Parking Brakes

Today I was able to spend a bit of time on JJ and cleaned, rebuilt and lubed the parking brake mechanism along with replacing the brake pads .

Lock wired and torqued with loctite to 60 ft/lbs.

An amazingly complicated mechanism for the parking brake, this one is for the drivers side.

What is what it looked like before it was cleaned

After installation of the parking brake mechanisms 

Beginning to clean/scrape some of the old grease and muck that has acquired over the past 50 years. Just starting and I'll bet I scraped at least two pounds of crud off the two lower control arms, after scraping I'll need to wash the rest off.

That's it for this week.
Cheers,
Lynn

Churchill Tool JD 42

Hi Ya'll,  Been making a tool that will allow me to adjust the valve clearances on the 5.3L V12 engine.  Fairly simple to make and from reviewing the manual a necessity when working on the V12's.  This tool is used to reach down and 'snag' the tensioner after the tension is released so the sprockets can be removed from the cam shafts. 

1/4" base plate being cut and shaped

Parts, battery hold bolts, black pipe and 1/4 steel base

Pipe welded to base plate, 'J' hook modified to fit and catch hole in tensioner

Completed JD 42 

I thought I'd add a picture from the ROM to give you a feel for how the tool is to be used.  Now heading out to the garage to make Churchill tool JD40 ;-)

Cheers,

Lynn

Dumping the 'Pricillas' on '73 E Type

If there's anything that detracts from the appearance of the later Series 3 E Types more than the Federally mandated overriders, I don't know what it would be.

I had read on the UK Jaguar site about how to replace them with new blades and overriders which is expensive and difficult to reverse.  Then at the bottom of the link there was a brief reference to Kjell Eriksson's approach witch required minimal body work and was reversible however there wasn't much information.  While it is pretty straight forward I thought it might be helpful to outline how I did it in case anyone else want's to give it a try.  The overriders are available from the usuals and I purchased mine from SNG  Barrett for ~$100 each.  The only other thing you'll need is an angle grinder, a few spacers/washers, a bit of primer and some touch up paint.

This is what you'll find after you remove the rubber covers from the '73 style overriders, note that these directions do not apply to the '74 style with the 'nordel' style units.  In the foreground you can see the bumper support after the 'hoop' has been removed, this will need to be trimmed off at the top and bottom to allow the new overrider to fit properly.

This is the inside of the new overriders, the flange will need to be cut off to allow them to sit square on the bumper mount.

This is the bumper mount after trimming, notice that the gusset on the outside had to be cut as well so that the overrider could fit up to the blade.  Be sure and protect all the surfaces with cardboard and painters tape as the cutting generates a considerable amount of dust that is going to be very abrasive. Also notice that I've marked where I'm going to drill to make a threaded hole for the retaining bolt.

This is the mount after the cutting, I decided to prime and paint it even though it won't be visible, still it looks a bit more 'professional' IMO.  I decided to use an additional bolt behind the overrider to give it some support in case I decide to tip the bonnet up on it at some point in the future.  One really nice thing about the old overriders was that you could tip the bonnet up on them to remove the bonnet for servicing the engine, I'm hoping that having this support behind the new one will allow me tip the bonnet up on these too.

Here is the new overrider with the rubber on it, it is slightly gappy next to the blad but one could hide that with some of the bumper rubber strips that are used on the S1 cars between thier overriders and blades.

This shot shows how the overrider is mounted to the support, one bolt with a spacer behind it, I had some left over spacers from another project laying around but one could use a stack of washers if they had to.

This is the finished project,  my wife likes it so it's a pass!

Cheers,

Lynn

Braking up....or I get a charge out of this?

Well heck, I don't have anything exciting to share today so I tried for the catchy title, oh well.

The Voltage regulator problem came back when Michelle and I drove her car to the gas station so today I thought I would open it up and clean the contacts and see if that fixed it.  Don't know yet but these VR's look like they have a pound of copper in them and look like they should survive a nuclear attack!  At any rate I cleaned the contacts with fine sand paper and electronic cleaner... I'll let you know.  The wipers were barely working on our test drive so I figured it was crusty grease and cleaned it out replaced it with white lithium and guess what, it has 2 speeds now.  For some reason I decided I had better re-check the lights and lo and behold the brake lights had stopped working, I'm sure they were working last December but not now.  I had a  new VW switch that reportedly works for the E Type and installed it today.  Brake lights! 

Inside of the VR, like I said it's robust.

That's it for now, centered the steering wheel and cleaned the turn signal mechanism but still need to finish the alignment.

Cheers,

3 hrs

Always an adventure...

Took RJ down to get the front end aligned which turned out to be problematic but after it successfully made it back home (with Jan on standby for towing) decided that it was time to gas up RJ.  I called Michelle up to see if she wanted to go into town with me.   Yesterday I had put 2.5 gallons in and thought we had plenty to get to the gas station,  well as you have likely assumed by this point, when we hit the last hill on the way into town RJ stalled out.  Well, I had been suspicious that RJ might pull such a trick so I packed another 2 gallons and after this unfortunate 'failure to progress' we made it to the gas station.  On the way back I 'forced' Michelle to drive RJ back, Michelle's Dad Pete, had made sure his kids knew how to drive LBC's and Michelle showed me up, flawless gear changes (moss box!) and here is a video of her driving.

Still a few things to work on, the amp meter pegged again, the idle is too fast and the windscreen wipers have one speed-SLOW.  But we are beginning to see the light....

Cheers,

Progress....

Made some progress this week, the oil leaks are 'better' with the new seals on the oil feed lines to the cams and new cam cover gaskets.  The idle speed is now under control, not the 1500 RPM that it was doing on Wed.  Since I was concerned about an air leak I took the brake booster system apart and cleaned it all up, checked and painted it.  Afterwards took it out again for a test drive and checked for leaks etc. Still has some issues like the turn signals but otherwise not to bad. I've uploaded a video of starting and running-enjoy!

Vacuum tank, checked it for leaks than decided it need paint to protect it

Another patch, sure wonder what they were doing?

Same patch job, different view #3

Start up and running, not perfect but making progress.

Cheers,

4Hours

Plugging leaks....

This afternoon was spent trying to reduce (it's British so will not use the word stop) leaks both oil and air.  I decided to tackle the the cam cover and related seals on the exhaust side.  The good news is that I didn't notice any cracks in the cam covers which is a notorious problem with these covers.  So after cleaning the surfaces, finding a new 'o' ring and cork seal for the end I resealed the cam covers (after cleaning).  Hopefully this will slow the leaks coming down onto the exhaust pipes.

One concern for today is the absence of tappet guide hold downs especially on the exhaust side.  It is not uncommon for the tappet guides to ride up with the resulting contact with the cam lobes causing significant damage to an XK engine.  There are several different types of hold downs available and I would definitely recommend that we make this modification on your car Michelle.

While I was trying to slow the idle yesterday and found that adjusting the idle speed screws made little difference in idle speed it dawned on me that there must be a vacuum leak most likely in the brake system.  After checking the various components it appears that the valve at the brake vacuum tank is the culprit.  Now need to figure out what to do about it, I will just cap off the line while I try to tune the carbs but will need to research this a bit more.

Valve covers off revealing the absence of a stake down kit

Cleaned cam cover reinstalled.

Back of cam cover where the 'O' ring and cork seal live, right hand at the end of the cover.

In this picture you can see the lock down plate, held in place by the two allen head screws

Cheers,

3 hours