A little late in posting this, but here we are! The V12 is out!
I’m sitting in the driver’s seat while dad is engaging the winch. My driveway is on quite an angle, so getting the car on to the trailer wasn’t all that hard as the trailer ended up being nearly flat when against the driveway angle.
Loaded, strapped and ready to roll…
First task was an initial power wash to get more mouse grossness out.
Next is to pull the Turbo 400 transmission
Engine crane is attached and ready to rip!
It’s out!
Back in my garage, we weren’t so sure getting the car off the trailer and back into the garage would be that easy – mainly because of that driveway angle was now no longer in our favor.
So, I bolted this block to the floor to loop the winch rope through and pull the car into the garage from the trailer.
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.
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.
Today I started tearing into the driver side door. I really wanted to get the window down so keep airflow inside the cabin now that I had a lot of the interior wiped down. Up until this point I was keeping the vehicle sealed up to not spread any mold/smells into the garage.
I’m still amazed for such an expensive car the door cards are essentially a pressed carboard…
I’m also amazed how much of this vehicle is GM based. This is the window regulartor:
Here is a VERY old style of door lock actuator – a solenoid.
A neat feature of the jag is that when someone unlocks the door with a key or the little flap inside the cabin, the other door will lock/unlock at the same time.
I’m going to ditch these solenoids (they are toast anyway), but I plan to retain this magical feature…somehow. Sensors. Lots of sensors.
Inside the solenoid shows how they accomplished this in ’86:
Ok, back in the car we find more hidden plugs in the wiring harnesses!
This is the button that actuates when the door is open/closed. Why is this soldered when everything else on the car has a plug? The passenger side and the trunk lid switch are also soldered, so this isn’t a one-off.
Back to the trunk we have the power antenna motor. I love power antennas. There’s something charming about them. This one is in perfect condition sans a rubber grommet and I was able to source a replacement. Even though I rarely listen to FM, I will still connect this to the head unit.
Grounds everywhere. Any place there could be a ground, there’s a ground.
Hidden behind the passenger quarter panel is this evap canaster. Just tucked in there.
Then there’s this.
This is a timer. A milage timer. From what I read the O2 sensors need to be replaced every 30k miles. Modern vehicles would look at the output of the sensors and tell you when things aren’t working as they should and trip a check engine light. The XJS? Timer. When you hit 30k miles a light in the dash appears specifically for these sensors. The sensors could have failed 10k miles ago. They could be still good. Timer. Reset the timer and you have 30k more light-free miles.
I am very impressed with the internals though:
Lastly for today’s tear down…these lights. The bulb is just sorta shoved in there. These will be LEDs.
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.
EV-XJS 