I want to refinish my air cleaner canister and it is currently black. I have seen some that are silver. My research tells me there was a change in the air cleaner and support bracket in Sept 1966. Mine was built in early 66. Is the original color of my air intake canister black or silver? Thank you

 

The rule was the 3.8 's were black, the 4.2"s were silver, but you could be right .

 

My 1966 left the factory in early Dec 1965 with a black canister.

 

Im looking at Feb 66 etype has a black canister, the later on the floor has the silver as well. 1965 was the 4.2 so there you have it.........somewhere along the line in 66 was the switch....
Good luck

 

Ours, for 40 years, was a 1965 4.2L S1 Coupe . . . one of an identical pair with successive numbers, both OEW / full red Connelly interiors, and both delivered to Australia with a range of factory fitted "enhancements". I don't believe these extended to the air canister which was silver . . . although I would describe the triangular shaped induction above leading to the triple SUs as a more silver-grey gunmetal or hammertone finish.

However, purpose of my post is to highlight a potential trap as these 50+ yo cars are often dated (especially in USA) by month+year of import rather than (for most of us, even well outside UK) by month+year of manufacture. Many years later, Jaguar recorded such model development changes by the far more reliable "from VIN####### onwards".

Cheers,

Ken

 

Thank you all for the input. What I did find out for sure is that mine is the correct black finish. My car happens to be a 2 owner car that was built Jan 14, 1966 and is in very original untouched condition. The reason I am refinishing this and the heater box is because the original owner painted something like a rustoleum paint on the surfaces along with some other places to deter rust. When I removed the canister and the heater box, I could tell they were in original color. With a lot of patience I have been able to remove most of the rustoleum that was put on but these items need redone. So somewhere in the production of the 66 model year the canister was changed to silver. GT Joey has a Feb car that is black so must be after then.

 

Great news now drive the wheels off of it!
Norman says the plugs will clear out as well once your over 135 miles per hour!