All posts by Mark DeLong

Body work

February 2006 – Chromed taillights and exterior door handles

Chromed taillights and exterior door handles

Quite a while ago, I sent off some badly pitted taillights and some merely OK exterior door handles to Ricardo Delatorre, the owner of The Best Chrome in San Martin, California. I sent them off in December 2004, and I let Ricardo know that I wasn’t in any hurry. The chrome pieces came back in February, after Ricardo attempted repair of the originals without success. He acquired different taillights and chromed them up, abandoning the ones I sent to him as lost to the scrap heap. (May they rest in peace until they are remelted and made into something useful!)

I am delighted with the newly chromed parts. As a matter of fact, they drew praises from the rest of the family, too, as I unpacked the parts from the box. I ran out to the garage minutes after unpacking the taillights to fetch the rest of the assemblies. I had the taillights on, fully tested, before the sun went went down that Saturday.

The taillight assembly went in quite easily. I only had to retap the holes in the straps on the body to do the preparation at this point, everything else having been completed. I loosely fit the rubber seal onto the taillight assembly and then plugged in the bullet connectors. After loosely fitting the chrome to the body, I positioned the rubber seal. I found that using a razor knife tip (without pressing too hard, of course) made it possible to pull the rubber into place. A little pressure applied to the taillight chrome held the rubber seal in position while I tightened the screws and got the taillight to fit snugly. I was actually a bit surprised that they fit so well, since I had heard that such fittings need often need to be ground when trial testing before plating.

A test of the lights, and that was it!

The door handles, of course, are a bit more challenging to fit together. When we disassembled the car in 2002, we discovered that the left side lock had a broken “retaining case” — the part that surrounds the spring-loaded plunger behind the locking mechanism. I’ve ordered a new one of those. (They are not interchangeable from side to side, by the way). The right door handle went in place after I took apart the entire lock and cleaned the accumulated gunk.

I resisted the urge to lubricate the lock with oil or grease. It seems to me that graphite is a better choice. I recall from cold winters in Minnesota that liquid (or gel) lubricants can get formidably stiff in very cold weather. I hope this car will be spared from that beastly cold.

It took me a while to actually see how the entire mechanism works, since when I first looked at it I suspected that the part might have been cannibalized. There was, it seemed to me, too much “air” in the middle of the part, between the rear end of the lock tumbler and the loosely fitted plunger. I’ll taken some pictures when I reassemble the left side lock, so that others might not be confused. At any rate, the right side door handle went on shortly after the rechromed parts came back to Rougemont, and like the taillights, it is beautiful to see in its final place.

The Best Chrome did very good work for me, and though the parts were in Ricardo’s hands for a good long while, I told him that I wasn’t pressed for time. So I couldn’t expect a fast turn around. I still have some chrome that probably needs to be done, but I don’t know the timetable for that right now. Mainly I have bumpers that need attention, and I’m planning on doing a lot of the preparation here in Rougemont. When I get to the point of sending off the parts for plating, Ricardo will be in mind. I just wish he was on my end of the country!

Ricardo’s contact information:

Ricardo Delatorre
The Best Chrome
13165 Monterey Road
San Martin, California 95046

Interior

January 2006 – Interior

I know. Many will wonder why in the world I would start on the interior before having the greasy bits installed. The answer is (mostly) straightforward. First, I’m a little impatient. Second, I’m not quite ready to have the Big Mechanicals go off somewhere. I don’t have a clear plan for the engine and the transmission, and I’m torn between being my own “general contractor” or using a reputable engine rebuilder to just do the job from beginning to end.

So, the interior sits there waiting, and I can do it. I’m posting this report well before I’m finished with the interior, but it’s been a long time since I’ve updated the site. I figured this epic of interior installation should be begun in medias res.

Vinyl & cloth. For me, probably the most excruciating part of the interior was settling on a color. I had always intended to install a standard color for the interior, in spite of intense lobbying from my sons to go with black which was not a standard interior color with Opalescent Dark Green for the 1963 E-type. The “correct” colors for the interior were Beige, Tan, Light Tan, and Suede Green — and those colors were constant over the life of the Opalescent Dark Green body color (from 1961 to about September 1967, as I interpret the data). However, other colors could be special ordered.

I gathered samples of the various colors from different vendors, and I settled on using World Upholstery & Trim as my source. They had provided the vinyl covering for the dash and instrument panels, and I was impressed with the quality of the vinyl (and that, I have learned, can vary widely from source to source). They have also been easy to work with. They also do E-type interiors to order. This is important because I am not willing to try my hand at doing the seats, and I wanted to make sure that the vinyl color and the eventual leather hides for the seats would fit well together. Also, I had planned to have the moquette (aka “body cloth”) consistent on the seats and on the couple of sections where it covers the interior. I ordered all of the vinyl, moquette, and carpet from World Upholstery, and should they eventually do a seat kit for me, the materials will be consistent. If I have someone else do the seats for me, I can get the materials from World Upholstery and maintain the consistency nonetheless.

My color choice? Tan. The specifics of what I ordered from World Upholstery follow.

ITEM COLOR ITEM # LENGTH
Vinyl (width 54″) Tan 4004 4 yards*
Leather hide Tan 4104 Not ordered
Moquette (body cloth) Tan 262 1 yard
Carpet (backless, width 60″) Palomino 5113 2 2/3 yards

* I could have used another yard of vinyl, just to make it easier.

Costs of the products vary, with the vinyl coming through around USD $35/yard, the moquette about USD $75/yard, and the carpet around USD $65/yard. Quantities of the materials are of course based on where it all goes on the car, and this seems to have changed through the history of the Series 1 roadster. The crossmember on later Series 1 cars had carpet, while earlier cars had vinyl covering. For 1963, as far as I can tell, moquette was only on seat backs, behind the seats on the “lower rear bulkhead,” and on the wheelwell arches. Carpet covered the upper sections of the rear bulkhead, but I have also seen Series 1 cars with vinyl (or perhaps hardura) covering that area. I decided to use vinyl on the floors below the seats, though I have seen hardura, carpet and moquette in that place. Vinyl, I think, will be easier to keep clean (and is, in any case, obscured from the view of people who might care about such things). Vinyl covers the crossmembers on this car, as I believe it came from the factory.

I decided not to differentiate the vinyl from the hardura sections of the interior. This means that the “outside-facing” section of the “scuttles” and the area surrounding the chrome bonnet releases have vinyl installed rather than hardura. I wasn’t impressed with the fit of the hardura that came off of this car when we dismantled it (though, given the state of the car when we got it, that’s probably not saying much). Hardura in the scuttle area needs to wrap around a 90° corner, and it is stiff enough that it doesn’t do that very well. The hardura panels were rounded over the corner, and the sections adjacent to the corner pooched out. At any rate, you’ll see that there’s no hardura on my list of materials. I do think that World Upholstery stocks it, if you want it.

Felt & padding. In winter 2004, I lined the interior with rubber-backed foil, with the exception of the inner sills above the groove for wiring and the wheel well arches. Atop that lining, I cemented 1/8-inch thick felt pad that has a Mylar-type plastic face on one side. It’s actually flooring product made by Armstrong. I also used regular old felt found in fabric stores for the facing pieces that extend from the doors to the rear interior light. Thickness of that material isn’t much more than a millimeter or so. Padding for the wheelwell arches and the windshield post (the A-post) was 5/16-inch foam. This material has a cloth facing and is actually sold for headliners. I also have half-inch foam previously used on the dash. I used it as the foam for the top portion of the door panels.

Hardboard door panels. Well, the product comes from Lowes and it’s used as a chalkboard. Exactly the same thickness as the door panels that came off of the car, one side has a painted coating for marking up with chalk (the green board). A similar product is available for use with special whiteboard markers. The product I got is from Georgia Pacific labelled “G. P. Chalkboard Wainscot.” I redid the panels for the trunk/boot with the same product, though with a smooth white coating for whiteboard markers. You can cut it with a razor knife. The 48″ x 32″ sheet cost well under USD $10, and after cutting out the door panels I still have extra for use on other projects.

Fasteners, glues, and cements. Certain sections of the interior are fastened to the body with clips. These originally were spring steel. I chose to use nylon “push” fasteners instead. For the facing on the “B”-pillar I’ve used Ford-style 1″ (or thereabouts) fasteners and for the “A”-post facing, I’ve used GM-style half-inch (or thereabouts) fasteners. I haven’t fitted the door panels yet, but I believe the 1″ fasteners will work there as well. If you plan on reusing door panels, you probably won’t be able to switch from the original fasteners, since the holes for the original fasteners are slightly offset, perhaps by as much as a quarter inch. I could use the new nylon fasteners because I have had to redrill holes for the fasteners in any case, since I made new panels. The original clips seem to fasten well, but they also appear to tear up the hardboard of the panels.

Some people used spray-on contact cement, but I haven’t had altogether wonderful experiences with it staying well glued. Instead, I’ve used the “gel” formula of Weldwood contact cement. The gel formula is easier to use than the “regular” paint-like formula, especially on surfaces like foam, where you want the cement to remain on the outer surface. The gel formula is not as easy to apply as a spray, but it works with a little practice. I’ve also come to appreciate hot-glue guns, especially for attaching vinyl tightly to make smooth curves. With a squirt of hot glue and a bit of pressure, the vinyl is attached quickly and neatly.

Armrest repair. The plastic sections of both armrests were cracked, one of them quite badly. I figured that I would try repairing them before ordering reproductions. They’re actually quite complicated structures, with internal passages for fastening the armrest pads (which are secured on metal frames) and for fastening the armrest to the door. Two plastic “ears” sit between the door panel and the armrest pad sections, and these are just really designed to break off, since they sit in a place where any upward pressure on the armrest will pivot and press on the thin plastic walls. All of these “ears” were cracked and broken on my armrests.

The pictures on this page show the repair process and the extent of the breakage. I did the repair in two steps: a thin coating of polyester body filler for the outer portion of the armrest and a reinforced fiberglass coating for the internal structure and reinforcement of the repair. If I were to do the repair over, I would not use the polyester filler, even though it shapes nicely. The filler didn’t bond well to the plastic, and I suspect that over time it will fail. The fiberglass reinforcement is a little harder to bring into nice shape, but it bonded well and did a good job of reinforcing the whole structure. Since the channels are the weak points of the plastic molding, I went ahead and reinforced even the channels that had not (yet) weakened or cracked.

Color is a question. The armrests that came on my car had been painted a semigloss black, and I was suspicious about the color. The plastic was a neutral tan-grey color. I suspect, though I’m far from certain, that the armrests were originally fitted without painting. Jaguar may have had a couple of colors (black and this tan-grey color, perhaps) that they used for the different interior colors. I tried to find period pictures of a tan interior, but I discovered what other people have already noticed: even Jaguar’s own brochures recycled pictures from earlier models. The brochure I looked at from 1963 included interior shots that seem to be of earlier model years. The pictures don’t include armrests at all; and that, I’m told, is a hallmark of very early year models of the Series 1 cars.

At any rate, I matched the color of the plastic — believe it or not, Krylon “Camouflage” (flat) with a clearcoat over it. I’ll continue trying to find original pictures as time allows. The color is all right with the tan vinyl, and I think it’s truer to the original color combinations than a sprayed color exactly matched with the vinyl.

Carpet and pad. A little note on the carpet and what lies beneath it. I used quarter-inch felt as a pad under all carpeted surfaces, and the cutting of the felt provided the basic templates for the carpet itself. Areas on the body that I expect to be sources of noise (such as downward-facing surfaces or cavities like the IRS section) had the aluminum/foam covering, the felt/Mylar covering, and the felt pad covering. Together, these pieces make up about a half-inch thickness.

The surged edge of carpet I sewed using our trusty Kenmore sewing machine. The edging is vinyl. I was wondering if the sewing machine would work on carpet as well as it did on the vinyl pieces that needed a surged edge. It did, so I didn’t have to go to an upholstery shop even for that little bit of work.

Wrong style grab handle! Yikes! I don’t know if I’m going to try to find a more “original” replacement in any case, since I actually like this style better. But, that variance from the original just doesn’t sit well with me still. I might try to find someone who’d be willing to trade. Now, where is Stephan Roundy’s email address?

Body work, Interior

August/September 2005 – Windshield, right door

This entry ends the third year of restoration work on the car. It’s been a long haul.

Windshield

The Cat Cage in Rougemont had a visitor from Oklahoma in early September. Wallace DeLong, also known as “Dad” and “Grandpa,”visited for a couple of days, and I set him to work in the garage. The right side door needed its insides put back into place. The left side door was enough of a challenge that I figured it would be a good weekend project for us. And we got rolling along and decided to set the windshield into place as well.

It was good to see Dad again, and he was able to see some progress on the car from the last time he was here.

The windshield is the original Triplex clear laminated glass. When we removed it we did not take off the chrome finishing strip that sits on the top edge of the glass. The glass shows some reparable scratches from the windhsield wiper frames that must have rubbed the glass a bit over the years. This can be buffed out, since the scratches are indetectable with a fingernail, except for a small section on the left side. Cleanup was quick — some 409 cleaner followed by the “Cerama Bryte” glass stove top cleaner took small scratches and the accumulated crud off quite nicely. One puzzling note: We noticed a dark blue deposit on the paper towel that we used to rub off the Cerama Bryte. This was only on the outside-facing side of the windshield and the right-side door window. It may have been a chemical reaction of some sort, though it might have been as simple as some ancient blue overspray from a body shop somewhere a long time ago.

I’m going to try the Cerama Bryte on the wiper scratches. I did a little hard rubbing on the left side blemishes, and the relatively gentle grits in the stuff seemed to work to make the scratches less visible. I figure a buffer might do a good portion of the job, gently applied.

I got the windshield seal from Classic Jaguar, and the first thing we noticed was that it was apparently intended for a “FHC” — Fixed Head Coupe. The seal was circular, so it was intended to go completely around a piece of glass. I figured there were two possibilities: the seal was mistakenly sent or there was a trick to doing this. I wrote to Dan Mooney, and within a half hour he replied that the seals for the convertible are no longer available and the seal I had on hand could be trimmed to fit nicely.

We looked at the seal in order to determine where the corners were, a task that wasn’t quite as easy as you might think. The seal is molded, but because of the corner curves, it twists in packaging. So you think you find a corner, but it turns out to be a deceptive twist. And then, of course, you need to find upper and lower curves, too. The whole thing moves as you search, so getting a clear idea of where you are on the seal is not so easy.

I tried to mount the seal without cutting it, but I found that was nearly impossible. So I went ahead and cut it in a place I figured (wrongly) was somewhere in the middle of the top edge of the FHC windshield. It turns out I was extremelyclose to the top curve on the right side — about two inches of rubber from cutting into the seal I needed to preserve!

Despite this little near ineptitude, the seal went on well.

One thing that I noticed is that it is best to do the final trim after the windshield is completely in place, because the seal naturally moves down the “A” post as the glass moves downward into position. I initially cut the left side what I thought was rather long, but it turned out to settle down to just barely long enough. My suggestion: trim above the upper curve, and then cut it to size after the windshield is completely in place. The curved seal on top won’t get in the way.

Setting the seal starts in the middle, and setting the chrome strip that’s nestled inside the seal starts in the middle, too. You do get better at alignment as you go through this process. Be careful to get the chrome finishing strip right in the center, because you won’t want to take it out to reset it. The Jaguar shop manual shows a bent wire tool that’s used to set the rubber around the glass and the chrome strip. I didn’t use it, but I found a bent coat hanger to be very useful even though it might have been better if it were a little thinner. The picture below shows it sitting on the car in front of the installed windshield.

Right door insides

I took on the left door earlier this summer, and it was a bit of a job. For the most part the tough part was rediscovering the order of installation. First, do the felt or sound deadener and the water tube. Second, install the lock mechanism. Third, install the window slide frame. Last, install the window and the slide mechanism. A movie would really do the trick to show how these (sometimes big) parts slip into that little slit at the top of the door panel. You just need to think about many angles. For getting the windows and the riser into place, at one time we had the window perpendicular to the flat of the panel. You might be tempted to bend the slit a bit wider, but you don’t need to.

We cleaned up the glass with the same stuff, and we noticed the same dark blue residue on the outside face of the window. Strange. Be careful with the flat connection from the door handle to the latch mechanism. It’s easy to pinch in the anchor for the window rising mechanism (the thing that is firmly set with four nuts). I managed to do that on the left side door, and Dad and I repeated the error on the right door, too.

Dad and I have different philosophies about grease. I am liberal and he’s a conservative. We both ended up looking as though we were liberal with grease, much to Dad’s dismay.

I figure it’ll delay rust; he thinks it’ll just get on the windows. I bet we’re both right.

Interior

July 2005 – Dash covering, “crosshatch” aluminum

Dash covering

I got a yard of black vinyl from World Upholstery & Trim. It comes in 54-inch widths, and a yard is more than sufficient for the dash. In fact, if I had not been so paranoid about cutting too small, I may have been able to do two sets for this and earlier cars at least, since the center instrument panel was still trimmed in aluminum. Later models used vinyl in the center as well, though there is considerable confusion about when the switch from aluminum to vinyl actually took place. Owners of cars produced from late summer to fall 1963 report various trim configurations, and the factory assembly may have been a bit unstructured and haphazard during the transition to vinyl.

I think it was an obvious “upgrade” in the mid-1960s to hide the crosshatch aluminum beneath a vinyl covering once the aluminum had shown wear. That, in fact, was probably encouraged when newer models of the E-type used vinyl — the vinyl covering looked like the newer models, after all.

We took off a tan vinyl covering that had been added by a previous owner, and beneath the tan vinyl lay the aluminum. With some considerable luck we might have been able to clean up, re-anodize, and reuse the aluminum, but it had been drilled, scratched, and otherwise violated. The aluminum surface is easily damaged, and so I can understand why Jaguar might have wanted to switch to vinyl. It’s durable and resilient to bumps and scratching, and — probably the overriding factor — it’s undoubtably cheaper.

It’s worth noting that vinyl comes in a huge range of qualities, and I easily found much cheaper vinyl than what I got from World Upholstery. The cheaper products were obviously cheaper for a reason: backing was flimsy, thickness varied, vinyl toughness was marginal, and often the embossed pattern lacked depth.

A note about vocabulary: “dash” often refers to the top, facing up toward the windshield, and the three vertically facing pieces that house the instruments and access to the glove box. I try to be specific, though I’m sure I slip up and use terms interchangably. (As someone usually says at this point: “Can’t you see my hands waving?”) I have seen the central portion of the dash — where the ignition and smaller dial instrumentation is located — referred to as the “minor instrument panel.” I’m assuming that the panel immediately forward of the steering wheel, whether on the right or the left, would be the “major instrument panel.” I’ve also heard the central (or “minor”) instrument panel referred to as part of the console. Pictures are, indeed, worth a thousand words of explanation, I’ve come to learn.

The top of the dash has a foam backing laying beneath the black vinyl covering. The other sections of the dash — the major instrument panel and the glove box access — do not include foam, but are simply black vinyl glued to the steel. On models after 1963, and on some transitional portion of the 1963 year cars, the minor instrument panel is covered with black vinyl as well.

My car, it turns out, was made at the beginning of the transition. Unfortunately, it was modified by a previous owner, so it’s well nigh impossible to figure out the original configuration of the minor instrument panel. The tranny cover console, and the forward “radio” or “speaker” console have crosshatch aluminum panels beneath the vinyl. It’s tempting to do the black vinyl over the minor instrument panel, but the fact of the matter is that I like the aluminum and want to see if I can scare up the correct crosshatch for it and the other sections.

Crosshatch Aluminum

The 1963 E-type had a crosshatch pattern on the aluminum facing for the center console and the central instrument panel. That crosshatch is really hard to find, though it seems to be available through the Aston Martin Heritage services. (The link is http://www.astonmartin.com/parts/heritage. Mac OS X Safari will not work, incidentally.) Dan Mooney at Classic Jaguar was able to get sheets at a dear price that he didn’t specify.

Here’s what it looks like at about 15X:

I wrote to Aston Martin about the crosshatch pattern, and the correspondence itself was an interesting example of specialized vocabulary, some of which no doubt arose from the working history of the company. I inquired about the crosshatch design that appeared on the DB4/DB5/DB6. I got the response that it was indeed available and that I could view the product in a PDF attachment. However, the pattern was called “polka dot” and the picture had insufficient resolution to see the pattern at all. Thinking I hadn’t made myself clear about the pattern, I asked for confirmation.

Sure enough, “polka dot” is also “crosshatch” according to Aston Martin. Or, perhaps more correctly, “crosshatch” is really “polka dot.” Mark Hewitt of the Aston Martin Heritage division sorted it out. “Sorry for the confusion,” he replied. “Polka dot is an in house name we use but it is indeed cross hatch design as used on DB4/5/6. This is to the original design and look.” It is available only through Aston Martin authorized dealers, part number 695288. It comes in sheets sized 1250 x 410 millimeters (49.1″ x 9.8″), and, no, I don’t know about a salvage at the edges. On the Aston Martin cars, this aluminum pattern was used for door and sill trim.

To fashion the central aluminum sections for the 1963 E-type interior, you’d need to get two sheets. If you don’t do the minor instrument panel, you might be able to do the job with one sheet, though it would be tight.

I am hoping that Classic Jaguar might make the crosshatch aluminum trim available again.

Foam and vinyl covering of dash

Dash top. The whole metal frame for the dash interlocks nicely. The steel pieces are covered with black vinyl, and the copper plated center section is covered with aluminum — this model year sported a “crosshatch” pattern that is really difficult to find.

Getting the foam onto the dash was quite easy. It’s really just a matter of laying out the foam (I used 1/2 inch thickness) and then tracing the vent holes and outlining the entire dash with a generousborder. Then, cut the foam vent holes about 3/8 inch broader than the outline. The rest is a matter of applying contact cement to both the foam and the metal. I found that the “gel” formula contact cement was easiest to use, since it isn’t as easily absorbed into porous material, like vinyl backing or foam. It is prudent to check to see whether the contact cement formula reacts with either foam or the vinyl. Do a test, since you don’t want your materials to melt away before your eyes.
Apply the foam to the metal, beginning with the center vent hole, moving outward to each vent hole, and then finally moving “back” to face of the dash. The key is to get the vent holes aligned right. If you have cut the foam generously, you can adjust quite easily. The last part is cutting the outlined edge. I cut the edge as if to bevel the edge slightly.

Contact cement goes on the back of the vinyl and on the foam and in the exposed metal around the vents. One caution: Carefully apply the contact cement to the foam, especially. If too much of it is applied, it can seep into the foam slightly, even though the foam cells are supposed to be sealed. If that seepage occurs, the foam can begin to stick to itself internally, causing a depression on the surface (and in your psyche, too). Using a gel formula contact cement helps avoid this, simply because the cement is so thick it doesn’t spread or seep as easily. Light and quick strokes of the brush help.


When affixing the vinyl, I think it’s best to begin with the vents at the front of the dash. As with the process of setting the foam on the metal dash, begin with the center vent and then move outward to the vents at the edges. At this point I didn’t bother wrappiing the vinyl around the metal. I just worried about getting the top surface smooth and wrinkle free. After the forward (vent) edge of the dash was firmly fixed, I moved toward the back edge of the dash — the edge that faces the car’s interior. When you apply the vinyl be sure to avoid uneven tension of the vinyl, since that can cause the dash to become wavy. Take your time and watch carefully.

You can see the final product emerging, but you can also see how generous I was with the vinyl. I trimmed a good four inches (ten centimeters) off the back edge of the vinyl by the time I was done. Appearances are a little deceiving here, though. The picture makes it look as though I had already wrapped the forward edge of the vinyl around the metal. This was not the case, but the vinyl had curled around the forward edge because of the gentle stretching that I did while applying it. At this point, I hadn’t even put contact cement on the underside of the dash.

I decided to make edges of the vent openings fold to the underside of the metal. This meant applying contact cement to the underside areas and slitting the center of the vent. Note the “dart” at each end of the vent hole. You can actually cut a little closer to the metal edge. If I were to cut this again, I believe I would have made the dart a little longer, since it’s easier to attach a longer piece to the underside. You can see that I had wrapped the edges of the vinyl already.
Now, the vent opening can also be cut open flush with the metal edge. Since the outside surface has a bronze fitting to outline the vent hole, the metal will not be visible, and the chance of a peel-back of the vinyl is minimized.

The original setup may have had the duct inserted up through the duct hole before the vinyl was cemented in place. I don’t know. I do know that the setup I took apart was flimsy and it most assuredly was a redo from the original, since the vinyl I took off wasn’t black but tan. The original metal pieces that trim up the vent holes are made of bronze and painted black. They were probably originally attached with sheet metal screws.

I chose to do the attachment of the duct from below using aluminum clips and contact cement. Not only did this make the trimming of the dash a little easier, but I think it would make eventual replacement of a duct piece easier.

The clips holding the duct in place are attached with a machine screw and nut which replaces the original sheet metal screw. The edges of the duct not covered by the clip need to be glued, so they don’t wander into the hole or otherwise separate from the surface.

The clip was a simple matter of cutting with snips and a little shaping with pliers. The aluminum is 0.040″ thick. Note that the bends of the feet-like tabs are made to exert some pressure when you tighten the piece in place, though remember that aluminum isn’t great as a spring metal. If you go this route, you’ll need to make ten of these things, but you don’t need to alter the design for the corner vents that are rounded. The clip isn’t long enough for the curve to matter on those.

Glove box. The glove box and the major instrument panel in front of the steering wheel are also covered in black vinyl, though unlike the dash top they had no foam backing. The vinyl just goes on the metal, and the trimming is quite easy.

I decided to make a paper template for the dash pieces, since they have an angled surface as well. You can see how much I made the cutting wide, mainly because I wanted to have too much material rather than too little. Since I had a full yard of the vinyl, I had plenty to work with.

The vinyl having been cut from the template and the surfaces covered with contact cement, it was really just a matter of laying the metal piece onto the vinyl and then methodically affixing the vinyl with finger pressure. I started applying pressure in central areas (though there isn’t much of a central area on the glove box hole!). Then I worked toward the edges. This picture shows a little innovation using clothespins. I clipped the perimeter where I have wrapped the vinyl over the metal edge. It’s probably useful to do this only on surfaces that are hidden from view, because the pressure of the clothespin can flatten the texture of the vinyl. Indeed, the clothespin trick might not really be necessary at all, since contact cement, once pressed into place, sticks pretty well.

The choke control is in place, and I just laid the glove box piece into position and set the dash on top of it. Though it’s obviously not in final position, the image gives an idea of what the parts will look like when they’re completely installed.

Body work, Electrical system

June 2005 – Data plate, door, headlights

Data plate, final episode

I might as well get this done right now. I finished the truer-to-the-original data plate with the able help of Eric MaLossi, and I’m quite pleased with the results. The plate is a little thicker than the original, so it resists a bit more under the mallet and die, but it should be easier to handle at installation. I have placed mine aside until I can be sure that the numbers that I’ll have on the car are what I expect. I know the body number will remain the same, but I haven’t had the engine block or the gearbox thoroughly evaluated. I’m not expecting any problems with either, but things have been known to happen unexpectedly in restorations.

The data plate could be improved with the adoption of a more original technique. The originals were probably done with etching and subsequent anodize. My plate uses a technology that might not have been in existence in the early 1960s. It’s called “photoetching.” It is quite durable and scratch resistant, but the black print is flush with the aluminum surface — no ridge at all at the edges of the letters and borders. Since the plate’s contents are true to the original, it is nonetheless superior to many, if not all, of the data plates currently available.

I believe I’ll never look at a plate in quite the same way again. Last night I was going through a book that displayed a plate of a “very fine” restoration, and I picked it out easily as an aftermarket “almost” reproduction.

Left door back together

Putting the doors back together is just slightly easier than taking them apart, probably because you can remember some of the pain of the initial door disassembly. The process is basically the reverse of the disassembly, and the trick is getting the bolts for the door latching mechanism and the window crank in the correct places. You need to think about the ways that the bits weave around one another. First the door latching mechanism, then the window assemblies.

I cleaned off the mechanisms with a steel brush and wire wheel, and they came quite clean. The door shell needed to be fitted with the drainage hose (don’t miss the clam that holds it in place) before any of the mechanicals could go in. The last items to be placed were the black skirts that close off the lower access holes. These seem often to be removed and never replaced, as far as I can tell. Pictures I’ve seen of reconstructed doors lack these little steel features, perhaps because they serve no practical purpose except for noise control, maybe. They’re pop-riveted on, and I used strips of neoprene padding to control vibration. Along the edge where the rivets are placed, the pieces were originally caked with a rubbery sealant-adhesive that may have served the purpose of dampening vibration.

Getting the left door set up took an entire afternoon. I’ve put off doing the right door because it is a bit tedious to do the job.

In order to fit the door, the weatherstripping and seals needed to go in. I got a very complete rubber kit from Classic Jaguar, and it has so far been extraoridinarily complete. I used 3M Weatherstripping and Gasket Adhesive. It’s basically a contact cement, and the tube I got was unfortunately full of a yellow-brown cement. The stuff shows up very brightly on Opalescent Dark Green, I can tell you! I did not follow Dan Mooney’s advice to fit seals with masking tape before cementing them in place, so I couldn’t adjust fit. I just cemented the pieces on, using a healthy amount of blue masking tape and some paper towel to hold the seals in place.

I did have to trim pieces of the seals, of course, but that was easily done without doing the taping to fit. Other sections of the car might need more careful treatment.

Fiat lux! Let there be light!

The bonnet having been prepped and clearcoated for a second time, we set about making the bonnet harness and installing the lights and horns. Of course this entailed redoing the bonnet harness that extends from the male bonnet plug receiver to the lights and horns. I used the same approach here as I did with the rear harness. That is, I used the original wiring on the bonnet plug receiver to connect to a new spade-connector connection block, and from there the hand-made harness reaches to the end points. The bonnet harness deviates a bit from the original in that I did not use exactly conforming color coding, though the wire gauge meets or exceeds the originals. The wiring colors were similar (a reddish/pinkish replaced the original red, for example). I was also uncomfortable with the grounding scheme.

The schematic diagram shows that wires go from the light housings and such to ground, probably on the bonnet somewhere. It’s a mystery to me exactly where the wires originally grounded on the bonnet, though my documentation shows that some grounds ended up on the mounts for the horns. Instead of grounding to the bonnet, I decided to run ground wires to a grounding point near the bonnet plug that can be connected by another ground wire to the car body itself. It seems to me that the bonnet connections to the car body are simply too insulated with new paint and lack unambiguous metal-to-metal contact.Of course, the original grounds worked, but I want the grounds to be unambiguous, just like the other wiring.

I ran individual ground wires to the electrical parts, since simultaneous loads at night with the horns blaring might make up a fair bit of current, and I’d hate to heat up a too thin wire. The horns use a pretty fair amount of current, and so they need to find their way to ground in a safe manner, too.

The headlight housings were caked in tar-like rustproofing, and they needed a thorough scraping, scrubbing, and sanding before being painted. The internal areas of the housings were in good shape, including the chrome light retaining rings. These just needed some buffing to bring back to life. The original rubber fittings on the housings served well, though they were quite tight, since the new wiring I inserted was slightly heftier than the original wires. The original wiring was pretty badly decayed, particularly the cotton loomed insulation on the two “hot” wires going to each headlight bulb. I used plastic coated wires, not cotton loomed wires.

The lights work, and it seems as though adding them returns a little bit of the car’s soul. Sure is nice to see them in place!

Uncategorized

January-May 2005 – 1963 Jaguar E-type data plate, continued

The data plate obsession has just about run its course, thank goodness.

I fussed with the artwork for what seemed like a very long time, and finally the job turned the corner when Eric Malossi pitched in with his Photoshop skills (which were just a bit better than mine) and his critical eyes. By picking harder at smaller sections of my retouchings we came up with a truer piece. I went through his work and he, through mine. The result was better than either of us could have concocted on our own.

The piece went off to the pros for laying onto metal, but not before I had at it with some silkscreen. I do think that large runs of plates like this would use some variant of silkscreen, and I think that the original plates used the process, though not to print black — as today’s shop most likely would — but to put down a masking lacquer coat prior to metal etching. I found that the silkscreen method I used left details too foggy, and this was the fault of the method, not the artwork. I used no camera or even a transparent image but instead used a regular old laser printed copy on some regular old copy paper. It works for T-shirts. It doesn’t work for data plates.

On the original plates, I think the process was etch and anodise, and the corners of the letters on the original betray the method. They are rounded — eaten a bit by the etching solution. That fact made the artwork for the replacement plate a bit harder, since the letters had to reflect a little roundness even though the individual pixels of the image are square. (The artwork uses a 300 dots-per-inch screen, so it is fairly high resolution.)

So, when will the data plate be back from the shop? I hope soon, at least something mid-summer.

Body work, Electrical system

January-May 2005 – Trunk floor, wiring harness (redesigned)

New trunk (“boot”) floor

The old trunk floor was totally exhausted, with the laminate of the plywood virtually falling apart in thin wooden sheets. The pieces were good enough to stack together like so many playing cards and trace onto a new sheet of plywood. I used 15/32 thickness plywood that was left over from roofing repair on an outbuilding. The original was probably one-half inch plywood, and I will eventually get around to counting the laminate sheets. The only piece of hardware I have reused is the prong that fits forward of the finger hole “handle” for the right side sheet. The snaps are readily available. The original plywood was painted in one coat with what must have been a flat black, or perhaps a black that was thinned enough to soak in and dull. I used Rustoleum flat black that I had left over from another project. The piece matched perfectly and fit very well.

Custom wiring harness

At least in some measure, the data plate was a dalliance — something fit between more mechanical work that could be accomplished either when winter cold was tolerable or spring warmth chased cold away. During those better moments in the garage, we focused on the rear end of the car. As it now sits, the car is pretty much ready for final upholstery, polish, and chrome from the rear bulkhead back. That includes the wiring from behind the rear bulkhead, in spite of the fact that the wiring harness is completely absent forward from that point.

The harness bothered me when we removed it (intact, believe it or not), because it seemed an unwieldy beast. Since wires can extend from the fuse boxes to the rear lights, I imagined the difficulties of troubleshooting and reinstalling a new harness modelled after the old one. In order to get rid of part of the awkwardness of managing the loomed wire, I decided to modularize the harness. The first one is designed to fit the rear section of the car, and it delivers power to the rear lights, the fuel level sender and the fuel pump. The connections forward of the rear harness are through two connection blocks, one an eight connection block and the other a four connection block modified to handle three connections. Both of the blocks have been modified to reflect the actual circuitry. The large block covers the lighting, and the small one is devoted to fuel sensing and pumping. The ground for everything is to the body, either by wire connection or by direct contact. I have all wiring coming to the rear through the harness hole on the left side of the car. I believe this is not standard, since I believe wiring was routed on both sides of the car to the rear.

Aside from the modularizing and perhaps some routing, the harness follows the original. Wires are color coded to the original specification, and they are wrapped in tape. I did depart from the original somewhat by not inserting the little “LUCAS” labels inside the harness, and I used heat shrink tube to seal the ends of the tape in order to discourage unwinding and give the piece a bit of a finished feel. Figuring out where the harness splits off is really just a matter of cutting the wires, laying them out to figure out where they go, and temporarily clamping or taping the general shape.

I’m using “bullet” connectors on the ends for the lighting, but spade connectors are used at the custom blocks. They’re just easier to manage. After crimping, those connectors also get the heat shrink tube treatment.

A very good source for wire is Rhode Island Wiring Service (http://www.riwire.com). They also carry connectors. They will put together a wiring harness for you, and they apparently have done E-type harnesses before. I’ll probably salvage wire from the original harness, too.

I have looked over the original fuse blocks, and I am increasingly tending toward replacing the old blocks with some newer fuse block setup, using the newer plug-in type fuses.

Braking system, Suspension

January-May 2005 – IRS rebuild

IRS rebuild

I had read the an IRS rebuild is actually straightforward and not too challenging. I agree. I also have a new measure for how long it takes: in winter it takes as long as a thumbnail to come back in; in summer, probably considerably less. I know the thumbnail timeframe because I managed to pinch my right thumb while removing the differential on the first day of working on the IRS. Now, with the IRS back in place, my thumbnail is just about back to normal, having fallen off and regrown since January.

I had expected the refitting of the several washers, bearings, and seals on the wishbone assemblies to have been the hardest of the tasks. (I didn’t take on the differential, except to do a visual inspection.) It turned out that I’d have to rank redoing the “safety” wires to the drilled bolts as the most challenging part of the job. I spent more time figuring out how to cram my fingers into the tightest places. I still wonder how the work was done on the assembly line, though I believe that the least accessible bolts were finally fitted with lock washers in lieu of the safety wire.

With some solid work, I think you could take on an IRS in a full week. My rebuild took a little longer because I was working in winter, and I ordered parts over a period of time. Also, I mistook the number of parts I needed, making me halt progress while waiting for replacements.

Removal of the innards of the IRS is quite easy, if you follow the shop manual. I recruited my boys to help lift the entire assembly on top of a low shop table (and that was shortly before I managed to crush my thumbnail). After the components were apart, the weight no longer mattered, since every piece is manageable — though the differential itself is a heavy chunk of metal.

Rotor alteration. I ordered new brake rotors in March, and those presented me with the first challenge. Holes drilled through the rotors provide access to bolts that affix the brake caliper assembly to the differential case. The replacement rotors had slightly different hole placement than the ones that were fitted to the IRS. (I am very confident that those old rotors had already been replaced once already, so they were not original.) The new rotors had holes too far from the center, making it impossible to slip a socket through to tighten or loosen the bolts behind the rotor.

The fix was to shave about two millimeters off the semicircle toward the center of the rotor. This made the hole slightly larger in one direction. I did this to both holes equally, so that even this slight amount of weight difference on each side of the rotor wouldn’t cause a problem with balance.

If you check out the illustrations in the shop manual, it looks like the new rotors have more original placement and size of bolt access holes, since the shop manual shows the holes extending across the angled gradation from the bolt-fitting plane to the plane of the rotor-brake pad face. The rotors that were on the IRS had smaller holes placed on the plane for the bolts. See the illustrations below to see the difference.

The old rotors were the same thickness as the new, but they were quite rusty. I am tempted to bring them in to have them turned, just to see how much of the rotor had been consumed. There is a chance that they still could be used, though with the trouble of getting to them it would be silly to put old parts into the IRS.

Brake plating and renewal. Like the front brake assemblies, the rear brake assemblies needed plating. I did the nickel plating on my own, as I did with the front assemblies. I was a bit surprised by the size of the brake pistons, which were much smaller than I was expecting. I noticed that Classic Jaguar often uses the front brake slave cylinders on the rear, and I had mistakenly thought this was for some reason for wear or the like. But it turns out that using the front cylinders for the back amounts to an enhancement. (I looked at Haddock’s Jaguar E-type 6 & 12 Cylinder Restoration Guide later, only to see the difference in cylinder size documented.)

I was also expecting to see Dunlop castings, as appear on the shop manual drawings. Instead, I found what might be Girlings, at least that’s what I’ve assumed since the center of the cylinder casting shows a “G” with a centrally placed hand grasping the letter’s left edge (see the photos). I believe that Girling eventually came to be a supplier for brakes, but I thought this switch took place later in E-type history. From what I can glean from the web, it looks like Lucas and Girling began to co-manufacture in the 1950s or 1960s. I know that today they are considered one and the same, though it’s odd that there is no website for the company — at least Google doesn’t seem to report where it is. Perhaps they have consistent electrical problems and can’t keep their web server running. Perhaps Lucas-Girling no longer exists, except as a name.

As a side note, I had prepared for equal sized cylinders in my purchase of cylinder seal kits — so I had two kits well suited for the front brakes. The trouble was that the rear brake cylinders are actually quite a bit smaller than the fronts. I bought a kit for the rear brakes from Terry’s Jaguar Parts for more money than I spent on both of the front kits.

Popping the brake pistons out is a matter of firing up the air compressor and shooting air into the cylinder. Be sure to keep the piston covered, since it will really pop out. The cylinders and the pistons were in good shape, and the rubber seals and boots (manufactured in Australia, by the way) showed no signs of wear or cracking. This was interesting, since the rotors showed wear, but they had very nearly the same thickness as the new ones, something I attributed to the expansion that comes with rust. We replaced the seals and boots with new, of course.

The hand brake setup has a separate set of calipers and pads, and these fit on top of the regular brake caliper assembly. These were a bit of a challenge to bring back into shape. I sandblasted the setup, which was quite rusty, and then I waxed the metal in hopes that it would be protected from corrosion. I later decided that paint would be more protection, and so I cleaned them all up again and painted. They look good, and I don’t think they will suffer from heat, since they shouldn’t do much other than hold the car in a parking place or at a standstill. Given the function of the handbrake pads, I didn’t expect much, if any, wear. Sure enough, there was none. I really didn’t need to replace them, though new ones went in.

I bent and appropriately flared new brake line. It is easy to do good double flares and bubble flares with the right tools. I really don’t know why people buy prebent brake line. New fittings went on, too, and those I had to cannibalize from other brake lines I bought just for the fittings. There must be an easier (and cheaper) way to get those things!

Differential. There’s not much to report on the differential. We opened it up to inspect the gears. We checked for any lateral movement or looseness. Everything looked good and felt smooth and tight. The red-brown paint on the inside of the differential was unmolested, but on the outside it had seen the grit of the years. The consensus on this red paint seems to rest on a brand call “Glyptal” which is a very low porosity enamel that is used to seal inside machinery. It’s used to seal up passages inside of engine blocks, and it’s used by Classic Jaguar in their engine rebuilds, I believe. It is currently available from specialists. (Though I’ve never found it in a auto part store of a paint shop around here, I think I’ve seen it in the Eastwood catalogue for about $40/quart). It’s been speculated that Jaguar dippedthe differential cases in the stuff, though I think that’s probably not the case. Whatever the process, the case and many of its innards are coated with the stuff.

I used a Rustoleum recipe for the exterior of the differential case. It’s a 1:1 mix of Rustoleum “Rusty Metal” primer and Red. The color matches exactly what I was able to find under the grime, and the coating is tough. I didn’t redo any of the interior of the case or its contents. I think Mike Moore, a restorer in the San Francisco Bay Area, gave me the recipe.

One thing we did notice when we drained the differential was how horrible the oil smelled. It was truly awful, and I think the odor might have had something to do with the leather seals in the differential. I suppose this would be a puzzle for an organic chemist to ponder. Also, we ran into what might be some Whitworth threads on certain bolts going into the differential. Certainly they were at least among the few “NC” threads (the course threads) on the vehicle, but they seemed to have a bit of a different angular pitch on the threads. I didn’t tarry long enough to research the matter.

We didn’t replace the differential seals, though the fiber seal for the case access cover was replaced since we destroyed it when we removed the cover.

IRS housing (or “cage”). One of the nice design elements of the IRS is that the entire assembly fits inside a housing that is easily removed intact from the body. It’s really just a matter of supporting the IRS underneath with a hydralic jack, removing a few bolts and detaching a brake line hose. Then, with the body supported, you drop the IRS with the jack and roll it out. The disassembly is a matter of removing the pieces from the housing.

After the wishbones, half-shafts, hubs, coils/shocks, and the differential were out, we cleaned up the housing and painted it with epoxy black paint. I know many people go ahead and use a powder coat on the IRS (which was perhaps the original finish?), but I didn’t go that route. The epoxy is very tough stuff, and I think it’ll do quite nicely, especially since this car isn’t going to see any moisture or tough wear while I own it.

Various notes. Bolt safety wire was a pain to install. I used 19-gauge stainless steel wire, and I didn’t bother to get a wire twisting tool. It seemed to me that the number of bolts I’d have to secure with wire wasn’t enormous, and besides that, many of them were very inaccessible. The safety wire was eventually abandoned and lock washers were used instead on the bolts that are accessible through the holes on the brake rotors. These are very nearly impossible to reach, and I can’t imagine how a production automobile could have used this tactic for securing bolts. (Of course, the run for the E-type was at one time only supposed to have been long enough to qualify the car for Le Mans — 500 copies.)

The wire twisting in the picture was comparatively easy to get to. Twisting it was another matter, as you can see by the less than perfect spiral. This bolt attaches the brake caliper to the differential and its safety wire goes through the other drilled bolt seen in the picture. The bolts that secure the differential to the IRS cage also use safety wire, and because it’s so accessible, it’s easy to do a nice job. That safety wire, I believe, has a certain ornamental value, too!

If you ever take a look at the “exploded” drawing of the IRS, the number of spaces, seals, washers, and such on the wishbone arms is quite formidable. I found out that the drawing is actually significantly more complicated than the reality, since the parts interlock predictably. I did wonder how to get the parts back into the right configuration and slipped into place before inserting the fulcrum shaft. I used multipurpose grease as a glue, and it worked very well. The IRS case with the differential and the yokes for the fulcrum shaft in place make for an exact fit. The wishbones with the various washers and seals just fit. I line things up and shove them into place. The last bit of adjustment was easy to do with a rubber mallet.

I had a bit of a time getting the last nuts off of all of the shafts — there are fulcrum shaft at each end of the wishbone and the shock absorbers are affixed to the wishbones with a similar shaft. Removing the shafts was easy, since you needed only to loosen one of the nuts, but getting the second nut off was significantly harder. After all, the nut that stayed on was more likely to be fusedon. I ended up soaking the shafts in kerosene, and then I used the air impact wrench to get the last nut off. All the threads were retapped and fitted with new bolts.

My shock absorbers (aka “dampers”) had waited some time in the parts bin — probably over a year — before they found their way into place. I bought Boge shocks, which are supposed to be suitable replacements for stock. The coils were in good shape, all with the correct height unloaded. I brought the old shocks and the coils to a shop to have them parted, checked and painted to coils, and then had the new shock fitted. (The bill amounted to $50, which seemed a little rich to me, since the job total took all of maybe fifteen minutes.)

The other work I had to have done in a (different) shop was pressing the big and little radius arm bushings in. I was able to remove them, but the big bushing especially requires some heavy pressing. After the IRS was in place, I installed the radius arms to the radius arm mounting cups, using plenty of copper paste to prevent the parts from seizing together.

So, two pictures to show the before …

… and after one more time.

Engine, Interior

November/December 2004 – Various and sundry

Interior insulation and sound dampener

From the outset of the restoration, I’ve been planning on insulating the interior and inside the trunk, especially below the spare tire storage and fuel tank area. I’ve kept an eye on products that would do the job well. I found two good candidates — Dynamat which is available through Classic Jaguar in Austin, Texas, and Fatmat which looks to be a less expensive Dynamat knock-off. The products are very similar: basically a laminate product with a flexible rubber-like substance laid over an aluminum or perhaps mylar substrate. Thicknesses vary, and the products include their own adhesive backing.

I felt that the Dynamat and Fatmat products were overpriced, since the technology doesn’t look that revolutionary. However, the Dynamat products look like they are textured to optimize sound deadening, as perhaps are the Fatmat counterparts. They do have the advantage of being sized and packaged for automotive use. Since I’m not planning on putting a huge subwoofer in my car (as a matter of fact it won’t even have a radio!), I won’t need optimal sound deadening. I’ve looked around for similar products, and I ended up with a good match in an HVAC duct wrap. It’s made the same as Dynamat/Fatmat and ends up being about a quarter of the price. Physical properties are similar, though the sound deadening properties of the duct wrap has to do with absorbing vibration on the foam side. The aluminum sheet is not perforated or otherwise adapted for sound deadening.

I used two differenty types of mat, actually. The predominant type was the aluminum covered foam, but I did use a purple foam mat as well in the front of the footwell. It is actually a foam pad used for softening the floor for exercise, but it is tough and will absorb vibration and sound well. Since it is durable, I’m thinking about using it as a backing for the “hardura” covers of the door sills and the floor of the trunk. The only concern I have (and it is not inconsiderable) is that the purple mat also has a “nubbly” texture that could (most certainly would?) show through the surface of vinyl. That said, this purple stuff is more durable than the aluminum foam. It would perform well in areas where there would be little other padding (felt or otherwise) and where constant crushing might be expected.

On the installation: I wanted to make sure that the foam would stay in place. Even though the aluminum foam was designed with an adhesive backing, I decided to cover the panels with contact cement so that the foam would stick with more vigor. The purple foam, of course, required full contact cement treatment, since it had no adhesive backing at all. I also used aluminum tape to cover all the joints, and those joints were prepped with contact cement as well. Things stuck very well, and there shouldn’t be any loose edges anywhere for a long time. When I fitted the mat, I cut away to leave bolts or holes exposed so that I can get to them later more easily. I also cut away foam from nuts that would otherwise have become lumps in the surface. The mat will even those out a bit.

Redoing air filter canister assembly

The air filter assembly consists of a large cannister and a triangular-shaped top that directs clean air from the cannister to the intake manifolds. A replacable air filter sits inside the cannister. The canister was especially rotted with rust in the base, and the round retaining plate that holds the filter in place was also badly rusted. I really don’t know why this would have been so badly rusted, since I would have thought that it was fairly protected from moisture. The inside of the canister may not have been painted — at least that’s what I’d suspect from the condition of the parts.

The canister was especially bad at the base, where there is a “false floor” with four round holes showing the real floor of the cannister about an inch under the false floor. I suspect this doubling was an attempt to baffle the air flow and even out the circulation of incoming air. The space between the floors would also serve to capture grits and larger objects so that they wouldn’t blow around near the filter.

I did the POR-15 treatment on these badly rusted items, and I rebuilt a small section around one of the canister floor holes that was enlarged by depleted metal. In order to get the coating to cover inside the section between the doubled floors, I poured some POR-15 into the cavity and shook it around until I was convinced that the inside surfaces were covered. I used basically the same prep as I did with the fuel tank, except that I had a much more accessible area to treat. The round retaining plate was treated in the same manner, and there I had to repair a hole or two with mesh and POR-15. It wasn’t pretty even after the treatment, since the surface was so badly pitted, so I used a bit of filler to smooth the surface a bit. This was cosmetic and probably a waste of time, since the piece is completely obscured and only sees the light of day when you change the air filter. I painted both that round piece and the inside of the canister a metallic, so it looks a little too silvery to be real metal, but at least it’s got another protective coat of paint on it.

The cannister is supposed to be black, at least for the 1963 model year. There has been some disagreement about this, since some cannisters apparently are hammered silver/grey in their current incarnation. The pictures I consider to be authoritative all show a black cannister with a hammered silver/grey triangular air filter manifold. So, I sprayed the outside of the canister and its clamp-on top gloss black.

They look pretty good — better, in fact, than I was thinking would be possible when I first looked at the rusted cannister bottom.

The air filter “plenum” is a triangular shape. Early 3.8 E-types also had a smooth top of the plenum, but they also had flanges that extended outward at the seam of the two shells making up the part. My plenum is smooth, too, though it doesn’t have flanges. Also the inside of the top shell has three grooves that roughly correspond to the grooves that later appeared on the tops of plenums beginning sometime late in the 1964 model.

I didn’t use a stripper on this piece, because paint strippers will also attack the fibreglass resin. To prep the surface, I sanded the old finish and removed any paint that was flaking or loosened with age. The metal pieces for mounting the manifold to the intake are attached with pop rivets, four on top and four on bottom. I removed the top rivets before repainting, but I left the bottom ones on. They are for all practical purposes invisible, and I wanted to lessen the risk of damaging the painted surface when I riveted. The top pop rivets were replaced with new.

Parts for repair and replating

Once you get paint on a car, having to wait for the trim becomes increasingly unbearable. I lessened the strain by quickly putting on the chrome surround that marks the edge of the license plate recess on the back of the car. And, of course, I dragged out whatever chrome I could find to see if there was some piece that was acceptable at least to hold against the body just to see chrome gleam against body color. Alas, my chrome isn’t in very good shape, and so I have to ship it off to have it repaired and rechromed.

I suppose that the taillights are the worst of the chrome pieces. They had suffered the elements most directly. The exterior door handles were probably the next worst. So, those were the parts that were packed up and sent away to a small chrome business in California. The fellow has some experience with 1963 Jaguar parts, and a fellow Jag restorer in the area said he would inspect the repaired parts before they would be sent off to the chroming shop. I’ll provide more information (and, I hope, a nice plug for the refinishing shop) when I get the parts back. I gave up finding a plater in North Carolina. While there are commercial platers around, they want sizeable and regular orders. The single “one-off” plater I found in Fayetteville, North Carolina, turned out not to be very responsible and so I rescued my suspension parts and did them myself. I don’t want to mess with chroming, however. It’s more of a challenge than I want to take on, especially when it comes to replating pot metal.

If things go well with the taillights and door handles, I’ll be sending the same California shop my bumpers for the treatment. They’re not as pitted as the pot metal, of course, but they need some attention.

The front sidelights turn out to be in acceptable shape. Whatever imperfections are on the chrome are small and they are tightly nestled against the bonnet in any case. I will need to work those a bit to get them to fit on the bonnet correctly, though. I’m not going to do any grindiing until the bonnet is sitting pretty on the body, since the shape of the bonnet seems to be fairly fluid until it’s actually in place. The interior chrome, for the most part, is also in good shape. The inside door handles are right at the tipping point for new chrome, and the chrome post that holds the rear view mirror is a wreck. I think it’s due a replacement, not a repair. The various escutcheons and ornaments on the dash and in the interior look good. With a cloth buffing, they’ll be nice.

IRS is next

While I had the entire male crew around, we lifted the IRS onto a work table. It’s going to get the attentions of mid-winter garage work.