I noticed that when I drive the car, my feet get extremely hot. There are 3 buttons below the radio - OFF, Cold, Hot. No matter where the push button switch is pushed in, there is extreme heat in the foot-wells. The fan is off. I wonder if this car has vacuum actuated flaps like other not-so modern cars. May be the heater flaps are stuck open?

What should I be looking at? Any suggestions welcomed.

 

You're correct about vacuum operation. This particular feature was carried over into the XJ6 of 1968.


There is a vacuum-operated heater water valve, and it sounds like this is stuck open, or there is a leak in the vacuum lines somewhere. There is also a little vacuum reservoir tank somewhere, too.
There are three vacuum servos, one each for exterior air intake flap, heater flap, and water valve.. There was a mod made after 684 LHD cars were made to make the external scuttle flap separately operated. The buttons were then labelled "Off", "Heat" and "Air".


During road tests by Motor magazine, the heating and ventilation system was criticised, especially the lack of control over the level of heat, (its either on or off !!), and there is no separate "Demist" facility. It's a bit of a Dogs Breakfast, really, but Jaguar were always poor at this sort of thing. When one chap in the 50s complained to Sir William Lyons about the lack of heating, he was told to put on an overcoat ! One set of testers of a Mark 2 found that a snowball wouldn't melt in the car despite the heater being on full.

 

After tracing the vacuum lines and actuators (for the air intake air scuttle and the heater matrix flaps) the solution was simple. The PO had misplaced the vacuum lines on the three button temperature switch which essentially rendered the heater on at all times. Now its all sorted out and the heater now behaves as it should - on when the "Hot" button is pressed and fresh air when the cold button is pressed. Woo Hoo! Its the little things that matter some times.

 

It's still a pretty stupid piece of design, though.

Sometimes I think that the Jaguar blind-spot on heating and ventilation originates with Sir William Lyons who, as a pre-war motorist in England would have been used to cars without heaters. In the UK they were only optional extras for many, many, years after WW2. People didn't use cars so much in winter, and certainly putting salt down to clear roads only came in the 60s. I can remember cycling home from a friends house on ice with a layer of grit on top. That would have been about 1962 or 1963.

Houses were also very badly heated too, and I can also remember waking up in the morning with ice on the inside of the window !!