat shield and the helicoil came with as you described. So for a few months now I've been driving around with the 9/16 bolt partially threaded into that hole and it's been fine. Not pretty but it works.

 

Hi guys! So I didn't seem to be getting any return line air flow into my gas tank. I traced it to my carbon purge canister, and it seemed to be blocked.

My first thought was to by a new one, and finally after research and finding the part number, it would be a $211 fix. I just don't have that kind of money. So my next thought was to either disconnect it, or rebuild it.

Now since I don't like the smell of gasoline fumes, I decided to try to rebuild it. Upon inspection, I realized this thing isn't be made to be rebuild, it's a throw away item. But I figured what the heck! At this point, I have nothing to loose.

So I stuck a screwdriver into the bottom piece and heard a pop. At first I thought it was probably something I broke, but then I realized it was the glue joint that popped. So I did that all around and the bottom cover came off.

Out poured all of the smelly, activated carbon (which I caught in a plastic container). So I read on the internet a little more, and there was a procedure for soaking it in sodium hydroxide. Having some generic drain cleaner lying around, I decided to give it a try!

So I took all of the carbon granules, and soaked them in a 10% solution for 2 days. Then I took them out, washed them in clean water, and then put them on a cookie sheet, and baked them at 320 for about an hour in the oven.

After about an hour of baking the carbon granules, they were dry, and looked relatively good. So I thought at this point, I at least thought I was successful at rebuilding the carbon purge canister. Next I spread the carbon granules on a cookie sheet, and let them bake in the hot sun for about 6 hours.

Now at this point, they look fully clean, and didn't have any chemical smell. So I poured them back into the carbon purge canister and reassembled it. I reassembled the bottom cover with Permatex Ultra Black RTV and wrapped the outside edge with 2 layers of aluminum tape. I let it cure for a day, reassembled it under the fender, and now everything is running great!

Now my air return line is not blocked.

I don't suggest that EVERYONE go through this procedure, but if you're financially challenged, and don't like the smell of gasoline, you might try this.

 

excellent! many of these car's parts are "rebuildable", like the wiper and turn signal stalk switches, with a little patience they can be made better than new! Same with some of the Relays.

Also I think Mike is correct about using a 9/16-18 bolt without the helicoil. But you can always re-tap the hole for a given bolt/thread.

 

So before we reinstall the interior, we're planning on refinishing the dashboard. Any hints/tips/tricks about doing this?

 

We are getting ready to take the dashboard out. Do you all have any suggested ways of refinishing it?

 

yes, send it to Saul at British Autowood in Orlando Florida.

British Autowood | Dashboard and Woodwork Restoration

 

Thanks for the recommendation, but we're DIYers. I found the following:

And my question now is can we use tung oil instead of the epoxy resin stated in this?

 

I just did the door wood on my Series 1 and they came out great with just ordinary spar urethane. All I did was:

1) use a citrus-based paint and varnish remover from home depot to remove the old finish. On the dash you have to BE CAREFUL because unlike the doors, the wood surface is laminated veneer. If you use wood stripper to remove the old finish, stay away from the edges because it might de-laminate the veneer if you're not careful.

2) sand with progressively finer sandpaper til smooth. I only went to 400 grit and it looks great.

3) Color - personally I like the darkened vintage-look of the old Jag wood. Once you strip it, if you refinish now it'll be sort of out of place and light-orangey colored. I pre-stained the wood with a mixture of 1/3 walnut stain 2/3 mineral spirits - it's more of a wash than a stain. Just darkens it a little but experiment to get the color you want.

4) Don't use oil to finish unless you like that look. I used spar urethane which is easily available and easy to apply. Spar urethane doesn't get as hard as epoxy or other types because as it's name implies, it's for the spars of ships. It kind of remains flexible which is good for the harsh environment of a car.

5) I used spray urethane with UV protectant. Hit it with one good, even medium thick coat. The thicker you apply, the longer it will take to dry completely. I'm talking days for a thick coat so keep it fairly thin. When dry, sand the urethane with 220-400 grit to smooth. You'll see that there are dimples where the grain is etc... Don't sand through the urethane to the veneer to get 'em. Just spray it again and repeat. I think I wound up doing my door wood like 4 or 5 times until the grain was mostly filled... just enough grain texture visible to see that it's wood and not plastic (I like that personally).

You might need 3 cans of urethane for a dash but if you take your time and sand between coats it'll look good and won't cost much. Obviously don't sand the last coat unless you want to wet sand and polish. More work

There are 100 different ways to refinish wood and some people might frown on using spar urethane but it works and it's cheap. It is definitely softer than epoxy but you're not going to be scratching the dash up once it's installed. Heck if you wanna spend money there's a guy on ebay that sells nice new dashes for $350.

Good luck,
~Mike

 

When I did the wood in my xjs (see my restoration thread in the xjs section) I tried various ways of removing the old lacquer. In the end I found the best way was with a hot air gun, heating till the lacquer just bubbled and then scraping of with a not too sharp chisel.

It takes some nerve and care but I managed to do it with little damage to the veneer. I sanded carefully with 1200 wet and dry.

I then adjusted the colour of some bits using woodstain. Apply panel wipe or water (carefully) to show the resulting colour once varnished.

I then applied many coats of Rustins Plastic Coating, which is supposedly the best varnish on the market, and flatted down between each coat.

The results were very very good.

For the centre console the veneer was completly beyond redemption. So I stripped it off sanded the metal plate flat and reveneered it using gorilla glue to stick the veneer down in the end after mishaps with various other glues inc high contact adhesive, epoxy etc. I used burl elm veneer adjusted to match with woodstain.

I then sprayed this with multiple coats of 2k lacquer as this was easier than the Rustins, not having to wait for the lacquer to harden between coats. 1 light coat and about 4 normal coats gave a deep shine and lustre once polished.

I actually prefer the well lacquered look as thats what jaguars had originally and IMO it looks better but it obviously your choice, it's your car at the end of the day.

A wood oil may work, provided the veneer looks good and doesn't peel of the backing wood which may be a problem or not, but would worry me. It will also require more work looking after it whereas lacquer is just a case of apply a good sealant/wax like Finishkare 1000p which will just wipe clean for months.

Don't apply the sealant/wax for a cuple of weeks to allow the lacquer to completly gas off.

The whole process, including the trial and error, took weeks of my life which I will never get back!!

 

Before we put the interior back together, I wanted to check out the dashboard and it's components to see if there was anything that needed to be repaired as it was all opened up. Mostly, everything was okay, except for my demister ducts. For some reason, they were all cracked and disintegrated. A little checking around, and it seemed like these were rare to come by, and a little on the expensive side to purchase. So I decided to try to repair them. First, I washed them in paint thinner, and let them dry for a day. Next I recreated their shapes, the best I could, with some aluminum tape I have. I should've taken pictures of what they looked like before, but I've attached some of the repaired ducts.

 

So we found that our dashboard voltage instrument didn't work. So, we did a little research and saw some instruments from Innovate Motorsports that we liked, so we're installing a lambda sensor and a combination voltage and water temperature meter. We liked the idea of the lambda sensor, because it will help us while tuning the Strombergs. And we liked the idea of the combo sensor because I get an accurate, digital read out of the water temperature. I understand from reading posts in this forum that keeping the engine running at the proper temperature is important, and I had a doubt if the temperature sensor was reading correctly anyways. It's not original equipment, but the style of the instruments blends in well with the dashboard. I'll post pictures when it's done. The question is, we need to get 2 small cables through the firewall. What would be the best way to do this? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Okay. So here are a couple of before and after shots of the engine as we've worked on it. Mind you that the first shots were taken after we totally cleaned the engine. You would not believe the amount of grease, grime, and corrosion that was on the engine when we first got it. The first two shots are after we cleaned the engine quite a bit. And the other shots are as the engine stands now. What's preventing us from completing this tune-up of the engine, is we have a Pertronix Ignitor II on back order.

 

Wow that engine bay looks great! Any secret, or just a bit of elbow grease and some paint?

 

Pretty much all we did was go over everything. It was all just done in Rustoleum Flat Black engine paint, with the certain pieces being done in either aluminum or semi-gloss. It just takes time, lots and lots of time. Since there was a lot of corrosion, we also used Rustoleum Rust Reformer in flat black as a primer. This stuff works great!

 

Pieces came off, went back on, it was one long tedious process. Constantly going over everything, taking it off, individually painting pieces and whatnot. Luckily, I have access to a small machine shop with a sandblaster and an industrial baking oven, so I could really make certain pieces look really good. Like the exhaust manifold cover, that was baked for roughly 1 1/2 hours at 600 degrees. If you happen to have access to a sandblaster, or do a lot of work on cars, and are in the market for one, definitely go for it! They are well worth the price for painting.

 

Hey guys - Sorry I haven't been posting in a while, I've been somewhat busy. So anyways, we've been getting around to working on refinishing the dashboard, and I thought I'd share some results with you. We sanded off as much of the old finish as we could, and then we just cleaned it off (rubbed it with mineral spirits until nothing else was coming off). Then, we made a run to Lowe's and got spray on gloss urethane finish. These pictures are of the first spray, and it's currently drying. We'll just keep sanding and respraying until we achieve the satisfactory results that we are aiming for. It may not be your $300 new dashboard, but it sure will look good!