Great work, keep the updates coming!
What is the plan for the cage?

 

Brakes; disks, callipers, pads. Maybe handbrake pads, I haven’t looked at them yet. Radius arm bushings, maybe shocks while I’m in there. Honestly, as little as possible, I want to drive the car!

 

haha... I can relate!

 

order the output shaft metloc nuts now. they are one time use. and any nylon nuts like the ones for the top shock mount bolts as well. just did all this and thats what has held me up for now 2 weeks is becasue i am waiting for the nuts lol. check out my build thread

 

Well, six weeks after I dropped the cage, it is now back in. So what did I do in that time? I kinda accidentally took it more apart than I meant to. Oops! I wanted to change the brakes, So I needed to take the cage off from the rest, which I did easily enough, but I managed to disturb the fulcrum bearing seals and spacers in the process. I ended up with three assemblies, the differential and two halfshaft-hub-wishbones. Everything around the differential was covered in a thick layer of grease and sand, as if the diff had been leaking and the car was driven on dirt roads. I got that all cleaned up and drained the oil from the diff. Since this is a Dana diff there isn't a drain plug, so I took the filler plug out and tipped the whole thing backwards over an oil drain pan. Then I took the cover off. The gears looked great, so once I got the rest of the oil out I sealed it back up and refilled it. The calipers were quite rusty and seized, so remans were obtained. There were a pair of rear brake disks in the trunk when I bought the car, I tried to put them on but the bolt hole patten was incorrect. The diff has a rectangular pattern and these disks have a square pattern. So then I measured the old disks and they're still at 0.500", so I put them back on. New calipers and brakes pads, with the old handbrake parts then went on. I took this opportunity to clean up the cage with a wire brush on a drill. Lots of dirt, grease, and a little rust came off, then it got a coat of black paint.
The fulcrum bearings were the next thing to address. Bearings don't seem to be the best idea in that particular application, they hardly turn but have quite a bit of weight on very small rollers, which is a great recipe for flat spots. So I decided to replace them with some bushings. I bought some bronze rod and with the help of a neighbor turned up eight bushings. I pressed these into the wishbone arms.
I had a great deal of trouble finding enough metlock nuts to attach the drive shafts to the differential. Four hardware stores to get eight nuts... But eventually they went together using the shims that had come out. Then it was time to put the cage back on and start lining everything up. Turns out a 2' 3/8" socket extender is the perfect tool for lining up the fulcrum shafts. I did decide to replace the shocks, they weren't original and might have been ok, but they're a pain to get at with the axle in the car. So those were put in around this point in the story. Eventually everything was back together. Getting the rear suspension back in the car was probably the hardest part of the whole process. I've been working on a gravel driveway that turns to dirt now and then, so moving things around isn't as easy as it would be in a garage. With quite a bit of help from my father, a board, some pvc rollers and a few prybars we were able to get it into a place where it could be jacked into position. It was a sweaty hour for the two of us to move the IRS from next to the car to back in place, but it is now bolted onto the car. Soon I will be able to attach the control arms, driveshaft, exhaust, and brake line.

 

I should update this thread more often, but I seem to only do it when meaningful events occur. Today I had my first test drive. Unfortunately it was a grand total of 60 feet. I backed down the driveway and stopped to check for traffic. The sun was in my eyes, so I stayed stopped for a minute and then the engine died. There had been a lot of smoke from the exhaust when I started the car, but now I noticed it coming up around the hood too. I'm pretty sure this is oil/penetrating fluid/cobwebs that are burning off the exhaust, but I let it sit for a while extinguisher in hand just in case. The smoke did go away after about 10 minutes, so I started it up again and drove it forward to where its been parked for the past few months. 30 feet in reverse, 30 feet total. Not a lot, but its the first time its moved under its own power in 5 years. Tomorrow I will try to set the idle, since its really low right now. I think thats why its cutting out. Then maybe a "proper" drive. Think it will make it a mile?

 

I have successfully driven the car on a short trip. I went half a mile down the road to the town's cemetery, took a couple of pictures, and drove back. The coolant gauge isn't working and there are a couple of warning lights, but everything else that I tried works. First, second, and reverse gears work, didn't get going fast enough to get to third. Really satisfying after all this work.

 

Congrats, great work on your car! It looks nice.

 

So I've had a month or so of a driveable XJ-S. At first I wasn't sure, lots of squeaks and bumps. I'd already rebuilt the suspension so I was a bit worried I'd done something wrong. The transmission mount needed to be replaced, a pothole hit in the wrong way would cause the transmission to hit the underside of the floor. That was alarming the first time it happened. I had a shop do it. I wasn't comfortable lifting the car that high on a gravel driveway. The transmission mount had completely disintegrated, so the squeaking I was hearing was the transmission bouncing up and down on its spring. The driving experience was completely transformed. If you haven't done it, you should. The other thing that got fixed was an exhaust leak. I had thought it was the drivers side, under the seat. Someone has repaired the pipe there in the past and its hanging down a bit. I think it is leaking a little, but the big problem was on the right side at that same joint. It was very perforated. Much quieter now.

I have been having a bit of a fuel smell issue though. It seems to be the season for that as there are a couple of other threads going on at the moment about solving this. I think I have an issue with the venting system, as there is almost always a rush of air when I open the fuel cap. But more importantly, there is a fuel leak in the trunk. There is a bit of a fuel smell outside the car, but when I open the trunk lid the smell is overpowering. I need to let it air out for at least five minutes before going near it. When I removed the spare tire there was a wet spot at the bottom of the trunk. I cleaned it up, tightened all the hose clamps, ran the car, and it stayed dry. So I thought I was good. A few hours later I went back and not only was the floor damp again, but the vertical surface up to the tank was wet as well. I think there is fuel weeping out the bottom of the tank. Its not gushing out, but its not staying in either. Which means that I get the super fun job of removing the tank and repairing it. Oh joy. I did look inside the tank early on in this thread and I thought it looked pretty good, but it doesn't seem to have held up. I suspect the venting problem has contributed to this just as much as rust has. Drawing fuel out without letting enough air in can stress the seams. Hopefully I'll be able to repair the tank rather than replace it. And of course I just filled up with gas, so I need to drive more first.

 

The tank leak is probably not from the seams. The tank sits on a foam rubber pad... and the rear window leaks, soaking the pad, and rusting the tank bottom. Also look up “stinking rivet” in Kirby’s book. Or steenkin rivet? It a rivet that wears on the tank. If you’re cheap, take the tank out, run a grinder over the bottom, and plug the pins holes with some sort of tank sealer.

 

Well I haven't updated this thread in a while have I? But I haven't been completely idle. Got the car out of storage in early April. It started up pretty easily, third or fourth time I cranked it over and ran fine. Brought it home and parked it in the driveway. It was obvious last fall that it was leaking gas and the car failed to magically fix itself over the winter. It seemed there were two options, replace the tank with a new reproduction from SNG Barratt ($610) or clean and seal the original tank. Sealing the tank seams like quite the labor intensive process that I wasn't interested in doing myself. I've also read some rather mixed reviews of all the products on the market. I considered having someone do it professionally, but that would have raised the cost without necessarily increasing the finish result. So I eventually opted for the new tank. I saved myself $43 by going and picking it up in person, just over an hour away luckily.
Drained the gas, pulled the old tank out, then let the car air out for a week while I figured out what to put under the tank. Someone had been in there before me, there was something JB Weldish on the outside where they had tried to patch things. Under the tank was an aluminum covered piece of foam. I opted for the furniture mover idea, adhesive teflon and foam disks stuck to the body of the car. I think I got a 20 pack and used them all, someone on here had done that, that's where the idea came from. Seems to give a good support but not let water pool anywhere. We shall see if it holds up. New tank in, start attaching connections, oh wait. The outlet has a threaded fitting on the original tank but just a pipe on the new one. There's a flare at the end, but now I need some fuel hose. It took ages to find 1/2" ID fuel hose. I could order some from Amazon, but only if I want 25' of it. I needed 2' max. Eventually I found someone selling 5' sections on ebay. I probably overpaid, but I don't really care. The fuel system is now plumbed up and working. Put a couple of gallons in from a gas can and no leaks! Drove down to the local gas station and started filling up. I had the trunk open so I could watch for leaks and I'm glad I did because it soon started pouring out of the fuel sender hole. It had felt a little funny going back in, and hadn't seated properly. taking it out and putting it back in solved the problem and the whole tank now holds gas.

So on to the car's main problem. The cooling system. when traveling more than 30 mph the cooling needle is halfway between C and N. It reaches N in traffic and will presumably keep going but I haven't been that unfortunate yet luckily. So I need to do something about this. I've opted for Do it Right, Do it Once, Do it All. The radiator will be replaced with a new aluminum one from Wizard Cooling, I opted for the most powerful of their electric fan options, two big Spal fans. I'm also replacing the waterpump, thermostats, heater valve, and all the hoses. Got a rebuild kit for the AAV from Jag Improver, so that will get redone. There are also some stainless water rails, which I think came from ebay but I can't remember. Bought them last summer. While I'm in there I'll be replacing the alternator with a more powerful one. I suspect the nearly 40 amps the two fans want would make the stock alternator rather unhappy. My current plan is to replace the air pump with a CS-130 style alternator. This would reduce the car to only two belts. If that doesn't work then I'll put it where the stock alternator is.
I spent most of Saturday tearing things apart. The thermostats on the car are very clearly marked 74C, which is probably why the car was running so cool. The coolant is not the bright green that it should be, except for the atmospheric expansion tank. This suggests to me that it may not really have been doing anything. I didn't really have any trouble getting things apart, particularly if we overlook the time I missed half the bolts holding the water pump on...
I need to clean up all the sealing edges, then I can start putting things back together. But first I really need to order that alternator.

The current state of things:

 

I'm staring at a simular site lol. Wish I could justify 1k for a rad. Well maybe I will if recore is same lol

 

It would have been a lot harder to justify if the timing hasn’t lined up perfectly with this spring’s stimulus checks. So Biden and the Democrats bought me a radiator and I thank them for it.

 

you Americans and your free but not free money