Going in the right direction...

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. Things have been happening to the Jag, but as the college course has drawn to a close that's been my main focus.

The Motorcycle and Small Engines Maintenance & Repair experience (actually with a heavy bias towards general automotive maintenance & repair) has been great fun. I have completed all the outcomes and done so well that the college presented me with a 'Student of the Year' award! My application for next year has been accepted so I'll be moving onto City & Guilds Automotive Level 2, skipping the Level 1 course. I can't wait to get stuck in!

As the course came to an end, and even though all the assignments and assessments were taking priority, I managed to get the Jag into the workshop to sort out her wheel alignment, check for leaks, and wire brush some of the underside in preparation for undersealing it at a later date. I'd been putting up with an off-centre steering wheel and odd cornering behaviour for a bit (easier to turn left than right) so it was time to sort things. I used a 4-post ramp to get the Jag airborne, wire brushed and WD40'd the track rod ends, then walked away for a cup of tea to let the WD40 do its stuff. Once back I got out the 4-wheel laser alignment gear, set the steering wheel to straight ahead, and sprayed the track rod ends again before starting any adjustments. The initial readings on the alignment gear confirmed that the alignment was well out. It was a quick fix though and within minutes the front wheels were both pointing in the right direction. The rears were within 1mm of each other. I really should have checked them first to make sure the thrust line of the car was dead on, but the 1mm difference is OK.

Here are a few pics of the job in progress...

Laser alignment gear all set...

Offside track-rod end. The spring you see is probably the wrong one for the car. It doesn't match the nearside! That wire dangling down is the earth for the ABS. Before clean up everything you see here was caked in mud, dirt, grime, oil, coolant and transmission fluid from all the various leaks. No major leaks to report now though!

Rear A-frame and under car view. What lies beneath, eh? Well, a fair bit of surface corrosion, but no holes! Overall it's in really good condition for a 15 year old car with nearly 120,000 miles. The rust has been brushed off and I'll give it another going over before the whole of the underside is coated in Tetraseal or something similar. The exhaust has seen better days though. More on that later!

Pointing in the right direction...

Now, as it's prudent to do when underneath the car, I had a poke about at any rusty bits. The chassis is good, including the sills and arches, but one of my silencers for the exhaust now has a hole in it. Makes the car sound a bit bad-boy, but it has to go. 

Poke, poke... D'oh!

A quick bit of welding after the area has been cut back a bit and dressed will maybe sort this out for the meantime. Ideally though I'd like a new exhaust for peace of mind and because I want to bring the Jag back to excellent condition. On almost every XJ I've seen, the rear silencers rot out here. I couldn't see a drain coming down onto them, but there must be some reason for such localised corrosion? Answers on a postcard please!

After the alignment had been done I can report that the Jag drove much better. The steering wheel wasn't canted over and the cornering had improved. I decided to use it for a couple of days and took the opportunity to go to my first Jaguar Enthusiast's Regional Meeting at the Craig House near Dalkeith. It was a rand night out with like-minded people and I was able to begin the process of sorting out new wheels etc. thanks to Rob Jenner. H9 WAP's current ones are too far gone to reasonably restore so I'm thinking about a set of XJR rims. 

So, now that college is over for the summer I'm a bit stuck for workshop space. Having said that though I hope that Ross at Mulsanne Motors will be able to let me on a ramp long enough to do a service, the underseal and re-charge the air con at some point. Maybe the minor welding too! 

History Mystery...

As you'll know, H9 WAP was bought without a scrap of history or paperwork. None. Not a jot. I broke one of the golden rules of buying any car and took one hell of a chance on it. Still glad I did mind!

Anyway, there was at least one wee tiny bit of information with the car, namely its last MOT and a V5 registration certificate. On the day of the sale, using those documents, I did some online digging and managed to source the Jag's previous MOT history back to 2006 (she was on 105,000 miles at that point - only 119,900 now... ). This information was useful because it let me see all the passes, the fails, and the advisories against her over the last few years. I was therefore able to make an educated guess as to what sort of maintenance had been done to the car over that period of time. For example, the advisories in 2006 were:

• All Coil spring corroded (2.4.C.1b)
• Nearside Rear Tyre worn close to the legal limit (4.1.E.1)
• Both Front wheel bearing has slight play (2.5.A.3c)
• Both Rear wheel bearing has slight play (2.6.2)
• All Brake hose slightly deteriorated (3.6.B.4d)

Since then the coil spring corrosion has been noted on all the MOT's, but none of the other issues have which indicates they were fixed. Looking under the car at the visible pipes and testing for play in the bearings confirms this. Other stuff sorted over the years around MOT time have included blows in the exhaust, faulty Lambda Sensors and dodgy lights. 

It bugs me that I don't have a history though with details on what else was done and where. So I set about getting some. 

Armed with the advice from the Jaguar Enthusiast's guru Rob Jenner, I nipped into the Jag dealer in Edinburgh to ask for information from their DDW (Direct Dealer Warranty) system. Stratstone couldn't give me much but did point me in the direction of where H9 WAP came from - which is Cheltenham in England and a dealership called 'H.A. Fox' on Rutherford Way. I decided to give them a phone to see what information they have and to my surprise found that they had carried out all the servicing and any warranty related repairs needed on H9 WAP for the first few years of its life. The last record they had was around late 1999 where the recorded mileage was around 40,000. 

In an example of going beyond the call of duty, the chap I spoke to at Fox's offered to trawl their archives, pull all the original paperwork, photocopy it, then send it to me free of charge!

My next step once I receive the info from Fox's is to contact the DVLA to request the registration history, which will give me a list of former keepers. Once I have that I can write to them and ask for any paperwork they have, or tales relating to the car. If I get a response it will help me further add to this Jaguar's Tale.

The other car...

Seeing as things are a wee bit quiet on the Jag front I thought I'd add a wee post about the baby of the fleet, my trusty Ford Ka. Here it is...

Bit different from the Jag, eh? SN02 FVT was bought in 2005 as a replacement for my previous Ka, a purple Mk 1 that expired after well over 100,000 miles and a dodgy engine swap. Many, many, many miles later (about 134,000 so far) FVT is still running and has well and truly replaced the first one. I took a wee while to warm to it though.

Spec wise, it's a Ka Collection in Panther Black metallic with cloth seats, an RDS 6000 EON CD/Radio, electric windows, central locking, and a 1.3 litre Endura-E engine which can trace it's design lineage back to the Ford Kent found in Anglias and the like. Since purchase I've added the 15" O.Z alloys, a G-Max sports suspension kit, wheel spacers front and rear, the shorty aerial plus a chrome trim for the exhaust. Everything else is standard.

I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is to drive this wee thing. It's no rocket but since you barely have to lift for any corner it feels faster than it is. The handling is helped by the lowered suspension and slightly wider track, but that comes at the expense of comfort - just ask my partner who gets car-sick on long journeys!

Sadly, the intergalactic mileage has taken its toll on the Ka. The situation right now is this: the engine is oil-tight but very noisy and it leaks coolant. This coolant loss has been a minor long term problem which was partially resolved using Radweld which stopped a water-pistol like stream from the intake manifold. There is a new leak now, not a dreadful one, but the coolant drips onto the engine, pooling around the No. 1 plug where it burns off thanks to the heat. That means I can't drive the car with the windows open because after a while the fumes get too much. Previously, coolant used to leak from the thermostat housing. That was resolved by removal, cleaning off the corrosion, then refitting with new gaskets and sealant. No idea what the solution will be this time though.  

Over the years it has been a reliable workhorse, hammered around the country, abused, and taken for granted. I didn't scrimp on servicing though and whatever needed done to it when it was needing done, was done. For instance it has had at least 3 steering racks, a power steering pump, several wishbones, pads, discs, drums, shoes, heater control valve, heater blower motor resistor, coolant temperature sender, new catalytic converter and manifold, complete new exhaust, new coil, a replacement headlight, a new clutch and a new flywheel. I've kept pretty much all of the receipts, stamped the service book and farmed out any work that I couldn't undertake myself. The Ka has paid me back by not letting me down. The only time I have had to pull over and stop was when it first became apparent there were overheating problem as a cloud of steam curled up from the bonnet while I was in traffic. After cooling down it got me home. It has always got me home - even when the clutch disintegrated, taking the old flywheel with it...

Time passes though and anything well-used will wear out. If the Ka lasts until its next MOT in August I will be happy. If by some miracle it passes, I'll be happier still, but in the back of my mind I'll be waiting for the day it goes bang. A pass in August is unlikely without some serious structural welding and a new windscreen. Unfortunately when Ford built the Ka they used foam on the inside of the body in areas that attract moisture. The foam traps the moisture and the car rusts from the inside out. 'FVT has rusted out around the fuel filler cap, rear crossmember/boot slam panel, offside sill, both front sill ends, base of A-pillars, round the rear wiper spindle and on the front of the offside wing (had an argument with a BMW once). Here are some pictures to show just how bad it is...

The boot & rear crossmember

Left side of boot & rear crossmember

Edge of boot, rear wing

Offside rear quarter panel

Rear wiper attachment

Fuel filler cap. There is no metal here. Only Duck Tape...

Nearside A-pillar base

Offside A-pillar base and cracked 'screen

Front of offside wing

We'll see what happens come MOT time. Just now though I am still enjoying what has been, and continues to be, a great wee, fun car. Having two constitutes a fleet as far as I'm concerned and I'm very happy to have them both! 

Fatigued...

So... One of the 'wee things' has actually turned into quite a big thing. The checkstrap on the driver's door has completely pulled out of the frame. It seems that over time the metal plate in the door where the strap bolts on to suffers from metal fatigue, especially if the checkstrap mechanism is stiff, and this eventually leads to the bolts which hold it being pulled or pushed through the door on the X300's. That's exactly what's happened to mine. It seems when the strap got stuck in the fully extended position, my pulling the door shut forced the securing bolts through the frame. This was confirmed today thanks to the boroscope (camera on a stick) at the college. Seeing as it's now useless, the strap has been disconnected from the a-post so that the door can open and close freely but I need to be really careful opening it until I can have repairs carried out.

Knowledge is power though so I made a point today of going round all the other checkstraps with lots of white spray grease to make sure they don't seize. I lubricated the aerial, plus the bonnet catches too - scoring a consolatory victory by adjusting the driver's side one so that the bonnet now sits flat when closed. The transmission fluid was topped up a wee bit and all the other levels checked. It seems the oil level is a bit high so a full service is next on the cards to address that.

Although the weather was rotten I gave the Jag another wash then headed out to an automotive spray painters that Mulsanne use. They had a look over the Jag and the painting quote (for getting both bumpers re-sprayed, fixing the tiny (less than 5mm across) rust bubbles on the edge of the roof and scabbiness in the sunroof well, a full roof re-spray, and the rest of the car fully machine polished to fix the scratches) came in at about £500. I reckon for the work to be done, which would include refitting the rear bumper on new brackets I'd need to supply, the quote isn't too bad. Okay, the cost is almost the same as the whole car, and yes it does look okay the now, but the value that such work would add to the car pretty much justifies having it done. I've seen many XJ6's with rotten bodywork. I don't want mine to end up like them.

Wee things...

Despite the rain it was another glorious day to be out in the Jag. I've been using her to commute and she has been running well. There is also noticeably less oil and transmission fluid leaking from her since the transmission service and thanks to the Pro-Tec stop leak treatment, which is excellent because the amounts that had been lost overboard were beginning to worry me. The gearshifts are still smooth, the 'box isn't as noisy and old girl has got some pace back.

A couple of things have cropped up that will need attention though. Just wee things, but they annoy me. First off, the petrol gauge is lying again. It had seemed to sort itself after earlier inaccuracies but today I put a lot of petrol in but it only says there's a half a tank. At some point I will need to run the Jag almost dry so that I can remove the sender and give it a clean up. The posts on the JEC forums seem to indicate that this is probably what's causing the odd readings.

The forums have also helped with diagnosis of another issue - the sticky throttle. When changing from D to R or N & vice-versa while stationary the revs will rise to about 1500 and won't go down till you blip the pedal. Not a critical issue, but annoying and embarrassing when you're at a set of lights. If the revs are left high it causes a good thump through the drivetrain too when the gears engage, which can't be good, so a thorough clean out of the throttle body and butterflies is on the cards.

Speaking of cards I'm going to need to remove the driver's door card shortly - sooner rather than later - to see what's happened to the check strap. The door got stuck open today in the rain but released with a bit of a bang. Now it will not open fully. The forums pointed me in the direction of a knackered strap which may have pulled out of the door itself and become jammed. Inventive repair work may be required along with a trip to Rob Jenner for spare parts. A wee thing again, but frustrating.

I suppose that's part of the attraction of older cars. There's almost a masochistic delight in something needing attention just so that you can fix it. I really don't want to be chasing my tail fixing things though. I want to improve the car, to make it run and drive perfectly and keep it's body and paint in good condition. I also want to look into it's past and start compiling a history folder. Mr Jenner has suggested a couple of things to try. First of all there's a Jaguar Heritage Trace which will give me the cars "birth" details, such as when it was completed, original spec, original and supplying dealers, original reg etc and maybe even first and second owners. Secondly if I pop into Stratstones (Jag dealer in Edinburgh), ask for John in the spares dept, give him the last six digits of H9 WAP's vin and ask nicely for a print out of my car from the DDW system, then that may yield more info. Thirdly I can pay DVLA for a full owner check.

Pulling all these wee things together will make H9 WAP a better, more valuable car. One that I can comfortably enjoy and maybe one day turn a profit on. 

Helping hands...

While I remember I would like to publicly thank everyone who has helped with the Jag so far. From Dean with the cleaning, to John with the transmission and Kevin with the tyres, plus everyone in between and at the college. It is much appreciated, thank you!

Transmission Service...

I haven't wrote much about the Jag over the last few weeks because to be fair it hasn't been used much, other than for short runs to the college or to local attractions. For most of the time she's been sat under a cherry tree in a nice part of town, just watching the world go by while my other car got hammered everywhere.

Today though I added a good few miles to the odometer as the Jag came to college with me so that I could finally do the delayed transmission service.

The overall process itself was pretty simple: open the bonnet, release the transmission dipstick, raise the car on a 4-post ramp and remove the end of the dipstick pipe on the autobox sump to let the old fluid drain away into a suitable container. Once that is done, unbolt the sump, remove it and the rubber seal, then unbolt the filter plus its 'O' ring. With the sump and bolts off give them all a good clean, plus remove the wee magnets on the inside of the sump to clean them of any debris. Re-fit in reverse order, making sure the gasket/seal mating faces are clean and that the bolts aren't cross-threaded. With the car back down, slowly fill the autobox with new fluid through the dipstick pipe using a small bore funnel. Roughly 5 litres should have drained out, so put at least 5 back in. Once that's all done, start the car and with the foot on the brakes begin to cycle through the gears. Let everything heat up then with the car in 'Park' check the fluid level in the box using the dipstick. Top up as necessary then take the car for a spin.

Now, if I'd been clever - which I'm not - I would have taken photos of the whole process. Ooops... You will have to use your imagination I'm afraid! One thing to picture is the state of the old fluid. Fresh ATF is a clear rose pink colour - the stuff that was initially drained out the Jag looked more like tobacco juice or black coffee, with loose tea leaves in. It smelled burnt too. It was knackered...

The difference in the Jag now that the new fluid is in the 'box is really noticeable. Much more so that I thought it would be. The gearchanges while on the move are a lot smoother and quieter. You barely notice them. In fact he car feels more lively, more responsive. Particularly from a standing start and in kickdown. I had no frame of reference as to how the gearchanges should be but I could tell they weren't brilliant. Beforehand the Jag just felt 'slushy' on the road. Now it doesn't, so I enjoyed a good drive for the rest of the day, even though the weather was 'dreich'.

First port of call after college, and an appointment with the choke cable on an Austin 7 Box Saloon at Mulsanne Motors, was Pentland Powder Coating in Loanhead to get a quote for refurbishing my wheels. It turns out they have a polished aluminium finish which the powder coaters will not be able to replicate. They can refurbish the current wheels and apply almost any finish, just not the original factory one. Looks like sorting the wheels will be a back burner project for a wee while as refurbishing/replacing them could prove expensive.

Following that trip I drove around Edinburgh, lots. The overheating gremlins that dogged the £600 Sov in the beginning are banished. Her replacement twin fans are doing a great job of keeping her cool. I noticed that the power steering was cutting out during very low speed parking manoeuvring but I know that one of the electrical connections is broken so it could just be loose. Not worried about it though.

While parked up for a wee bit after a particularly arm-straining 30-point turn in deepest Leith, I discovered how to play with the trip computer/odometer display to show my MPG, average speed and so on. I also mucked about with the electric mirror and window controls to make sure everything works and I sussed out how to manually alter the speed of the heater fan motor. All wee things that add to experience and make me smile.

So, the next job I'd like to tick off the list of things to do on H9 WAP is servicing the differential. This needs drained and re-filled with a specific type of oil called Shell Spirax. I doubt what's in there has ever been replaced so putting fresh fluid in won't do any harm. I also want to fix the seat adjusting mechanisms which seem to have stopped working on both sides of the car. The motors run but there's no movement. Not a major issue as my seat is in a comfy position, but it's one I'd like to address. On the whole though the Jag is running brilliantly and I feel very lucky indeed to be driving her, : )