Category: General Update

Back on rubber!

Quick update. The car is back on four wheels as I’m taking it to my folks’ to pull the engine and transmission out! Then a power wash and we’ll return it to begin the conversion!

So so busy…

(05/07/2023)

Hi there! I’ve been pretty busy with family and work so I haven’t had much of a chance to work on the Jag. But here’s a few updates:

  • I received the PCB for the speedometer and I made some errors I couldn’t live with, so I’m redesigning that. I’m also using larger displays for the MPH
  • The plan to pull what’s left of the engine is set – doing that early June, followed by a pressure wash and then everything that’s going to be removed is out
  • I HOPE to get the driveshaft and maybe the trans out before the engine pull as we have to trailer the car to my dad’s shop to do that part of it.

More to come!

Cardboard!

(03/20/2023)

Not a lot of time today, but I pulled the door pad off the driver door and removed the carpet. Now I start the process to repair the big hole I made 15 years ago with a piece of aluminum!

Two steps forward, one step back

(03/19/2023)

So today I continued on installing the 6×9 speaker in the driver’s door. 15 years+ ago when I was doing the whole gas tank thing, I had modified the driver door to accept a Kenwood 6×9 that was previously in my 88 Beretta GT, which was previously in my 86 Cavlier RS. However, like the rest of that project, I never finished it. So only the driver door was done. Then the whole mold issue came into play, so I decided to just trash those speakers and get something new.

I got these. They are amazing. And thick. Way too thick as you’ll see soon.

So in order to make them fit, I needed to use a spacer between the speaker and the door. The speaker kit came with spacers, but they were not thick enough. So, I scanned the original spacer, traced the outline in Illustrator and made a 3d replicate in Fusion 360 and we have this:

An hour of printing later and we have the perfect spacer:

Everything was great until I tried to close the door and I noticed how close it was to the pinch welds. I temporarily popped the threshold back in and … yeah, it hits. Ok. Well, let’s think about this. The spacer pushes the speaker way out, these don’t look at sleek as the original Kenwoods did.

Plan B:

I kinda forgot that when I get new carpet for the car, I need to recarpet the bottom of the door pads. That gives me a chance to repair the big hole I cut 15 years ago, recarpet and install more suitable round speakers in their place.

So I guess I’ll pull the door card off and wait until I have carpet in hand and redo what I did…and I’ll be happier in the end.

Driver’s door update!

(03/18/2023)

I’m fairly close to having the driver’s door done. In fact the only things left are to figure out if/how I can Dynamat the door and make a spacer for the 6×9. Yes, the speaker is quite bulky for the door, but I like it and want large speakers in the front. So there.

Here’s how the power mirror’s original plug/wiring was:

The Ampseal connectors I’m using elsewhere in the car will not fit in the small hole in which the wires have to pass, so I am using these Molex Squiba connectors. Actually, they are a little too small, but they did do the job.

All put together I have a nice harness whereby I can remove the mirror, or the switches, all with locking connectors.

Back at the car, I have put in the rivet nuts and painted the bracket for the power lock. Now this is installed for good!

From here I started installing the other wiring harnesses in the door and passed the mass of cables through the gland at the door jamb.

After that, I set the door card on the door to see how things fit/looked!

Indicators!

(03/13/2023)

A big shout out to my dad on this one. The indicator stalk on the Jag has always been loose. Apparently it was internally broken.

I asked my dad to take a look at it. He found the broken piece and replicated it with aluminum!

Random Bits…

(03/11/2023)

Over the past week I started working on some other parts of the car. The first of which is converting the puddle lights to LED over their incandescent lamps the car came with.

I’m using these small cobb LED strips. They have a high density of LEDs in a small strip. I did have to notch the strip a little to clear for the screw, but I made sure to notch on the negative side so if something shorts out, it’s just bonded more to ground.

Next up is power door locks. I picked up these after market door motors. I thought about going something out of a GM product like from the GMT platform, but these looked well built and I got four for the price of what one used GM actuator would be. I decided to take my chances.

This also shows the wiring and connectors I’m using. These are all Ampseal16 connectors which use the Deutsch DT series pins. The Ampseal, in my opinion, offer a lot more options as far as keying multiple same-pin connectors to different shells (like in a door where I have a lock, a window motor, etc)

I need to make a small bracket to adapt the factory door lock mount to this new motor – I plan to do that next.

On the topic of wiring, I took the opportunity to change over the power window motor wiring from the bullet connectors also to Ampseal. The door lock uses the ‘yellow’ lock where as the window is using ‘red’ – same, but different!

Last for today was to install some Dynamat on the roof of the car. This is the thin/light stuff which works great for a roof. I plan to Dynamat the floor, but I need to get the engine pulled and pressure wash everything first.

All four tires are off!

(03/04/2023)

I finally managed to break free the last tire!

Now I can put a heavy coating of never-seize on it and put all the wheels back on. I need the chassis to roll still to eventually trailer it to my dad’s to get the engine pulled. Last thing I want to do is hammer on the tires again…