All posts by Mark DeLong

Suspension

June 2004 – Front suspension, part 2

The heading says “front suspension,” but for all practical purposes it should read “torsion bars are the key — and the pain.” I have a vague suspicion that a great number of

restorations go swimmingly until torsion bars need to be dealt with. At that point, the would-be restorer throws up his hands in defeat and carts the car to a professional, or the garage becomes as silent as a crypt.

Like it or not, torsion bars and the parts that meet them make up a lot of doing the front suspension. As I found out, if you don’t prepare these parts before you assemble, you end up breaking things down and rebuilding. The truly bad thing about the torsion bars is that you’ll have to mess with them quite late in the game — when you have everything together and need to adjust them.

The shop manual I use has useful exploded views of many of the assemblies on the Jag, but it struck me as odd that the exploded view of the front suspension was spotty about the location of nuts and washers. The ball pins, for example, seemed to float freely without a washer or a means of affixing them to the assembly. I was thankful for my scrupulous photography during the breakdown of the car. Since the suspension was literally doubled — left and right sides — I could usually find a shot that showed what I needed.

I was fortunate enough to lurk on Jag Lovers E-type forum (http://forums.jag-lovers.org/) to read through active discussions of front suspension issues, and especially torsion bar installation. That helped greatly, though I didn’t find an opportunity to pose any questions. They were, for all practical purposes, already addressed by the assembled wise guys. Or my questions resolved themselves with some careful looking.

Perhaps you won’t make the mistakes I did.

— The Process, Distilled from Experience in the Garage —

The prepared lower wishbone assembly should look like this. When you are ready to install the brackets, tighten the nuts on each end so that the brackets fit snugly against the fulcrum shaft and the attached levers. This seems necessary in order to get the brackets to slide into their slots on the subframes.

This more or less distills the process of how I installed the front suspension. I have illustrated the text in the sidebar. This process comes after installing the front suspension (or at least one side of it) not once but twice. I managed to make enough mistakes to warrant dismantling my work and starting over. Overall, the key is to make sure you understand the subtle differences between the parts on the lower wishbone assembly. (Yes, the forged front wishbone levers do fit only on one side in spite of their seeming identity.) And the other big point is preparing the splines on the torsion bars and their splined fittings. Remember, you will be revisiting the torsion bars later when it comes time to adjust them. Later, of course, means after you’ve already got most everything else installed — and therefore haven’t much room left to fuss over the bars.Actually, I dread the thought of adjusting torsion bars later on down the road.Oh, and in all of this please note that “your mileage may vary” — use this narrative and the pictures to guide and inform your better judgment.

Assemble the upper and lower wishbone assemblies.

There are a couple of tricks with the parts making up the lower wishbone assembly. First, the ends of the fulcrum shaft are not equal; the front end is slightly shorter — by about 8 or 9 millimeters. Second (and this is not immediately apparent), the forged levers that attach to the “upright” via the ball pins fit on a specific side of the car. On the end where the splines for fitting the torsion bar, there is about a 2 or 3 millimeter indentation that extends over the hole with the splines all the way to the end of the piece. The indentation should face forward. I didn’t see any other indication for right and left.

This means inserting the fulcrum shafts and loosely attaching the brackets with their bushings already inserted. For the upper assembly, you can loosely fit just the bush and bracket part of the front bracket. That bracket has two parts, one of which you attach to the picture frame separately. Both front and rear brackets need to be loosely fitted onto the lower wishbone. I had mistakenly assumed that I could attach the lower bracket on the picture frame (the largest of the front suspension brackets) and then slide the fulcrum shaft into place. I found out this is either impossible or, if not impossible, hard to do without chipping away at paint and otherwise furiously banging.

Lower wishbone assembly.

The lower wishbone goes together quite easily. Mind the washers, especially those that sit between the bush and the castellated nuts. These are very close to the size of the washers that fit the upper wishbone assembly. Closer inspection shows that the hole for the lower wishbone washers is slightly larger than the washers fitting the upper wishbone. I had to scare up one of the special washers from Stefan Roundy, who called them “distance washers.” I was missing one for the upper wishbone and another for the lower. These are quite thick and they sit on the side of the bush opposite the castellated nut. The lower wishbone, as far as I can tell, has only one of these washers, located at the rear end of the fulcrum shaft. The front lever of the assembly — the part to which the torsion bar attaches — apparently doesn’t have a washer between the bush and the cast wishbone part, which is quite wide and flat on the side facing the bush in any case.

The fulcrum shaft for the lower wishbone is not symmetrical. One end has a longer section for fitting the wishbone part and the bush than the other, by a few millimeters. The longer of the two ends goes to the rear.

Although the “rear wishbone lever” (the tapered bar extending from the rear of the fulcrum shaft to the front lever) is for all practical purposes identical on both sides of the car, the “front wishbone lever” is specific to a side of the car. The difference is at the end with the splined hole that receives the torsion bar splines. The front-facing side of the bar is machined to be slightly indented. If you put the lower wishbone lever on the wrong side of the car, the lever will bang against the subframe, and probably cause damage.

At this point you actually begin preparing for the torsion bar installation. Using a triangular file (get a new one so it’s sharp), clean out the splines on the lower wishbone levers, inside the fitting that goes on the rear end of the torsion bars, and on the front and back ends of the torsion bars. This is tedious but it made all the difference for me, and I believe it will pay off in future adjustments. I didn’t do the cleaning for the first installation of the front suspension, and I found that the torsion bar installation was simply too difficult. I could get them in place, but the thought of having to adjust them was a nightmare. I figured I’d break everything on the lower wishbones down and start over. (Jag Lover’s was helpful here, since discussion of torsion bar adjustment was active at the time.)

File the fittings and the bars until you can place the bars into the splined holes without having to use anything more violent than a rubber mallet. You do not want to do too much filing so that the bars fit sloppily. They should be snug, but adjustable.

Upper wishbone assembly.

Upper front bush and suspension bracket. This piece attaches to the picture frame, and the bush and bracket attach to it with three bolts.

The front mounting bracket for the upper wishbone has two main parts, one that attaches by three bolts to the picture frame and the other that holds the bush. These two parts are attached by means of three 5/16 24 NF grade 8 bolts. Shims may or may not sit between these parts.

The rear mounting bracket fits directly to the side frame with two bolts and nuts. On the inside of the frame, where you attach the nuts, there is a stiffener sitting between the nuts and the frame. This bracket might also have shims. You can tell the difference between the stiffener and the shims by noting their shape. At least on my car, the stiffener had squared corners and was noticably thicker gauge than the shims. The shims had rounded corners, were thinner metal (26 gauge, perhaps), and one of the holes for the bolt was in fact more of a open-sided slot, making a “C” shape. The shims, of course, fit between the frame and the bracket.

It is easiest to attach the rear bracket and bush and the piece that fits to the picture frame separately, since these parts are situated such that you can slide the remaining wishbone assembly into place. (This unlike the lower wishbone which needs to be slipped into the subframes with brackets already attached to the wishbone assembly.)

Upper rear bush and suspension bracket. This part can be installed onto the subframe and the fulcrum shaft can be slid into position without a problem. This bracket does not have any shims, though they may need to be fitted later.

Insert the fulcrum shaft into the wishbone by slightly loosening the adjustable holes on the wishbone (one of the holes is threaded). Do this by inserting a screwdriver into the groove and spreading the groove slightly. Make sure that your screwdriver doesn’t extend into the hole itself, since that can either obstruct the fulcrum shaft or even damage it as you are inserting it. The fulcrum shaft goes into the threaded hole first with the threaded section of the shaft going in last, of course. I found that applying a bit of grease to the threads was useful, though I was also careful not to smear grease on the shaft. You do need to exert some pressure to screw the shaft through the threads, and there is a period when you don’t have access to the notches on the shaft. Those notches are for using a wrench to turn the shaft for adjustment.

I brought the threads through the hole and didn’t pay much attention to how far. Fine tuning the geometry of the front suspension comes later.

Upper wishbone ball joint/pin installation.
The ball joint/pin fits into the top of the upper wishbone, with the pin extending down through the oval-shaped hole below the chamber that holds the ball-shaped end. The ball pin is held in place by a concave fitting pressed on the top of the ball and held in place by a spring. The spring is pressed by a disk covering the top of the ball pin chamber in the wishbone. The disk is held in

The kit and the upper wishbone. The shims are a bit different, perhaps because they are designed to fit on top of the cap instead of under it. The original shims had a smaller hole in the middle. The cap disk is the original, not a part of the kit.

place by a circlip or, also called an “internal retainer clip” or a “snap ring.” The pin part of the ball pin is threaded, and a rubber boot protects the pin and exposed sections of the ball recessed inside the wishbone. This boot is held in place with an external wire ring that wraps around the base of the rubber boot and presses it into a groove on the wishbone.

To begin, it’s best just to clean the ball pin chamber on the wishbone, especially the bore that will accept the circlip. This groove surrounding the upper part of the ball pin chamber has a tendency to get clogged with residues from plating, rust, and general grime. If you don’t get this clean before putting things together, it’s a little tougher to clean up without sliding everything apart.

Apply a small amount of grease either to the ball pin where the pin and the ball meet or to the inside portion of the oval hole at the base of the ball pin chamber in the wishbone itself. This should lubricate the lower section of the ball pin after it is placed into position. Then insert the ball pin into the chamber. The ball is pressed down by a short cylinder with one concave end. The concave space has a hole in the center of it. Grease the top of the ball pin or the inside of the concave surface, and place the concave surface into contact with the top of the ball pin. (My kit came with the concave fitting already coated with waxy grease, and I added some.)

The view of the upper part of the ball pin and the concave section of the fitting with grease smeared on it.

Place the spring on top of the concave fitting. Now comes the hard part. You need to press the cap down and insert the circlip. I used two small “Visegrip” welding clamps to hold the cap in place. I think the ideal would be to use a wheel puller-type tool to press the center of the cap, but I don’t have one … yet. I found that a key here was to make sure that the garage door is closed. I ended up losing a circlip because it flew right out the door and the only other one I had also sproinged into oblivion. As a matter of fact I had to order not one set of circlips, but two. I mismeasured and ordered the first set too large. They are 1 3/8-inch. (If you need some 11/2-inch circlips, let me know. I’ve got 25 of them.)

You can put the cap on anytime after you’ve installed the upper ball pin and associated parts. I installed the caps after I had fit the “uprights” and the torsion bars (basically everything else was done but the caps). I did that so that I could bear down on the cap. I can see that installing the caps before mounting the upright onto the upper and lower ball pins would make that installation easier. Once installed, the cap keeps the ball pin from spinning too freely, so it’s easier to get the lock nut on the pin.

The cap that came with the kit had a place for a grease fitting. That fitting was added for the Series 2, if I’m not mistaken. The original cap is slightly thicker than the replacement, and it has “A&A” stamped on it. The picture of the replacement cap that came with the kit includes the grease fitting and a shim. A nylon disk fits under the grease fitting to cover a small offset hole to release excess grease. The old shim I found during disassembly covered a larger area, sized as it was to the diameter of the cap but with a smaller hole in the center, perhaps 1/4inch wide.

The rubber boot goes on easily. Slip it over the pin that is now extending from the wishbone, and slip the wire retaining ring over it into the groove on the boot. I used a piston ring expander to expand the ring, though the tool probably wasn’t necessary.

The cap in place. I didn’t have to use shims.

Lower ball pin installation on the “upright”

Clean out the threads for the four bolts.

The lower ball pin fits into the bottom section of the so-called “upright” which is the part that connects upper and lower wishbones and accepts the stub axel and the brake caliper. It is slightly larger than the upper ball pin. The kit I used contained a steel alloy ring that fit into the large hole on the upright. It also contained a plastic retaining cup that really had no place to go in the assembly on my 1963 E-type. I assume it was used on other cars using the same type of ball pin setup. The installation process is similar to the installation of the upper ball pin, except it is perhaps a bit easier because the ball is held in place by a steel cap that is held in place by four bolts. You don’t need to fuss with a circlip.

Use a wooden tamper to avoid denting the surface of the alloy ring when you insert it. Notice the groove in the alloy ring to the left of the wooden tamper. This is not a flaw or damage. The groove allows the passage of grease to the upper section of the ball pin.

I cleaned up the threads for the bolts using a 5/16 24 NF tap and wire brushed the hole where the steel alloy ring was to go. I let the steel ring sit submerged in engine oil for a while before inserting it from the bottom of the upright. Using a small piece of hardwood as a soft “punch,” I tapped the ring into place without any problem. The ring should fit firmly. The ring should extend about three millimeters or so on the top side of the hole. There is a small groove surrounding the ring where the rubber boot fits.

Note the bendable bolt locking insert. (The zinc plated BEES bolts look good in spite of the fact that the picture is out of focus!)

Insertion of the ball pin is quite similar to the process used for the upper wishbone installation: you apply a small amount of grease and insert the ball pin. Noteworthy in the design of the steel ring is a small groove that extends in a curve inside the ring, on the face where the ball and the ring meet. When I first saw the groove I thought that perhaps I had received a damaged ring, but it turned out that the other kit had an identical groove. I then realized that the groove was an intentional design to allow grease to move from the lower section of the ball joint assembly — really where the grease fitting is — to the upper area of the assembly that is covered by the rubber boot.

Tin shims fit between the body of the upright and the conical cap. My kit included four thin shims and one slightly thicker one. I installed the shims one at a time, tightening the four bolts each time, until the ball pin was movable. One thing that got in the way of the cap installation resulted from the clear coating I had applied to the nickel plated parts. I had to sand off the coating so that the shims and the cap would sit true.

I used a piston ring expander to spread the wire retaining clip around the rubber boot.

When you have the correct number of shims in place, remove the bolts, place the bolt locking inserts, and reset the bolts. I didn’t bend the bolt locking inserts around the bolts (and won’t until everything is unambiguously correct). I put in a new grease fitting, too. It goes into the cap.

A small note: I was able to use the original BEES bolts on the cap, and only had to replace one of the bolts. I was particularly proud of my zinc plating job on those bolts. They really look quite good — too bad they’re placed where practically no one else in the world will be able to see them!

The last thing is the easiest. Slip the rubber boot over the pin that is extending from the upright now that it’s in place. Put the wire ring into the groove at the base of the boot. I used a piston ring expander to expand the wire, but this can probably be accomplished without a tool.

Joining the wishbones with the upright. This is, perhaps, the easiest of the tasks (and because of that, I’ve not illustrated this section with photographs). Basically the upright is attached by inserting the pins in the appropriate places. The upper pin in the wishbone goes into the hole at the top of the upright, and the lower wishbone has a hole into which the lower ball pin fits from below. The kits I used include new nuts with nylon “locks.” I found that the nuts went on nicely until the nylon hit the threads, and then the pins had a tendency to spin. Since the pins are (mostly) held in place by friction, I used my rubber mallet to tap the wishbones, thereby setting the pins more tightly into place. This firmed up the pins so that it was quite easy to tighten the bolts. By the way, there are washers for every bolt on these pins. My lower ball pin kits didn’t include new ones (the originals are quite thick); the upper ball pin kits included new washers.

A note on greasing the ball pins. I chose not to shoot grease into the upper and lower ball pins until after I had completely finished the assemblies. I did this because I wanted to be able to remove the upper and lower ball pins more easily if I needed to, and greasing them might have made removal more difficult because of spinning. I didn’t need to remove these again, but I think holding off on the grease is prudent. You just need to remember to grease before you do any sort of serious movement of the suspension.

Torsion bars. I have to admit, torsion bars are not my favorite things in the world.

Although the torsion bars are mechanically interchangable, they are intended to fit on a specific side of the car. They are labelled on the front end with an “RH” (right) or “LH” (left). Installing the torsion bars on the wrong side may make them fail, so don’t do it.

The torsion bars are labelled for right and left. You’ll see “R H” and “L H” on the front end of the torsion bar (the end with the groove crossing the middle of the splines). Although the right and left bars will indeed fit on either side, switching them may invite failure of the bars, so put the “R H” on the right and “L H” on the left. I believe this has something to do with the way that steel adapts to tension — as long as it is consistent, the steel holds, but wrenching the torque the opposite way (as when you put the right on the left, and vice versa) weakens the steel.

The key is to make sure that the splines on both ends are clean and rust free. They should slip into their receivers on the wishbone and on the rear bracket without too much whacking. As a matter of fact, being able to slip the torsion bar splines into these parts without a rubber mallet is desirable. But you do not want to make the match “sloppy.” I learned in getting my torsion bars ready that if you drop a bar on a cement floor, you can expect the splines to have been altered slightly enough to make refitting into a wishbone or bracket more difficult (though not impossible, thank goodness). The moral: If you drop it, check it. Also, any amount of whacking with a steel hammer is likely to change things, so use a rubber mallet whenever possible. If you must use steel to hammer, find the indentation on the end of the bar, insert a punch into it, and then “drift” the torsion bar back and forth into place.

The wishbone splines should look like this: clean and sharp. Note that the wishbone lever is recessed slightly over the opening for the splines. This recess needs to be orientedtoward the front or else the lever will not swing freely over the frame above it. Instead it will smash into the frame at that point and cause damage. The rectangular groove inside the hole is where the retaining bolt emerges to fit into the groove in the center of the front splines on the torsion bar.

Use a triangular file to clean up the splines on the bar and in the receivers on the wishbone part and the rear bracket. Insert the torsion bar frequently to test the fit, and be sure to rotate the bar in the parts, since you’ll be adjusting the tension of the bar by rotating the bar. It needs to fit any number of positions, not just one. A note on adjustment: the torsion bars can be adjusted very finely, it turns out, since both the rear and front splines can be set. There are 25 rear splines and 24 in front, making the adjustment possible to a tiny degree. Besides, you can’t accidentally insert the rear splines into the wishbone receiver — unless, of course, you really mess up the splines.

Before inserting the torsion bars apply an anti-seize grease to the splines. The stuff is like sticky mud with a brown coppery color. It’s also supposed to keep the meeting surfaces free, which is important since the torsion bars will need adjustment at least once more before the car is back on the road.

When you’re ready to put the torsion bars into place, fit the rear fittings onto the bars, so that they swing loosely around the bar in front of the rear splines. Then insert the rear splines into the large hole on the frame where the torsion bar fitting rests and move the front part of the torsion bar into place in the splined hole on the lower wishbone lever. I found that I could gently rest the bars in place without completely inserting them before putting some grease on the splines and the holes.

The Jag Lovers E-type forum mentioned the use of “anti-seize” grease for the torsion bars, and I decided this was the way to go. I have used a regular old lithium grease, but I believe I’m going to move toward a “multi-purpose” grease in the future. The anti-seize formulas include metals, and the one I got was based on copper, which I gather is common among anti-seize products. My guess is that one brand is as good as another. I applied the anti-seize grease to both the torsion bar ends and the fittings they were to go into. It’s quite messy stuff — as thick as glue or river-bottom mud. The bottle I got had a brush in the cap for applying the stuff.

After all of the Sturm und Drang of the first time I had installed a torsion bar without the preliminaries of filing and cleaning and fitting, the torsion bars went on neatly and quickly. I installed both bars in less than fifteen minutes, using only a rubber mallet for “convincing” — gentle at that!

The torsion bars fit nicely, without too much work. I used a rubber mallet to tap them into place from the rear, and then after the front fitting was secure, I moved the rear fittings into place. I have put a couple of bolts into the rear fittings just to hold them in place. The set up by no means is able to hold much weight, but that’s not a concern right now. I plan on finding my torsion bar reaction plate and putting it in place. I haven’t seen that part since I installed the new floors some time ago. I want to make sure that the reaction plate is in good shape with the new torsion bar set up. After that is checked out, I can remove the reaction plate for more permanent installation after the engine is in place.

I remember that getting the reaction plate out was an ordeal. I hope putting it in isn’t — though I have a feeling it will be a job that is joyful only after it’s complete.

I’ll return to the front suspension later, when I’ll take on fitting the stub axels, brake calipers, steering couplings, and all the rest. I figure this will take a while.

Paint, Suspension

May/June 2004 – Color on front frames, suspension, part 1

Color on front frames

First, a larger picture than I usually post. I beg forgiveness for the size of the shot, but I figured the compressed GIF image sacrificed too much accuracy in color. Fatter JPEG format will do.

The picture shows the color a bit more clearly than the previous shot did, but still the photograph doesn’t quite do opalescent dark green justice. It is indeed more fiery than the flat web browser allows. You can probably see the strategy I am taking in rebuilding and spraying color. I am holding off with exterior sections of the car until the internal sections are more or less complete. This has the upside of allowing me to get a little better with the spray gun before I attempt shooting color on the parts of the car that are most easily seen — and therefore more sensitive to my ineptitude with the sprayer. It has the downside of making any painting a big deal, since everything needs to be masked and cleaned and fussed over. Doing the entire job in one fell swoop would be more efficient, perhaps.

But if I were worried about efficiency, I wouldn’t be restoring this car, now, would I!

The primed front frames were sprayed with sealer and then color was applied. They were sprayed separately and then assembled onto the firewall (front bulkhead). I had replaced most of the bolts and nuts with grade 8 hardware, replated with zinc and then treated with zinc blackener. The effect is quite nice. I decided to give the blackened zinc a try in spite of the hours I had spent doing the nickel plating the front suspension parts. The additional protection was nice, but using correct color bolts convinced me.

As a small aside, I should add that I have been seeking opportunities for practice with the spray gun. Well, sometimes they have found me, too. The boys managed to wreck the 1995 Dodge Ram pickup so that the insurance company totalled it — it doesn’t take much to total an old vehicle, even a truck. I settled for enough to get another old pickup (a Ford F-150) and I decided to keep the Ram. We fixed it with some pulling and sanding and new parts, basically the driver’s side front end. Mechanically the old thing is still in great shape, and the frame wasn’t harmed by the accident. This turned out to be a great opportunity to practice painting. It was, unfortunately, as hard as I remembered. The old truck looks good from 20 feet, but you do see a couple of runs if you stand much closer.

Oh, well, so long as it doesn’t happen on the Jag….

Front suspension rebuild started

I thought about calling this section “Sproing!” because of the trouble I have had with the upper wishbone “circlips” (also known as “snap fasteners” or “internal retainers”). I got new upper and lower ball joints/ball pins for the wishbones, and the upper kits were supposed to have included internal retainers. And one kit did, but the other replaced the internal retainer with an external retainer, which of course wouldn’t work at all. I fetched the old part that I removed that had the internal retainer and I figured I was set.

Never underestimate the power of tools that aren’t quite suited to the purpose.

I managed to let both of the good circlips fly off into the netherworld. In the vain hope that cleaning might scare up one of them at least, I grabbed the broom and swept the garage. No clip appeared. The second one flew off after I had opened the garage door to let light come in so I could search for the first lost circlip. Of course, it flew off into the rose garden and grape arbor with a sleek and fast zing. I told Aaron he could grab his metal detector and search, but he wasn’t motivated.

McMaster-Carr came to the rescue, and I will be expecting a box of 25 circlips sometime early next week, I suppose. That should give me enough circlips for, well, another eleven cars. Anyone need a circlip cheap?

Besides this little annoyance, there are others. I’ll be compiling tips for installation of the front suspension parts to publish later, probably in the next entry. It turns out that order of rebuilding and installation matters a bit, but it’s not complicated.

Suspension

April/May 2004 – Small plating gets big

Plating saga

My intention in the beginning was to have a professional plater complete the nickel plating of the front suspension pieces. And, indeed, I made good on the intention on my side. I drove the parts down to a plater in Fayetteville, North Carolina — all sixty-some pounds of them. I was hoping that I’d be able to get an estimate and shake hands on the deal when I was there. I wasn’t in any particular rush, especially since I has seen on the web that this particular plater “took his sweet time.”

I ended up leaving the parts in the Rubbermaid container, because the fellow in back was mixing chemicals and couldn’t break away to look at the parts. The time for the project was “six to eight weeks,” a little longer than I had hoped but I would still have the parts in the summer. The estimate would be available Monday, I was told. It was Friday, so no problem.

Monday, I called. No estimate, but surely Wednesday. Wednesday, no estimate. Friday,nada. I waited another week for the estimate. Finally, thirteen days after I had dropped the parts off, I drove down to fetch them. The estimate wasn’t available, and there was mumbling on the telephone about the sandblasted parts being “too rusty.”

I figured that I would take a shot at plating larger pieces. If I messed things up, I could always send them off someplace other than Fayetteville.

Believe it or not, I was able to use the Caswell nickel plating kit that I had used for the smaller pieces. It was mainly a matter of finding plastic containers that were big enough for the part and that still did not have too great a volume so that my supply of nickel plating solution wouldn’t cover the part.

The toughest part to manage was the “upright,” which is a long enough part but also has a depth because of the fittings for the top and bottom ball pins, going in one direction, and the hole for the stub axel, going in the other.

I thoroughly cleaned the parts using the degreaser and removed any remaining rust — there was a little left, I must admit. I used the strong muriatic acid bath (one part muriatic acid to two parts tap water) and electrical charge to remove the remaining rust. The negative charge goes on the place you want the rust to go (the sacrificed steel part) and the positive charge goes on the part you’re cleaning. The top photo shows the upright being cleaned.

Plating itself was a little trickier, since I had to do the agitation of the nickel plating solution by hand. Since space was cramped, a bubbler or other agitation device wouldn’t fit. I used a plastic spoon or sometimes just jostled the part itself. The key is not to let any bubble form on the surface, since the nickel will then pit. Also, especially in the case of the upright, you have to place the piece in an orientation that will not allow the collection of bubbles, since the nickel won’t adhere to the section where the bubbles collect.

In the close quarters of the smaller container, you also have to watch out for “gassing” which seems to occur when the piece being plated is too close to the nickel anodes.

As for electrical sources, I used three AC-DC converters and, for very large parts, an old Sears battery charger. I doubt any other plating than nickel would have worked, since nickel plating seems to be pretty forgiving in matters of electricity. Zinc plating has been far fussier, I’ve found.

In the end, the nickel plate really worked well on the front suspension parts, but at the cost of considerable tedium and fussing with containers and chemicals. Plating took weeks. After everything was plated, I sealed the parts with a two-part clear coat made for bare metals. The suspension should be in good shape for a long while.

Pictures below show the parts as they looked in April before I tried to have them plated. The picture below that one shows the newly nickel plated parts. They shined up nicely!

Engine

April 2004 – Cylinder head paint, small plating, bushes installed

Cylinder head gold paint

When my dad was here, we inspected the tappets that accept pressure from the cams. One of these appears to have been damaged either by dirt or by corrosion. The surface of the plate where the cam touches has been pitted. This will probably have to be replaced, since a roughened surface like that will certainly wear the cam and also be significantly weakened itself. The other tappets show almost no wear at all. My dad says that the cams bear the most pressure of any parts in an engine. They look to me to be models of precision and efficiency.

A previous owner of the car seemed very happy with gold paint on the cylinder head and sprayed the entire outside. From what I can tell, only the area between the value covers and behind the cover over the timing chain sprockets was painted gold, the rest either left aluminum or polished. I removed the gold paint from the timing chain sprocket area, and prepped the rest by removing as much as possible of the gold paint. No chemical strippers were used, since I didn’t want to have to worry about unfortunate reactions with aluminum.

The gold paint I used was the “Oldsmobile Gold” engine paint from POR-15. From what I could tell, there was no difference in color from the paint in place on the head when I took possession of the car, which is certainly not to say that it was an original color. While I was removing paint I did notice (with some momentary excitement) that a “pumpkin orange” color lurked beneath the grime, but I’m assuming now that this was discoloration due to age or heat or both. The reason for the excitement? There are rumors, denied by Jaguar, that at least some early 3.8 liter engines were fitted with cylinder heads sporting a pumpkin orange paint.

Nickel plating small parts

Since I want to install the front subframes fairly soon, I decided I would go ahead and get a nickel plating kit from Caswell Plating and do the front suspension mounting brackets. The brackets fit into the subframe and really need to be installed at the time when the subframe is fitted. The pieces have surface area below the 16-square-inch per ampere of current that nickel requires. I was able to cobble together DC power sources to make about an amp, so 16-18 square inches was about the limit. Plating nickel is indeed easier than plating zinc. The electrical charge doesn’t have to be quite as precise, I think, for nickel. And, perhaps, experience counts a bit in plating. I was very pleased with the results.

Although Caswell suggests plating nickel for 60 minutes to get a plate that is for automotive applications, I went ahead and increased plating times to between 80 and 90 minutes. As with zinc plating, surface preparation really counts. I had already sand-blasted the suspension pieces, but just to make sure that I cleaned up all rust and old plate, I submerged the pieces in a “pickle” containing one part muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) to two parts tap water. Then I attached the negative lead from a AC-DC converter to a sacrificial piece of steel (in my case an old drill bit) and the positive lead to the piece I wanted to clean.

The process of completely cleaning takes several minutes and I imagine that really rusty pieces would take longer. I wouldn’t leave the piece in the acid with electrical charge unattended or you might dissolve the piece. I generally took the piece out, buffed the faces with a wire wheel, and returned the piece for a short bath in the acid mixture to remove whatever flash rust might have appeared during the buffing. Then it was a matter of following the Caswell instructions, and of course adding some time to their recommended plating session. I did notice that the acid bath sometimes made the surface of the pieces rough, and so the buffing smoothed things out.

Bushes installed (with the Ray Livingston method, modified)

In a recent discussion on the Jag-Lovers E-type forum about bush installation, Ray Livingston provided a sensible way of doing the job. (As a matter of fact, Ray seems to be full of sensible solutions to problems one encounters with Jags!) His solution involved a pipe with an inner dimension slightly larger than the outer dimension of the bush, a threaded rod, nuts, and washers. Basically the Ray Livingston Method was simple: you fit the bush to the open side of the mounting bracket, slide the threaded rod through the pipe, then the bracket, and finally through the hole in the bush. Put washers on both ends of the rod, followed by nuts, and then tighten the nuts to squeeze the bush (sprayed with silicone as a lubricant) into the bracket and finally slightly into the pipe on the other side of the bracket.

Simple, elegant, and cheap.

Of course, if you have a big honker bench vise, you won’t need to use the threading bits. But Ray surmised that pulling the bush through with more pressure on the centermost parts of the bush would probably make the process easier. I discovered that he was right. Also, the Ray Livingston Method could probably be used with mounting brackets still on the car — while hauling a car to a vise or vice versa would be a bit more difficult.

My approach to bush installation was the Ray Livingston Method, Modified. Instead of pipe, I used holes drilled into a stout piece of wood and instead of threaded rod, I scrounged up a nice long carriage bolt that I had previously used in a press.

The holes that I drilled were 1 1/2 inches (for the larger brackets) and 1 1/4 inches (for the smaller). Two of the smaller brackets — I can’t remember now if they’re the for the upper or lower fulcrum shaft — are attached to the frame with three bolts that go into a fitting attached to the frame, sometimes slightly spaced with shims. These three-bolt brackets won’t lie flat on the surface of the wood, so I made a slight indent with the drill bit so that the piece would lie flush to the wood at the point where the bush was inserted.

I found that the bushes went into the larger brackets quite easily. The smaller brackets were a bit more of a challenge, since the bracket tended to slip into the hole in the wood, setting the pulling force a bit awry. This was a rather minor challenge, though. Once things were set, the bush slipped right in. You do have to fiddle a bit to get the bush to go in so that about the same amount of rubber appears on each side of the steel bracket. This sometimes means pulling too far and having to remove the piece, turn it upside down and pulling the bush back a bit.

The shop manuals seem to suggest that a man with a firm hand can install bushes. That is not the case, even with the soap-water mixture that Jaguar then recommended to lubricate the bushes. You need a device. And use silicone instead of soap. Silicone doesn’t harm the bush (at least the ones I got), and it won’t promote rust on the bracket.

The bushes I got are apparently “Metalastic.” At least they’re labelled as such.

Body work, Engine

March 2004 – Bonnet test fit, plating prep, cylinder head cleanup

Bonnet test fit

The garage had a very special visitor over this weekend. My dad, Wallace DeLong, came up to North Carolina after making the rounds through Florida to see relatives and participate in a travel exchange with people in Sarasota. I was a little worried about suggesting that we take on a project with the old car, since I didn’t want to impose my restoration work on an unwilling participant, but it actually turned out that Dad wanted to do exactly that.

As I mentioned before, Stefan Roundy provided a fine replacement for the bent bonnet subframe. That piece, along with the replacement left subframe from Bill McKenna, meant that the front frame could be put together with sound pieces. The bent up bonnet frame meant that the bonnet itself hung badly, and I was anxious to see whether the new bonnet subframe would straighten out the bonnet fit.

So, Dad and I installed the front subframes and mounted the bonnet on its hinges.

It fit squarely off the front bulkhead (firewall), though the bonnet measured just shy of an inch forward of the bulkhead — a bit too wide a space. We figured we needed to get the space to about a third of that.

We made some makeshift shims to insert into the hinges at the top. Basically, to bring the bonnet back, we had to make sure that the hinges were tightened until the hinge touched the area on the lower valance where they fit. No shims there — we needed to get the bonnet back as far as possible. Shims at that point would move the bonnet forward. Once we had done that, checked to see how the bonnet fit against the lower sections of the bulkhead and the upper sections. Things were slightly wider at the upper part than at the lower, meaning that we could raise the bonnet to even things out.

We did the raising in two ways: we raised the bonnet subframe by inserting a small shim between the subframe and the “picture frame” at the lower connections. And we placed shims over the top section of the bonnet hinge that pivots on the subframe. These two things did the trick. I do not think both will be necessary when we actually fit the bonnet after the suspension is in place, since the dynamics of the frame will change, and the bonnet subframe will probably sit slightly higher as a result. Roger Los mentioned that his bonnet fitting was simplified after installing the suspension pieces that fit into the picture frame. When I first read that, I felt it might be a little dubious, but seeing how the structure fits and acts when bolted down, it is very probable that the rigidity of those pieces will support the frame in the right places, with the result that shimming will be less of an issue. I think we’ll still need to shim upward, though.

The final gap between the rear of the bonnet and the front bulkhead ended up being about 3/8 inch — about a half centimeter, a little wider perhaps. I’m reluctant to go much narrower than this, simply because the thickness of the primer and paint will make things a little tighter. The gap is about right. It is amazing to see what a new bonnet subframe will do to the gap, at any rate. When we first mounted the bonnet back in August of last year, the gap was a crooked disaster.

Front suspension parts for plating

Although I didn’t subject my dad to the gritty glories of sandblasting, we did weigh and organize the front suspension pieces that are due for nickel plating. There is still one suspension fitting that needs disassembly and cleaning. It has resisted my efforts to extract some pretty rusty bolts. It’s soaking in penetrating fluid now. We have 64 pounds (about 30 kilograms) of metal to be plated. I’ve decided not to send off small parts like washers and nuts. These I will probably plate myself, as I’m leaning toward ordering a nickel plating kit from Caswell Plating. Bill McKenna says it’s actually less putzy than zinc plating, and that seemed simple enough.

The platers is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and UPS wanted almost $90 USD to ship the parts. I figure that the trip will be a pleasant drive, and I should know what the charge will be without having to spend $180 USD on shipping, roundtrip.

Cylinder head cleanup

The final thing we did was clean up the insides of the cylinders where the valves are located. Five of the six chambers had a good deal of grime in them, and the remaining one (number one) was not too bad — which made me suspicious. I think that the fuel mix was set rich, probably to avoid pinging? Wire brush attachments to the drill made quick work of the grime. The valves were obviously in good shape, and my dad and I wondered if the valves were recently replaced in an overhaul. Dad looked pretty closely at cylinder wear and the valves and felt that the last overhaul wasn’t that long ago, and the engine didn’t require a massive amount of work. We did not look closely at the crankshaft (most of which is still in place), and there is a high probability (in my mind at least) that the rebuild of the engine was focused on the top, and not the bottom. Even though the bearings for the piston rods weren’t bad, the keys in my mind are the crankshaft bearings. After all, it’s fairly easy to replace rod bearings, but to replace the crankshaft bearing you have to remove the crankshaft. Wear related to that is heavier on this engine, so I’m suspicious. When we get to the engine in earnest, the crankshaft comes off and the measuring begins.

Here’s what the chambers looked like after some cleaning:

Paint

January-March 2004 – Plating and spraying color

Part 2: Plating and spraying color

One thing up front: the color of the car is not British Racing Green, though it’s close. I decided to go with Opalescent Dark Green, the very color that I liked the best long, long ago. I guess we all go back to our roots. The initial spray appears later in this page.

I got a Zinc and “Copy Cad” plating kit from Caswell Plating and set it up one moderately-not-cold weekend in the garage. I carefully read the book, which was quite instructive though perhaps they could have stood the skills of an editor. I set up the line of containers, donned my gloves, goggles, and protective clothing and successfully plated a couple bonnet latch fittings. No sweat.

They key appears to be the preparation of the piece. The guidelines are simple: get it to straight, clean, clear steel and you’ll be OK. I blasted the pieces to the bare steel, since this was the proper prep for a close to cadmium finish. The original cad was still on protected sections of the pieces, so I had to make sure that I didn’t breathe in any cadmium dust released during the blasting. I also used the 1:20 muriatic acid “pickle” to remove any residues. Electroplating took a bit longer than the manual suggested — actually about twice as long, but I got good solid coverage. After the plating was done, I used a bronze wire brush to make the metal gleam.

The end product looks shockingly like cadmium, I think in large part because the surface preparation with blasting helps with the finish. I think only a very well trained eye could see the difference between “Copy Cad” and the Real McCoy, and perhaps only then if pieces were next to each other.

I can tell that this plating process will take a long time. I am glad that I’ll be sending out the bulk of the plating to a professional. I can handle the small parts and nuts and bolts that I might want to plate.

Well, I announced before that the car was going to be British Racing Green, but I did give myself the option of changing my mind until the paint can was safely in the garage. I did change my mind. And, besides, it turns out that 77RW was Opalescent Dark Green, too. I mentioned that I didn’t like the color of a Opalescent Dark Green car I’d seen on the Classic Jaguar website, but I noticed as well that photography of the color varied enormously. You can’t get a picture of what the color “really” is, since that is part of the charm of an opalescent/metallic paint. The dark green seems to play with light especially well, and it appears nearly black in some light and glimmeringly dark green in other light.

Picking paint was not simply complicated by indecision. The paint codes that are available on the web are lacking in currency. Sure, there are numbers to be found everywhere, but they are for the most part outdated and mostly not even indexed or cross-referenced anymore. I worked with a PPG shop and a Dupont shop in Durham, North Carolina, to get the codes straight. The Dupont shop took old codes I had found and contacted Dupont. They subsequently scared up the original chips and mapped the current numbers.

I went over to the shop to look at the chip of Opalescent Dark Green but was astounded to see that the chip was extremely dark. Dark, as in very close to black — and I put everything on hold again so that I could verify the numbers somehow. The only difference that Dupont noticed in comparing the old and new chips was a difference in size of the matallic flakes. The old chip had very small flakes; the newer chip had slightly larger ones. The color itself was identical, for all practical purposes.

I took all of the numbers I had found for Opalescent Dark Green (about a half dozen of them from various paint manufacturers) and went into the back room of the PPG place and watched the cross-reference database at work. When the new Dupont number was entered, a PPG number that I had found came up. This was corraborating evidence that I had a real Jaguar color. I would have walked out of the place with paint had it not been for the fact that the color required some consultation with PPG. That couldn’t be done immediately, so I left and called up the diligent Dupont shop to order the paint. I was all set with paint in a couple of hours.

The paint has a basecoat of color that goes on thinned 1:1 and dries dull. Clearcoat goes on between one and six hours after that. The clear brings out the metallic and sets the color bright. This process was almost identical to the process for PPG that Bill McKenna described for his application of Opalescent Dark Blue.

I masked and painted the front bulkhead (a scary vertical face!), and the paint and clearcoat was amazingly resistant to dripping. The clearcoat was much thicker than the basecoat, but it held fast. The directions suggest two or three sprays with a few minute “flash” between coats. I waited a little more than five minutes between my clearcoats.

I have to touch up a section on the front right sill bulkhead panel where the basecoat bubbled (bad surface prep I think), but everything looks great. I started with the front bulkhead so that I could get some practice on a “low anxiety” part of the car (as if there is any such area). Spraying is an art. I hope I can master it well enough for the areas that are most visible. One thing I can say is that the years have improved paint technology. I remember spraying my old MG with enamel and having to rub out a huge mess. This paint goes on much more easily, as far as I can tell, even with my very average spraying equipment.

Paint

January-March 2004 – Winter cleaning, undercoating, plating prep

Part 1: Winter cleaning, undercoating, plating prep

It’s been a while since I updated the web site, but when cold weather comes in, as it did in abundance this winter, you just want to hunker down and get through it. So I occupied my restoration time with things that were easy to do in short and less cold moments. Little things over a long period do add up. This is a two-part addition to the restoration journal. Welcome to part one….

I mentioned that I had chosen a non-3M undercoating. It is called “Gravi-Tex” and it seems to me to be a good equivalent of the 3M “Rock Guard” that is well known in Jag restoration circles. It goes on with a spray gun (that I got free with purchase of two bottles of the stuff). I got the material in black, although I suspect that other colors are available, simply because the color was listed on the label. It’s manufactured in the UK.

I followed the guidelines on the Classic Jaguar website for undercoating. The illustrated instructions are listed in the “FAQs” and show you what you need to mask up and where the borders of the undercoating are on the rear boot bottom and the lower outer sills. It took a short evening to mask up the body shell. Since I’ve decided to ignore the bonnet for the time being (yes, I got sick of messing with the bonnet), I didn’t worry about the front wheel well areas on it. I figured that I would go back to the bonnet in earnest once I had the bonnet subframe issues resolved.

I went about two and a quarter inches up the outer sill from the bottom of the outer sill and followed the photographs on the Classic Jaguar web site for the border on the boot floor. Use the notches in the bottom that meet the wheel wells to guidance. Your masking will almost bisect the hole for the fuel “bung.” Be sure to mask the radius arm mounting cups and the bolts for mounting the exhaust pipes beneath the floor.

I used fairly low pressure to spray the undercoating — 40 psi — since I wanted to have the coating go on roughly. Higher pressure will make the material finer grained, so to speak, and smoother to the touch. The original undercoating was even rougher than what I eventually ended up with, and I suppose I could have backed off on the pressure even more. The final effect is nice nonetheless.

I left the undercoating for a week or so before spraying a thin coat of primer over the surface. This may have been unnecessary, but auto paint folks suggested it for good sealing and for a uniform color beneath the paint.

In addition to the body work, I prepped the front suspension parts for nickel plating. I decided to go ahead and blast them. They’re pretty clean now, for the most part, and I have just a few more small parts to clean up before shipping the lot of them to a plating service I located in North Carolina. (I’m sending them off with a little trepidation, I’ll admit. The parts are practically irreplacable, after all.)

And, since one can easily spend money in warmth inside, I did a bit of that, too. Shocks, bushes, brake cylinder rebuild kits, ball joint kits, front brake rotors, and so on. Also, I got a used bonnet subframe from Stefan Roundy to replace the bent up one that came on my car. I can hardly wait to get the subframes ready!

Paint

January 2004 – Body shell spray priming

Body shell spray priming

Over the entire New Year’s holiday and, for that matter, for the entire Christmas holiday break the weather has been absolutely wonderful. We took advantage of exceptionally warm temperatures to open up the garage and spray the body shell with primer. The temperatures reached the mid-70s (Fahrenheit, 20+ Celsius), and so short sleeves did it, as you can see from the picture of Aaron spraying the right rear quarter panel. As everything was open and the fan was blowing, we didn’t use face masks, which probably weren’t necessary in this case. But we did wear ear protection because the compressor is so loud. In retrospect, I believe we should have worn our respirators, too.

Aaron isn’t too interested in doing the sanding, but he was ready to do spraying since it involved a new tool to play with and didn’t require tedious motion.

This was the first primer coat that was sprayed on, as opposed to brushed, and it went very quickly. Using a paint brush is a bit easier in preparation, but the real work comes with the block-sanding. It was very nice to see the coating go on without so much as a brush line anywhere, though Aaron was a bit too liberal with paint on the quarter panel since he left a few drip marks. These were easily removed with the blocking, though. You can see from the light lines at the top of the quarter panel that the blocking I’d done before has paid off in nice clear and predictable reflections. The quarter panels actually have been quite easy to do, perhaps because they are not large and flat surfaces. Flat surfaces and ones that require a long straight light line have been the troublesome ones for me.

As a matter of fact, two such surfaces make it impossible for this spray of primer to be the last. The outer sills (or rocker panels) are curved, of course, but the light line extends their whole length and it ought to be arrow straight. The outer sills are really shaped like quarter round moulding — quarter cylinders rounding out the connection of the side panels (and the doors) to the floor pans. Part of the problem (though not all of it) is due to the fact that I fabricated the left outer sill and it has a few irregularities that I need to work out. But I still am having some trouble getting the light lines on both sides arrow straight — it isn’t purely a matter of my fabrication methods (which were, I’ll admit, a bit crude). I think most of the issue is that the area is simply harder to work on because it’s lower and I don’t have a rotisserie to swing the area into easy access. The lower halves of the outer sills had at best a single brush coat of primer, and the sanding was difficult.

They’ll both need at least another spray of primer and blocking. The rest of the body shell is in pretty good shape, and I think that one more spray of primer will do the trick before we can spray color. The interior and the front bulkhead (firewall) will get no more primer. They’re ready for paint, after I sand the bulkhead a bit.

Spraying and blocking the body shell without the doors took two days. I did not spray the underside or the inside of the trunk (boot) nor did I block the front bulkhead or the interior. The bulk of the work was in the blocking the exterior sections of the car, and that was greatly simplified by spraying, as I said. The nice thing about using the brush in the first stages of priming was that it was easy to do small areas (like the detail section on the door that I did). If you manage to do all the prep, spraying the entire car is probably easier, despite the mess of spraying. Blocking sure is easier without brush marks.

Temperatures are expected to drop down to normal levels this next week, so I don’t think I’ll be spraying any more primer for a while. I also got a hold of some rock guard, though I decided against the 3M “Rocker Schutz” that has gotten a fair amount of exposure among the Jag restorers. The brand was recommended by a body fellow, and it has the added bonus of being a bit less expensive than the 3M product. I asked for “Rocker Schutz” by name, and we shuffled off through the shelves of stock to get it. He asked what I was going to use it on, and I told him. He said, “Let me show you something else” and we went off into the depths of the place. “I sell twenty times more of this stuff than the 3M,” he said. Now, I’m sure that “Rocker Schutz” is great stuff, but I figured I’d give this a try. The nice thing was that I didn’t have to shell out $60 USD to get the special 3M spray gun for this product. It uses a more generic aluminum low pressure gun, and the bottles of the product attach directly to the gun. I’ll provide more information later when I have a chance to use it on the underside of the car.

The body shell is virtually complete and ready for paint, so we’ll have to turn our attention to other things. That is a bit of a relief, to tell the truth. I am thinking that I will begin to study the IRS, and perhaps make some room in the garage to begin working on it. (The garage is a huge mess, I’m afraid.)

To close things up, a couple more photos:

Body work, Paint

December 2003 – Detail body repair, priming, sanding

Primer, sanding, finish prep

Patience is a virtue, I keep telling myself. If that is the case, I expect that people who do block-sanding and priming for a living are among the saints of the world. At least they are among the most virtuous, since it seems you can’t rush priming and blocking.The weather over the holidays here in North Carolina has been uncharacteristically warm, with temperatures reaching into the 60s (Fahrenheit, or about 15 Celsius). The garage has been nice and warm, and I have been able to do some more priming in shirt sleeves. As a result, the entire exterior and the body shell underside is primed. (Actually, there are small portions of the underside that need some primer — the front portion of the footwells that sit on the crude frame I made to hold the body.) On New Year’s Day 2003, we had just finished sealing the truck floor, and the car was still inverted. So, there has been progress.

The trunk floor was again something that needed some attention. When we put the car body on the rolling rack, we placed it on two two-by-four beams cushioned with styrofoam insulation. The body rests on the footwells and on sides of the trunk floor. In order to prime the parts of the trunk floor that were obscured by this set up, I first primed the housing for the IRS, let the primer dry, and then jacked up the trunk from the beams using some spare wood and two hydraulic jacks that float around the garage and elsewhere. (They’ve been wonderfully serviceable little jacks in their long history around here, jacking up old floors, a mud-bound horse trailer [twice!], and trucks in assorted situations.)

Anyway, the jacking opened up most of the space along the beams and all of the trunk floor for priming. As I mentioned, only the front footwells still need priming. So, after I’m done with the trunk floor, I’ll get those primed. I figure that I’ll get the “Rock Schutz” rocker guard on the edge of the trunk before I lower it, though.

All of these theatrics with the jacks could have been avoided, I know, if I had built or invested in an honest-to-goodness car “rotisserie.” Live and learn. If I ever restore another Jag, I’ll know better.

The front bulkhead (or firewall) is now completely assembled and ready for a final sprayed coat of primer and then some color. The picture shows the area partially blocked, since you can still see areas with the marker coat of spray paint. I put the marker coat on quite lightly. The footwell parts of the bulkhead came out quite well. I had to repair both of them last November. Check out the pictures of the footwell repairs and the front bulkhead as it was being dismantled. Since the bulkhead has many curved indentations and smaller flat areas, I had to abandon the block for the most part. Even my four-incher wouldn’t work very well in the constrained space. I’m not too worried about the smoothness of the finish on the bulkhead. I have concentrated on areas that are less obscured by parts either affixed to the bulkhead or by hoses and such. This section of the car body will just get a once over with sanding. I’ll do a spray of primer on the surface, followed by color.

The plan for spraying color is a little clearer to me now. I’m now planning on spraying color on the underside of the car and the front bulkhead first, perhaps with the interior and inside the trunk, too. My main interest is getting the body to a point where I can begin to reassemble sections like the independent rear suspension and the front end. It also seems prudent to hold off on spraying color on any exterior section until all the exterior is ready to accept color — including the bonnet.

That bonnet is now in a corner of the garage. When I need to clean excess primer off a brush, I smear it on the bonnet. That’s all I’m willing to do on the bonnet at this point. It can wait until I have a rolling body.

Detail body repair

The right door has required a lot of work, and I ran into a troublesome high spot that needed some hammer work and some additional body filler to remove a dip. The location is right in the vicinity of the “A” post, and it looks like one of those unfortunate dings that comes from a tree branch or something dropped.It seems a good occasion to go through the whole process of fixing the small ding at this stage in the priming and blocking process.

Detecting the dent — Why light is your friend
Although this dent was big enough to notice with the fingertips and from sand-through and left over “guide” spray paint, it’s good to see why light is your friend. The top photograph shows the “light line” that falls over the problem area. Of course, I didn’t need to see the line to see (or, rather, feel) the problem, but the line illustrates what happens when light hits a bump. You can set up a flourescent light to serve as a light source, but this often isn’t necessary. Most of the reflection comes from lights on my garage ceiling. For areas that are “below the curve” and therefore where I can’t use ceiling lights, I use a pair of halogen lights on a stand. I picked them up at the lumber yard for about $25 (USD) — a pair of 1000 watt halogens have come in handy.

Anyway, look for an interruption in the light line. You can usually get the feel for where the line ought to go with practice. If you are in doubt, use the vehicle’s symmetry to your advantage. Take a look at the light line on the corresponding section on the other side of the car.

It’s said that Sir William Lyons wanted to see an example of a pre-production car sprayed in black gloss so that he could look at the “light lines” of the design. In a sense, that’s what you do as you take in the light lines while block-sanding the primer. You look for the consistencies, or, rather, you look for the inconsistent in order to find the problems.

Hammer work and surface prep
Lots of times block-sanding an area will show you where the bumps and the dents are located. The dents or impressions keep the color of the guide coat that you lightly spray over the primed surface before blocking. They keep the color because the impression protects the paint from being sanded. High spots, the bumps, often appear because the primer below or even the base metal appears after block-sanding. I’ve heard to people using different colors of buildable primer simply to help identify high spots in this way. I suspect that using contrasting colored primers might make sense if there was great need to smooth a pretty rough area, but the project doesn’t seem to warrant that treatment.

Handling the high spots is easy. You tap them down. Do this gently and use lots of light taps on the high spot and in the vicinity. Stop frequently to see if you’ve tapped the spot enough. You should be able to tap a high spot down almost to the point where it is in line with the desired surface. If you overdo it, you’ll be able to handle the dent with filler. But remember that doing too much hammering has a tendency to stretch metal. And, at this point, you really shouldn’t be doing any but very minor adjustments. The majority of the body work should be behind you.

After the tapping is done, I use some 60 grit sandpaper to rough up the surface quite well, so that it accepts the body filler well.

“Easy Sand” body filler from Evercoat and block-sanding
The filler I’ve used for this final work is “Easy Sand” by Evercoat. Bill McKenna mentions it on his ’63 E-type FHC restoration website, and I found it at the local auto parts and body shop supply. The chain automotive stores, around here at least, don’t have it in stock. It is very good stuff. The filler comes in a tube-like bottle (see the picture), so dispensing it is easy and creates no mess at all. Like other fillers, Easy Sand is a two-part product, so it should be durable. The filler itself is very fine and goes on very smoothly — it’s more a cream than a putty. The manufacturers say it bonds well to metal, plastic, and primers.

The best thing about it for this kind of work is that it sands so nicely. When I’ve used other filler to bring up low spots in primer coats, I’ve always doubted whether the stuff would stick to primer, so I’ve ended up sanding right to the metal again. Also other fillers often sand badly when they are adjacent to buildable primer. The stuff usually is slightly harder than the primer, and so you have to be careful about outlining your filled area with a low spot in the primer. (Good blocking usually makes this less likely, though.) The Easy Sand product blocks very nicely.

I mix the filler on cardboard from soft drink containers or cereal boxes. I also use the cardboard to create a straightedge filler “knife.” These are probably not professional grade tools to use, but they have the advantage of being easy to clean up — you just throw them away. The downside of the cardboard filler knife is that it often doesn’t apply the filler smoothly. The third picture from the top shows the freshly applied filler, and it does have some troughs.

Block the area after the filler has cured. The area should be noticably better, though it might have a few imperfections. I noticed on this repair that I missed a small tap dent that I created while tapping down one of the high spots. It was not a particularly big dent, so I figured that the buildable primer would take care of it You can see the effect of the 60-grit sandpaper on the area. The two original high spots have merged to become one elongated spot, now flat from sanding. Flanking low spots have been filled with the filler. There isn’t very much filler left in the area, which is as it should be.

Repriming and blocking the repair
After the filler is blocked, it’s time to reprime the area. I use a paint brush to apply the primer, and that works quite well in small areas like this. After the primer is dry, block it again. This should bring the area to where you need it to be. I did this small repair after the second primer coat was blocked, and the problem was apparent. (This door has been a real job, and this little fix was nothing compared to the rest of the smoothing that was required. The big work was the result of many minor ripples all over the mid section of the door. That work was tedious mainly because getting the lines straight was complicated by the large surface area.) Any imperfections in the primed surface of the repair will get a at least one more going over before the surface is ready for color. I check the light line of the repaired area to see where it needs more attention. As you can see in the bottom picture, it’s in pretty decent shape, though it has some slight indentation yet. This will be taken care of in the next round of primer coat and blocking.

There is no doubt that these small repairs and the multi-staged priming and blocking is a time consuming process. But it’s also indispensible, unless you’re willing to settle for a less than acceptable finish.

 

Body work, Paint

November/December 2003 – Holiday greetings to all!

Yes, more primer but also greetings!

North Carolina weather has not cooperated with working the in garage, so I have set about some short moments priming and sanding the car’s body shell. There is not much new to report, though I will post some photographs after the Christmas Holiday week. I’m taking most of the week off, and perhaps warmer temperatures will be a nice Christmas gift to us this year. One thing that is needing some handling is a high spot on the right door. I’ll document the handling of that little detail, since there is a little difference in body correction at this stage in the game, that is, during the final points of priming and preparation for “spraying color.”

Holiday Greetings from the Cat Cage Garage! The picture perhaps offers little to the diehard restorer — it is, after all more about my wife and me than the old car behind us. She is beautiful, don’t you think? (I will let the indirection of that sentence remain, for the reader to resolve.) Thanks to John and Susan and Alec Boutin for giving us the picture that they took during a Thanksgiving visit!

I hope you will overlook the mess in the garage. I do have to contend with other objects in this little domain, and many of them get carted outside when it’s time to work on the car. In parts of rural North Carolina, people’s wealth has been counted by the number of outbuildings scattered on their property. This is probably a hold-over from the time when tobacco farmers cured their own leaf in small wooden curing barns. I am thinking that having another outbuilding wouldn’t be such a bad idea, since the garage is given over to my project and the accumulation of implements, tools, and children’s debris. The old chicken coop houses much that is not exactly poultry now. So, a small place out back somewhere for non-Jag equipment? Maybe in 2004….

Even though we can’t rev up the Jaguar yet, it has been one of a great many blessings given to us over the past year. We here in North Carolina wish everyone who visits this little space on the ‘net all the greatest and most wonderful of holidays and a fine start into a New Year 2004.

More on car restoration next weekend — this weekend we wish all of you and all of us restoration of other kinds.