It’s been a busy month and I haven’t had a moment to work on the car until now.
I DID manage to get a second wheel off! Two down, two to go!
Behind each wheel is a small compartment. I found there are five screws in the wheel well area that can get in there. The passenger side I knew had wires in, as with the driver. I did find yet another mouse next in the passenger side.
And on the driver side? I found a random tank! Again Jaguar with the “shoving something wherever” motto. I’m pretty certain this is a coolant overflow tank.
When aluminum is bolted up to steel for 15+ years, it essentially welds together. Imagine if there was salt and water on top of this (thankfully this car has never seen Michigan salt)
It took many soakings of penetrating oil and hammer swinging to get this wheel off. Fun part is, all four are like this. One down, three to go…
Once part of the exhaust was out of the way, I focused on removing the starter and the torque converter bolts.
I’m sure with a different tool I could get the TC bolts from the inspection shield on the bottom, but with what I had, I ended up going through the starter well.
Look up “Jaguar XJS fire on YouTube” – you will find more than one result.
This picture is the main positive battery cable as it traverses from trunk, where the battery is housed, to the engine bay. Notice it pinched under a heat shield.
Yes, it is clamped and there is foam in there. Still, seems poor.
Removed more of the 4,000 shields today and revealed more of the driveline.
And I started removing part of the intake on the engine.
This random pipe was under the hood. It’s used for coolant. It has a bleeder on the right side and exits the engine bay at the radiator support goes around the front and goes BACK into the engine bay on the left side. Why???
Under the hood I found more relays and inline fuses and a random resistor pack.
About 15 years ago when the fuel leak was discovered I had fully intended to just replace the leaky fuel tank with one of those racing fuel cell type tanks. I even purchased the tank, a pump, filters – the whole deal. For some reason gasoline, or maybe the off chance of a fire in my trunk, scared me and I never finished it.
I had removed the back seat from the car to ensure no fuel was actually in the cabin, but then after that I just kinda parked the car. On 11/23/2022 I resumed the teardown of the car, this time with new intentions.
Here’s the trunk. The car is in perfect shape (well, more on that later) and I just need to remove all the wiring and plumbing mess that was factory installed.
See all these hoses with bolts plugging them? At one time they all went to the fuel tank, or the external sump tank, or the external fuel pump. Lots of external things on these cars that other vehicles in 1986 would have had mounted internally.
This full wave rectifier looks like an afterthought, but I have to believe this is probably factory? This is just many of electrical gems to be found…
What’s with all of the inline fuses and taps? Why is this wiring harness such a mess?
And then I came across this discovery. See this sticker? That’s a factory Jaguar replacement part. Great, right? Factory parts are typically superior to aftermarket, right? Yup, that’s certainly true. However, this is a rear quarter panel. This means the car was wrecked at one point in it’s life. The repair looks to be done quite well and was possibly done at an authorized factory repair shop. I haven’t uncovered the mystery of how bad the wreck was, but my dad and I believe that it sideswiped something. The driver rear quarter was replaced, there’s evidence that a completely new door was fitted and evidence of body filler in the front driver side fender.
Since I’m starting this blog after the project of the car has started, let’s catch up what I’m doing, where I’m at and what’s left.
Currently the plan on the vehicle is to fit it with NetGain Hyper9HV motor at 144v. This will be coupled to a TorqueTrends 1.9:1 transmission (single speed, think of it like an underdrive) and I’ll need to change the rear differential to a 4.11:1 ratio. This gives me close to an 8:1 from motor to rear, which I’m told is the golden ratio for the motor I’ve chosen.
Power brakes will be handled by a Bosch iBooster gen 2 and power steering will be an electric assist from a Toyota. I have the iBooster on hand, have not purchased the assist motor yet as I’m concerned about room under the dash/hood for this. I might have to go electric-hydraulic. I don’t want to, because I want the vehicle nearly silent when not moving. More on that later.
Thankfully no mice ever entered the cabin of the vehicle, however the interior did get mildew inside. I suspect when I last parked it, it was humid and that was trapped in the car. Regardless this turned the project from a ‘replatform the drivetrain’ into a full on restoration minus body work…and after I dug into the interior, I was super glad I decided to rip everything out. It turns out any spot a relay or a fuse or a wire connector should be shoved in this car, that is exactly what they did.
At any rate, enjoy these photos as I tear into the vehicle!
EV-XJS 