Practically Classics Forum

After quite a bit of experimentation I eventually came to the conclusion that the correct formula required to remove the old finish from the woodwork is a combination of carefully applied heat and patience. I'm sure if I could get hold of some proper old school Nitromors (the can we thought I'd found it turned out had dissolved the bottom out of the tin) or similar I'm sure it would be sorted in minutes...but the modern water based nonsense is a total waste of space when up against what I am pretty sure at this point is a polyeurythane clearcoat.

The starting point:



After the old clear coat had been removed it was given a gentle rub down with 1200 grit sand paper just to remove any bits I had missed and to key the surface ready for the application of the new coating.



Which is a little disheartening to be honest as it ends up looking awful when the first couple of coats are applied.



However after a few coats it did start to look better, though spraying one coat when the ambient temperature was too cold resulted in a satin-like finish at close of play a couple of days ago.



Today though it felt like we actually made decent progress towards it looking decent, reasonably warm but breezy weather was ideal to get several coats added to it which has resulted in a pretty decent finish.





I think this one better demonstrates the degree of gloss we've managed to attain (even though the camera has helpfully focused on the wrong surface).



Those pieces are sitting in the spare room just now safely tucked away while the clearcoat fully hardens. Given I now have a workflow which works reasonably well for this I'll look to get the remaining trim removed and put through a similar treatment shortly. While this isn't maybe a factory perfect finish I think it's fair to say that it will look a whole lot better in the car than the flaky mess that's currently in there.

That looks beautiful mate! Well done..

First two pieces of trim have now been reinstalled in the car. This gives us a nice "before and after" set of images I think.







Definitely think this will be worth the effort once all the woodwork has had this treatment and is back in the car.

The offside air vent surround and the glove compartment lid have now been brought in and are waiting on their turn to be given a fresh clear coat.



Stripping the old stuff off is fiddly and time consuming but not really difficult.



I suspect I'll be finding bits of that stuff for years...

Tomorrow we should hopefully get this looking nice and shiny again.

The offside air vent surround and the glove box lid had their first couple of coats of lacquer earlier today.



Will still need several more coats but it's getting there. I do love the colour and depth that this has taken on. It's impossible to see in a photo, but there is a really strong three dimensional effect when direct light hits the grain in the wood.



Once this two are done it will just leave the door cappings to be tackled. Unfortunately getting those off involves pretty much entirely stripping down the door cards, so a bit more involved than the dash trims.

I noticed yesterday that there was a bit of a burning oil smell when parking up at home but didn't think too much of it. Today though I've found evidence that we do appear to have a leak...these spots weren't there a couple of days ago.



Hmm...I did have a quick look around and couldn't see anything immediately obvious. No visible drop in any fluid levels, though it does hold enough of both engine and gearbox oil that it would take quite a bit to drop the level on the dipsticks.



I'll have a better crawl around tomorrow and see if I can pinpoint a major source. Though there are quite a few minor leaks (both cam covers weep to name two), about time the oil was changed anyway... usually is done virtually the moment a new car hits my driveway. Probably get funny looks from my motor factor when looking for oil this thick!



Crossing my fingers it's nothing difficult to sort. Oil cooler unions will be the first thing to be checked as they will have been disturbed I believe when the radiator was changed a couple of months ago.

Little package arrived this morning containing the replacement switches for the Jag. Not hard to spot the difference is it?





The other two have a little bit of crazing in the lenses but nothing that sticks out so badly so I'll keep my eyes peeled for a hazard and interior light 2 switch turning up cheap. I'm guessing these are prone to cracking like this based on the mental prices that new ones seem to be advertised at on eBay. I don't care how special you think it is..I ain't paying £75 for a switch!

Second task was reinstating the glove compartment lid...



Fair to say that's improved the interior immeasurably. I look forward to getting the strips on the doors done too...not so much looking forward to having to strip them down to get the strips off though!

Main useful job for the day though was to try to track down where the oil leak I noticed yesterday was coming from.

Despite looking quite impressive based on the spatter on the back of the car and the smoke that had come off the exhaust, there wasn't any obvious drop in the engine bay.

Engine oil still sitting on full (reads about 1/2" high here because of the slope of our drive).



Gearbox oil likewise is sitting on maximum (if anything slightly over full). Not horrible burnt looking fluid either which is nice to see.



Power steering fluid is sitting on the "add" mark, but it hasn't moved since I got the car.

Looking underneath the car didn't immediately reveal anything obvious. The marks on the ground were from where oil has dropped from the exhaust fasteners and heat shields.





The complexity of the rear suspension of this car is quite something. Having seen it on diagrams is one thing, but it will take a while for the novelty of looking under the back of my own car and seeing a pair of springs on each wheel to wear off.



There were a couple of areas which I wanted to take a closer look at.

The rear of the left hand cylinder bank definitely has a leak from the cam cover.



Looking at it I suspect that the connection to the air conditioning expansion valve will want checking out given it's visibly oily. Hopefully being a flare nut it will just need to be nipped up a bit.

The other area that's obviously oily is the front end of the right hand bank. While these areas are only, neither looked wet enough to explain the degree of splatter on the back of the car I'd seen.

A common area to cause issues are the pipes to/from the front mounted oil cooler...which looks absolutely disgusting, but in half an hour of the engine running didn't produce a single actual drip...so I think a thorough session with the degreaser and pressure washer might be in order here to pin down where this is coming from.



So definitely attention needed there but I'm pretty sure it isn't the main issue.

Having a dig around did reveal a horrific mess below the brake servo though due to the small fluid leak spotted earlier.



That will want cleaning up sooner rather than later.

Eventually after the engine had been running for about 30 minutes I spotted a fresh drip on the driveway away over on the far side of the car.



A closer look at the new drop revealed that it was definitely engine oil.



This is right to the rear end of the left cylinder bank, and looking up from by that exhaust flange shows this assembly up there...





This is the engine end of the lines to the oil cooler.

My guess is we've got a failed seal in there which is allowing oil to be forced out at higher engine speeds.

Given this is a bit of a pig to get to without a ramp I may well chuck this at my local garage to sort as it shouldn't really be too bad a job on a four post lift. I'll probably just get a set of seals for everything involved here so I've got everything necessary in hand. It's probably the difference between it taking me two to four hours scrambling around on my back getting oil in my eyes versus it taking them fifteen minutes on the lift.

Finally actually got the service items ordered...



I thought I'd already done this...however it turns out I'm an idiot and while I had the items in my basket I'd never clicked the button to complete the order. Yes I am indeed an idiot.

Only a quick update today. I discovered yesterday that half the interior lights weren't working in the Jag. This happening immediately after I changed one of the switches involved seemed far too much of a coincidence, so I took a closer look. Sure enough, they're different. The new switch only be four pins on the back rather than six on the old one. So I switched over the cap from the old and new switches and put everything back together. Problem solved.

I've also painted the area behind the switches alongside the trip computer black for now. I will be looking for some veneer offcuts to rebuild the wood trim here in due course, but this looks better than the cracked, warped mess that was there for the time being.





The distributor breather air filter has also been swapped for something a little more standard looking.



The red anodised thing would have looked at home on my Suzuki Cappuccino...not so much on a Jag.

I'm enjoying the wood refinishing stage of the Jaguar's freshening up procedure. I can't decide which impresses me more, the quality you're achieving on the surface of the timber or the fact that you had the courage required to get in about at it and take the risk of that very thin veneer breaking up, which is almost certainly what would happen to me were I to try this. Much respect is due, IMHO, for your efforts with the car so far. I reckon you're providing the lovely old thing with the best home it could have found, please keep up this high standard.

This afternoon involved a lot of standing around and waiting.



It takes a while to drain off this much oil. To put in perspective how much oil this car takes...this much.



Not quite the 40 odd litres a Detroit 8V71 takes, but a lot for a car!

What came out wasn't disgusting but equally it was definitely due a change. The fact that I had to resort to "mechanical assistance" to remove the oil filler cap and the battle it was to shift the oil filter tells me it's been a while since she had an oil change. I'm equally aware that she's had a miss for quite a while before I got her so there's probably some degree of fuel contamination in there.

It's not the most inaccessible oil filter I've ever come across, but it's definitely close. Nothing from above. The circular thing you can just see through this gap is the oil filter housing.



From underneath is nearly good...except for the fact that the left hand exhaust downpipe runs directly under the filter so gets in the way of you being able to get a hand onto it. A not insignificant amount of swearing was involved, especially as the filter was thoroughly stuck in place. At least it's mounted vertically so you can fill the new filter with oil to help prime it and minimise the work needed to get oil pressure back up.

While I was waiting for the oil to drain down it gave me a good opportunity to double check the rest of my fluids etc. Especially the coolant. Glad to report that it's not moved at all since it was originally topped up.



The cap was horribly graunchy to remove or loosen, so have given it a tiny smear of rubber grease on the seal. Lovely and smooth now.

It was about that point at which I noticed some bodgery which will need to be resolved before I get the air conditioning reinstated. Generally it's one of those areas where you see nice big, chunky hermetically sealed fittings. Jubilee clips aren't normally on that list. Especially on the hot gas line to the condenser...





Yeah...that will need to be replaced. At least the hose isn't expensive. One found for £35 delivered over here on British Parts, which makes me wonder all the more why they messed around with this. Have to wonder how long it has worked like that as the hose clips and everything don't look recent.

I spotted something about that point which I need to pick the brains of the Jag experts about. Not a problem, but a "why is that there?" type question. Why is there what appears to be a second ignition coil tucked down in front of the radiator?



It appears that the HT terminal is capped off, but it's definitely hooked into the loom so must be doing something. I'm curious.

Oh, on reading the handbook I discovered that the steering wheel has a reach adjustment. Turning the knurled collar releases it and allows about 3" of adjustment. Doesn't sound like much but really makes a difference.



I'd never have found that by myself!

While looking at the interior I figured it was worth snapping a photo of the switch panel in black with actual daylight involved.



It's actually growing on me...the veneer there almost clashes with the black of the trip computer casing and this whole panel being black looks a bit more coherent. Obviously it wants to be painted properly as it's a bit rough and ready at the moment so the finish isn't great as it was only intended as a stopgap. That's easily fixed though.

We did have a fun moment in the afternoon when attending a hospital appointment. What odds would you have given two V12 engined cars ended up parked next to each other in the hospital car park completely randomly?



Think mine sounds better...

I'd have to drive one of each, just to confirm which made the more beautiful noise!

Have done a bit of reading and the second coil is indeed in parallel with the main one, essentially being a cheap and simple way to get a big inductor using off the shelf parts rather than needing a specialised coil. Pretty clever actually and a good solution to the challenges of setting up an ignition system to work well with a V12 where the sheer number of firing pulses per second at higher RPMs would cause most conventional ignition systems of the time to fall flat on their face.

It turns out the horrible hose bodge on the AC system is indeed a horrible bodge...but one the car left the factory with. In fact all the 5.3 engined cars had this setup. I'm guessing it was deemed to be adequate in the context of the system being serviced every year or so. However in the spirit of environmental responsibility and with the prices of refrigerant in 2020 it seems worthwhile to do everything reasonable to get the system as gas tight as possible.

I wasn't 100% happy with the finish I had achieved on the glove box lid. It ended up looking a bit less smooth than I was really aiming for. So today I pulled the trim back off and gave it another few coats. Is now looking a lot better.







The helpful bit of workflow I added to the mix today was to set the heating running in the back of the van to a nice toasty 25C and use that as my drying room. That understandably sped things up a good deal and seems to have helped achieve a better finish.