Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

Right...for the best part of the last two years I have been trying to ignore this mess.



I had already pruned quite a bit out of here by the time I took this photo.



After a couple of hours of multimeter bingo I'd figured out where *almost* everything went. We've still got one mystery red wire. That has been left disconnected and safely terminated until I figure out what (if anything) isn't working. It's quite likely the answer is "nothing" as there has been a huge amount of bodgery going on in here. I've pretty much decided that this side of things will be gutted and rewired at some point down the line. Because everything disappears into (by this point in time very brittle) ducting the moment it appears under the floor it's nigh on impossible to follow anything without some pretty major destructive surgery.



It's still hardly pretty...but everything is securely connected, is labelled and is sensibly fused.

I'd really like to know where all the ground wires come from as it seems utterly unnecessary...it wouldn't surprise me is 50% of the voltage drop we see when high power things like the water pump are used is because the ground lines run the full length of the van and are unreasonably skinny. I may well see if I can improve things in that department a bit.

While tracing the wiring out I did find continuity through to what appears to be the split charging relay in the other battery box.



The split charging system has never worked since I've had the van. This far I've never really done much to investigate this as it seemed a bit of a lost cause given the state of the spaghetti surrounding the leisure battery. Having sorted that out though it was worth a look.

Turned out the 5A fuse in that white fuse holder, running to one of the coils in the relay had blown. Not sure how that could have happened...though given the degree of messing around I've seen it could have been hooked up wrong at some point. Replacing the fuse and starting the engine resulted in...



Yep...the split charging system is now working again.

I need to route this lot under the floor to the battery box at some point or enclose it in a little duct to tidy things up. Once everything was back together and we'd gone over everything with the vacuum cleaner looked a bit tidier.



While I had the vacuum out I gave the cab a going over as everything was covered in a fine layer of sawdust from the kitchen work.



I also finally lost patience with that bit of trim over the door on the Jag coming loose and attacked it with some spray adhesive today.



Hopefully it will stay stuck this time.

[Zelandeth]

Abby has been suffering from blinding toothache for the last couple of weeks and was finally able to see her dentist today.

Given the Jag has no functioning A/C (yet), I opted to park in the shade and get out to wait outside (given the heat soak through the transmission tunnel is bad enough when it's not 29C outside).



I made a discovery today in that the *back* of the car ends up nigh on too hot to touch after an hour on the motorway. That kind of puts in perspective how ridiculous the amount of heat that this engine chucks out!

[Zelandeth]

Decided it would be fun to spend a couple of hours outside in unreasonable temperatures today arguing with the air con on the Jag. Said temperatures being the main reason for having moved it up the list.

Nobody this side of the Atlantic seems to have the compressor to condenser hose actually in stock, despite a number of places listing it. My local hydraulic guy I'd usually use for this sort of things is only doing trade work at the moment. Fair enough.

So I snugged up the hose clips a bit to see if it would do anything...leak immediately stopped as far as I can see. Did get a good couple of extra turns on it. We'll see if the pressure has dropped in the morning.

Next challenge. Excuse the rubbish photo, this was the only way I could see what I was up against because there's a bonnet in the way - whoever thought that front hinged bonnets were a good idea?!?



Getting the 14mm nut off the compressor pulley involved downright alarming levels of force but did eventually crack off.

Unfortunately that is as far as I got as apparently I finally need to actually buy a puller. The clutch assembly is well and truly stuck on the compressor shaft. Old school levering and swearing isn't going to cut it this time.

On the plus side the brake fluid leak does indeed appear to have been sorted by fitting the new hoses from the reservoir. Still bone dry now.





At least that's one thing I can tick off it looks like!

Will get a puller ordered and then resume battle with the air con. The bit I'm really not looking forward to is that I need to remove all the other belts again to put the air con one back on...that was so much fun last time.

[Zelandeth]

Couple of things done today.

First was a general fluid etc check. I didn't expect anything to have moved on anything aside from the Jag, but everything on that is treated with complete suspicion at all times. Especially given how much oil it appears to leak.

Nothing had moved...to be honest, as usual. Had been meaning to properly check the gearbox oil for a while though beyond "there's some in there."



Can't complain there. Slightly high reading is expected due to the slope of our driveway.

Had a look at the A/C, I left it with about 35psi in it after nipping up the leaking hose clamp a couple of days ago.



That's an improvement...it was down to about 5psi after this time last time. I really need to find my proper gauge set. It's in the garage somewhere. Will check it again in a week and see if the gas has continued to stay put.

While I was out there I did a bit more investigation of the ticking noise I've noticed over the last couple of weeks. Sounds very much like an exhaust manifold leak...and has now been traced to the furthest back cylinder on the offside (6A?). As disconnecting that injector makes the noise stop.



Hmm. There was a brief period where I thought it might just be a noisy injector, but that hope vanished when I discovered that unplugging the spark plug lead had the same effect. Oh.

So... Exhaust manifold gasket, cracked exhaust manifold, cracked spark plug...or something more sinister like head/head gasket issues? Place your bets...

I'll get plugs ordered in (was sure I'd included them in the last parts order but apparently not), then whip that plug out. At least it's probably the easiest one to get to! At least it looks that way...I may well come to eat those words when I come to actually pull the plug out! If nothing else it will give me a chance to do a compression test on that cylinder, to *hopefully* rule out head troubles.

If the exhaust manifold needs work, a garage is getting that job. I'm not playing that game.

Speaking of exhausts though, the misaligned tailpipe tips were driving me mad. I needed to do something about them...however discovered that they had now welded themselves into the tailpipes and stubbornly refused to shift. I figured it would be easier to separate them from the silencer off the car. Thanks to being stainless it came apart easily enough and indeed being able to get at it with a hammer meant separating the tailpipe tips took five minutes.

It would have been rude not to test out how things sounded without two huge mufflers on the back... especially as this system is quieter than the factory one, and I'd like to hear the exhaust at least a bit..albeit nothing over the top. An experiment needed to be conducted though.



Yes...I think I will be speaking to someone about making up some slightly less silenced tailpipes for the Black Cat.

Things have been reassembled for now.

The only other thing of note today was spotting the heating controller in the van flashing at me that there was a firmware upgrade available - and being web connected meant that with a couple of button clicks we had the upgrade on the way.



...And done. 3.2.1 is the current version.



If only all modern technology behaved this well!

[Zelandeth]

Things I learned yesterday: You need a special tool to wind off/on the clutch pulley on GM/Harrison A6 air conditioning compressors. A normal puller won't cut it, and obviously won't get the pulley back on - it's a friction fit on the compressor shaft, the nut is a safety feature rather than the main means of retention for the pulley.

If I'd used half a brain cell and read up on the job before starting I would have known that and made sure I had said tool in stock. It is now on the way, but if I'd used me head it could have arrived with the new clutch.

[Zelandeth]

Following the rear silencer delete experiment I wanted to at least get a ballpark figure for likely costs involved, however it turns out that our local stainless specialist looks to still be closed. Fair enough to be honest, not really surprised. To be honest there's one over in Cambridge which I'm probably going to be using anyway as several folks have recommended them to me.

It's also about item 28374638 on the priority list. The horribly out of alignment tips had to go though as they made it look like I'd reversed into a low wall and made my OCD twitch every time I walked up to the car.

The only way I could make them sit even with each other resulted in them pointing upwards by about 20 degrees, meaning the system filled up with water whenever it rained.

The purists will probably hate me for it, but I reckon this both solves my immediate issue and actually looks better than the stock exhaust tip arrangement anyway.







No it's not stock, but I think it doesn't look out of place.

In my opinion, the spindly little double elbow looks right on the saloons, but something like this suits the XJ-S better.

[mickthemaverick]

Easy fix for your OCD issue Zel, reverse the car into its parking bay and approach it from the front

[Zelandeth]

Hmm...I appear in a moment of "I wonder if I could..." to have bought a big (way bigger than needed but it was all I could find locally) sheet of really easily malleable metal...I wonder what my plans for that might be...

[Zelandeth]

Well that worked well...Mission Burble has been a success.



Well...refined rumble anyway. Burble is more of a V8 thing.

Pretty much what you want really. Quiet refined Burble at the low end, but proper howl above about 3500rpm.

[Hell Razor5543]

I was thinking that having the tips pointing up might (with a bit of work) allow you to have a couple of tall roster tails when travelling at speed!

[mickthemaverick]

I was thinking that having the tips pointing up might (with a bit of work) allow you to have a couple of tall roster tails when travelling at speed!

Not to mention boosting the downforce!

[Zelandeth]

Downforce? With 425Kg of drivetrain up front we really don't need any extra downforce!

-- -- --

What was the deal with that metal sheeting then?

Well I noticed something when I last had the tail pipes off. They're just deresonators, so a straight through pipe with a perforated section surrounded by wadding. You can see straight through them.



This got me thinking...Could I be really sneaky and essentially just bypass the wadding by slipping a sleeve in? Longer term I do intend to have some proper straight through tailpipes made up...but with the world being a bit nuts at the moment it looks like it will be a while before that's really viable...so time to experiment.



This was just the rough cut, things were trimmed back to fit nicer before I actually tried this. I figured given the way things are designed it's dead easy to remove again (it only takes five minutes to pull the back boxes) it was a worthy experiment.

The plus side is that thanks to the shape of the silencer, the cranked bit is on the outlet...so the only way the sleeve can come out is back through the inlet side, so there's really no way that it could fall out the pipe while driving or anything daft like that. It does mean that section has lost about 0.75mm worth of cross section...but I doubt that really makes any difference...it's still about 10mm wider than where it passes over the rear axle.

The initial result was shown in the previous post, but later in the day I managed to get out for a proper test run.



I'll take that as a win! That's pretty much exactly the sort of balance I was after. A nice growl at the low end, a proper howl above 3500rpm, but no real drone at either 60 or 70mph which I was most worried about. I think the car sounds like it looks like it should now...

Yeah...I think we have our blueprint for getting something made up properly down the road.

I really need to get a new phone case that doesn't rattle annoyingly when recording video.

[Zelandeth]

The ominous sounding ticking/chuffing noise has been identified. It's an inlet manifold leak right next to the injector for cylinder 6A.

I could tell pretty much for certain that it was nothing to do with the exhaust because it was coming from the wrong place. It seemed to be coming from within the V rather than the outside. Hence me wondering if it was combustion gases leaking by the plug or possibly signs of a leaking head gasket.

Then I noticed a bit of oily residue (because everything is covered in oil) that was "wobbling" in an odd way on the manifold to head joint just forward of the fuel injector.

I was just about able to capture this on camera, though access is appalling, because V12.



Reasonably sure this is the source of it as if I stick a bit of grease on the end of my finger and put it there the ticking immediately stops. Though this is the first time I've ever heard a leaky exhaust manifold like tick from a leak on the inlet side.

Well as the inlet manifolds are scheduled to come off as soon as the injection parts arrive anyway that should be sorted at the same time as obviously new manifold gaskets will be going on then.

[Hell Razor5543]

I think it is safe to say that THIS big cat is enjoying the attention she is receiving. She has gone from having major issues that made her 'life' painful to having minor glitches that just make things occasionally awkward. Keep up the good work, Zel, she is becoming one beautifully healthy Jaguar. My Great Uncle Jim (who used to drives Jaguars, both as runabouts and as racing cars) would love what you are doing (not only did he race cars, he tinkered (well, a LOT more than that) with them as well).

[Zelandeth]

Got around to actually blanking off the water supply to the toilet in the van so that I can still use the sinks to wash my hands when I'm out with the dogs etc until I get around to sorting the leak. After scratching my head for about twenty minutes I eventually found something which was precisely the right size.



Slightly unconventional but it works! Still really irked by this fault as sorting it is going to require me to dismantle about 60% of the bathroom. Whether the toilet itself gets repaired or replaced will basically depend on how impossible to get into the casing it is. I suspect that rusted screws will be the order of the day. If it puts up much of a fight it will probably be replaced.

Have started to do a little bit of cleaning up in the Jag's engine bay while I was hunting for the ticking noise, just to make it slightly less unpleasant to touch. To be honest I really just need to hit the whole engine bay with the degreaser and pressure washer as there is just so much caked on congealed oil in a lot of places it's not even funny. The timing cover on A bank has obviously been leaking in such a way that it's dripped onto the alternator fan, which has done a fantastic job of liberally coating that entire quarter of the engine bay from sump to bonnet level in the stuff. Also explains why the belt keeps slipping!

There were a couple of obvious leaks I could easily do something about short term though - the PCV connection into the manifold on B bank had obviously been weeping slightly for decades, just isn't a particularly snug fit on the barb the hose sits on. One hose clip added to hopefully resolve that problem.



It's very obvious where I've given the inlet manifold a bit of a scrub around where the oil was..So the manifolds *will* clean up okay with a bit of a scrub. Just a shame so little of them is actually accessible!

Information labels are mostly actually in surprisingly good shape under the grime.



The whole lot really needs a darn good scrub from top to bottom. I'll probably look to give it a going over once before I start pulling manifolds off as I really want to reduce the odds of me dropping gunk into the engine - though properly blasting all the crud off the lower areas may as well wait until after I've sorted the cam cover gaskets as I'm reasonably sure that's where about 90% of the oil is coming from. Though getting rid of at least some of it will help show up what's historic and what's still currently escaping. I've never had to actually top the oil up - but having said that it does take something like 11.5 litres of it so you need to lose quite a bit I imagine before it will show on the dipstick!

If anyone enjoys the really fiddly work associated with detailing engine bays...Be my guest!



he immediate urgent job for the Jag though is tyres.

What I hadn't spotted when I looked at them originally (and observed that there's excessive wear on the inner shoulder), was that the driver's side one is worn far more badly on half its rotation to the other half - and it was the good side that I originally looked at. It's still legal as the tread is still above the legal limit over more than 75% of the width of the tyre and it's not down to the cords or anything like that, but it definitely needs changing now. The fact that it's got about 0.75mm more tread on half the tyre than the other probably accounts for the horrible out-of-balance like vibration at specific speeds.

The rears have plenty of tread, but are pretty cheap, the best part of ten years old, and starting to perish in several spots. As with the front ones, they are also the wrong size. The car is currently fitted with 205/75 R15 tyres with a speed rating of H. It should be wearing 215/70 R15 W tyres really. I can't recall what load rating they are, but definitely lower than what's stated as being OEM fitment.

This size doesn't give me a huge amount of variety for appropriate rubber, it's a very common size for van tyres so you have to do a bit of sifting through the listings to find what is actually applicable.

While I'd love to fit the Pirelli Cinturatos that were original spec - at £400 odd each, that just isn't happening. Much as my sense of order would enjoy actually having the specific tyres listed in the handbook on the car. It needs to be a period looking tyre though, something with a very modern tread pattern would just look violently out of place on a car like the Jag. Plus I'd really prefer a tyre with a nice squidgy sidewall like would originally have been fitted to ensure we get as decent a ride as possible.

The one I seem to keep coming back to is the Vredestein Sprint Classic, which the cheapest I've found so far is £224 apiece over here on MyTyres.f anyone has seen them cheaper anywhere else please feel free to sing out. Camskill are one provider I've heard a lot of people mention, however they only have two tyres available in this size, and they're both van types.

Pretty much wherever I go, that bill is still going to sting!

Still waiting for the air conditioning pulley puller to arrive. I got duped by a dodgy Amazon page again, which proudly proclaims to be a UK based seller in several locations...however has a tiny asterisk and states in about 0.2pt text "Goods may be dispatched from our warehouse in the People's Republic of China." So that will turn up at some point down the road...precisely when though is anyone's guess. At least it's not massively urgent.

Had to make another run up the motorway today and can confirm that the exhaust is not at all obtrusive at speed, which is nice. The cruise control is also behaving far better now I've adjusted the cable a bit so the actuator is actually pulling the cable straight rather than at about 30 degrees as it was before.

I imagine once the tyres and brakes are done it will be like a different car to drive.

Edit:

Done a bit more research this evening.

Well it looks like £224 each is about as good as it's going to get.

MyTyres: £224 EA Inc fitting.
Openeo: £224 EA + Fitting.
Black Circles: Not Available.
Vintage Tyres: £309.60 + Fitting.
Just Tyres: Not Available.
Camskill: Not Available.
Mr. Tyre: Not Available.
Formula 1: Not Available.
National: Not Available.
Tyres Direct: Not Available.
Kwik-Fit: Not Available.
Tyre Leader: £225 Inc Fitting.
Costco: Not Available.
ATS: Not Available.

There are a couple of cheaper options out there, but the idea of putting budget tyres on a 1700kg, 300bhp rear drive sports coupe seems a bit of a poor move. It's just not a car which you should skimp on it feels like.