I've about finished installing a new headlight harness and started putting all the front lights back in place. Discovered that all but one plastic (why?) adjusting screw "nuts" were broken, surely from the screw corroding and getting hard to turn-snap, broken nut. The nuts are riveted to the headlight bucket, so the first thing is to drill the peened end of rivet and remove the broken plastic piece. I ran three or four different fixes through my mind and came up with what is in the pictures. Works very well and will be tougher than boiled owl s--t. The first one took me a few hours of R&D and making the pieces, second one took 30 minutes. I am sure I will need to do the headlights in the bonnet when I bring it in the shop.

Seems like the little things take more time to "fix" than most big things.

Dave





Finished product.

 

Necessity is the mother of invention

Cheers
DD

 

You should team up with David who makes the bonnet and boot latches and go into business together! Your are both ingenious.

 

Thank you Bill, I consider that a compliment being mentioned with David, but he is several levels above in his design and contributions to our car projects.

Dave

 

Each well above my level!!!

A most elegant solution. Far better than the original.

My Jeep has similar issues.. All plastic, and "welded" or busted stuff at the back of it's plastic lamps!!

Well, yeah,. plastic does not rust,. but is it better??? No vote here...

Carl

 

Hi,
I think that the management that insists on ridiculous cost saving in components to the point where they are not fit for purpose, engineers who design and those in management team that approve of appalling cheap and nasty fittings that fall apart within several years of purchase of a vehicle should be held to account by the company.
I am thinking of the endless bits of trim that break in your hand, switches that fail like the hazard warning on my Series 2 and of course the headlight adjusters you mention.
I also have a P38 Range Rover. A brilliant vehicle again largely ruined by tacky plastic bits that fail.
Nothing has such a negative effect on an otherwise enthused and loyal customer of a marque than broken bits of plastic.
Good work with the fix
Al

 

Interesting solution. Would another option be a metal "rivnut" mounted similarly to the original plastic piece that was broken....??

Thanks

Andrew
Jaguar Specialties

 

I never thought of that Andrew, a Rivnut would have been a much cleaner fix. I use mine so seldom that it just didn't come to mind. I think there could be a problem with the radial and axial pressure needed at the crimp being too much for the plastic that remained. I also would have needed metric Rivnuts because I wanted to keep the special adjuster screws, and I don't have any of those.

I'm glad you brought up the use of the Rivnut, they are great to have in your bag of solutions and repairs.

Dave

 

Are rivnuts and nutserts similar???

Somewhere on my shelves, I have a kit for the installation of blind captive nuts. How to use it escaped me...

Carl

 

Yes Carl, they are the same, just different names. They are installed like a pop-rivet except you reuse the "stem" when using the blind nuts, whereas the stem breaks loose in the pop-rivet. Blind nuts provide a much stronger connecting point, but are meant to provide a bolt together arrangement instead of one-time use of the pop-rivet.

Dave

 

I agree.

However when a car, any car, is 25-30-40 years old I can find a few shreds of forgiveness in my heart when things break

Cheers
DD

 

Hi Doug,
Yes, there is truth in what you say about 30 year old parts yet I'm still in two minds.
certainly components that are exposed to the rigours of fatigue through driving can be expected to fail over time but my objection is when components such as the headlight adjusters or perhaps switchgear etc which are only ever subject to known and very light duty break in one's hands. How easy should it be to design an internal light switch for example that lasts forever if not abused when there are plenty of switches a century old that still work perfectly.
Yes, the vast majority of components in our jags give brilliant service, including engines, gearboxes and suspension components that do huge miles, in our case, much of it on rough and unformed roads at considerable speed yet the failures which often cause us the most grief are small bits of plastic that are along for the ride for 99% of the cars life. I guess recently battling with the hazard warning switch on the Series II has focused my mind but I have had similar failures with headlight adjusters on other British cars, in particular, my Rover Vanden Plas ( gone but not forgotten)
I guess sagged head linings also fall into this catagory after all the acceleration due to gravity is the only load it is subjected to has been known since the time of Newton.
al

 

It has oft been said that Jaguar spent money where it would do the most good....but one wonders if they shouldn't have spread the budget a bit more evenly. When people have asked about my old Jags I often reply that they were "...the $40,000 cars with the 79-cent window switches"

In recent years I've spent a lot of time working on a wide variety of older cars and have found disappointments in all of them. This mitigates my frustration towards Jaguar's penny-pinching. Even the German makes, often ballyhooed as being oh-so-superior in quality and engineering, show signs of cost-cutting and not-so-brilliant designs.

Interestingly the Japanese seemed to do a much better job with plastics than others. Generally, their plastic parts, switches, etc seem to hold up better over the decades.

Cheers
DD