I've been out of town a few days, and haven't kept up with this thread. I am thrilled for you in buying this car! It appears in FAR better shape than the one I bought!

Since coming on this forum, I have seen threads on a rotisserie restoration on a 95? XJR, and a XJS. On both of these, I thought "why would anybody do such a thing??!!". And yet, when I saw the final project, I was very proud of the effort, and can only imagine the sense of accomplishment the owners felt. Most times, those of us who enjoy our Jags don't even consider the financial obligation because it would kill our desire to own one. These cars are becoming more rare almost by the day.
I feel you got a nice one to start with, and am jealous already!

 

My car needs to have the top replaced and the passenger window tends to drop a bit by itself. Since I currently don't have space in my garage it is parked in the driveway. I placed a tarp that covers the roof and extends over the windows, windshield and trunk , under a water resistant car cover. This has been effective in keeping water out, even with the heavy downpours we we having in the last several months. However I've been out of town a lot the last couple of months and I hadn't noticed that the wind had had caused the tarp to shift. I started working on the car about two weeks ago and found the passenger floor wet, with quite a bit, maybe 4-5 oz. of water in the right footwell under the carpet. I dried everything out and there was not a trace of rust, luckily. I have no doubt that the rust in your car was from a similar cause. My car is a dead ringer for yours, except I don't have the chrome wheel arches, but my XJ6 does!

 

Well, don't get too excited, the car is really full of broken parts, damaged parts, missing parts, wrongly installed parts, and and and ..
Once I get the car home, I will open a separate thread and make my list, which is probably getting longer and longer once I start to disassemble her.

 

It's been well researched that being accountable to a community will make you more likely to fulfill your responsibilities. So don't worry, we will ride your *** until you replace the rusty bits, get rid of the chrome wheel arches, and install a proper growler in place of that leaper

As long as you love the car and are going into this with eyes wide open regarding cost, you're well ahead of the game.

Congratulations.

 

100% right. The XJS is and was a supercar of its era, faster, less expensive and better than any of its contemporaries, and is by far the cheapest of its type to fix nowadays. The fact that William Lyons insisted on using common parts really works to our advantage as major components are readily available at prices no higher than fixing a contemporary Ford or a Volkswagen. Doing the work yourself, a budget of £4,000 UK pounds should fix absolutely everything mechanical to new, as long as the engine is OK. And by everything I mean shocks, springs, suspension, rear axle, brakes, fuel system, ignition parts, cooling system. Which, for my money, is fantastically cheap to get a V12 Grand Tourer into factory as new performance and condition.
Bodywork, that is something else again, and depends on finding a decent body guy who will not charge the earth, and the luck of finding a body that is basically OK! If yours turns out to be so, and it certainly looks like is is after your careful inspection, then really go to town on the rustproofing with rust killer sprayed into the body cavities, then rust preventing paint, then wax on top.
Greg