Now, this is going to be a bit of a marmite / vegemite (if you're Down Under) thread

To put this in context: 12 months ago, my son is 16 –

His Headteacher (High School Principal) had asked him to come up with an idea for an engineering competition…

So, he took a 1939 Lanchester LD11 chassis, chopped the tail off (someone had stuck a horrible bit of 4” x 2” box in to try and mount an IRS) & grafted in a completely new ’Z’ section to take an LSD IRS from a 69 Opus 10 second drag car.

Next he stuck a transverse spring, 1953 Pop front end from the same car on & converted it to discs. He designed and built an ali skinned body based loosely on a 29 Ford Tudor Sedan Delivery & added in electro-mechanical gull-wing doors & hand controls so it could be driven by a paraplegic driver (there is currently NO pedal box at all!).

Oh yes, then he nailed a Lexus LS400 and autobox up at the sharp end.
All the above was done in 3 months around full-time school!

I kid you not...

It was actually driven for the first time last summer by John Harris, a 70 year old 5x Paralympian & medal winner – he’d never driven a Hot Rod AND never driven on a Drag Strip before this. In his opinion, it was as much fun as winning a Gold Medal!

Now, you might ask, what the heck does this…





have to do with a Jaguar forum?

Well... he decided that 8 cylinders & 752Kg (1651Lbs) wasn't enough!

Teaser... with a borrowed pic
:icon_ razz:
Hope you like the idea...

 

Bloody hell, Vegemite all round.

WELL DONE.

When I read the LS400 bit, I screamed NOOOOOOOO, it has to be a V12, no discussion.

 

Your Son is one talented guy. Congratulations

 

Thanks for the interest, chaps! If you'd like to peruse the original build, it can be found here (hope this link is OK Mods):

5 Teenagers, 5 Months and a School Project, what could possibly go wrong?

One of the first things Rogan discovered was that not everyone who claims to be your friend really is one... Rogan was initially too trusting but the team eventually dropped to 3 (one of whom was only around for the PR...) whilst Jordan stepped up to offer support in the final few days of the build - as real mates do!

I'm glad I'm old!

Anyway, on to the 'teaser-motor'...

As 8 cylinders was never going to be enough, a replacement 60,000 mile engine & box were sourced a few weeks ago & the weight loss programme began.

All possible orifices were duck-taped and sealed & a bucket of degreaser was liberally applied to the motor. I'm sure the external lubrication system (cam cover gaskets) used by Jaguar is designed to keep as many of the external bit as corrosion-free as possible! It seemed that about 15Kg of muck was removed at the 1st power wash!

Yuk!
And now a little cleaner...

On to the diet...

 

Woweee! Did generous swabs of Marmite aka Vegemite spur the kids on ??? I kinda like the stuff and indulge from time to time. But, no results anywhere near that.


My compliments to your boy and his pals. More than well done.


Considering your nanny state law, as in MOT, can it be licensed and street driven?
And, moreso, in view of limiting insurance policies, can it be insured???


Here in CA, with a lot of nannyism, it just might be possible to register. Insurance,
might be more difficult, but possible.


Is it not merely a slightly updated 39 Lanchester saloon? For the DMV and insurer!!!


Carl

 

Carl,
You must have too much time on your hands if you've read it already!!!

But seriously; at 15, Rogan had bought the LD11 body and chassis with the intention of nailing a spare 318 / 727 combo up front. The body had been badly roof chopped already about 30 years ago. When we got in touch with the Lanchester Owners Club the initial response from the LD11 registrar was positive... he then passed it on to the 'Dating Chappie'

This was not a "good thing".

Considering we have EVERY data plate/chassis plate for the car and can even prove it's precise build date (AND the registrar had even suggested we build a Roadster from the body!) you'd have thought this would be fairly simple. NOPE. He went absolutely spare! "IT HAD BEEN MODIFIED!!!" Sacrilege! "You will never have that monstrosity on the road, as I live and breathe!"

Anyway, we now have a load of incredibly rare spares which would help someone doing a full-on restoration just sitting in the shed. What we'd hoped to do was get another Lanchester badge out there and on the road whilst offering all the parts we couldn't use to the Club. Sadly, with their attitude, I don't know if I can even be bothered to offer them over here

Ok. Back on track...

Right now the car is resting up in Coventry Transport Museum in the Hot Rods & Kool Kustoms Exhibition while he works on the new engine for it.

New Exhibition: Hot Rods & Kool Kustoms - Coventry Transport Museum

Attitude Adjustment, as the car is known is now going to have a 1978 5.3 V12 installed - originally this was to have a 'stock' V12 carb conversion from injection. More weight loss! Ditch this lot...



And add this instead!

Just ‘cos he likes carbs – plus a new Opus replacement ignition system.

However... in typical 17 year old fashion, he's decided to be different! After buying the carb setup, he pulled the complete injection setup off, ready to simply install the stock early intakes.

THEN I SHOWED HIM A CLIP ON YOUTUBE (Thanks Martin - oops!)


:icon _clapclap:

 

Ok Folks,

A quick shout out for help & advice!

Below is a pic of the back half of the LH cylinder head showing one of the the intake flange mounts on the head (blocked off with lint free cloth) .

When the modifications are to be done to the intake runners (I'll explain later), the hole marked with the white stick will be exposed (there are 12 of them, 1 for each intake flange).

At the moment each was covered by the protrusion on the intake runner & sealed by the gasket.
Having checked all 12 of them, they are of differing depths and show varying amounts of slightly oily 'crud'.

The curved intake runner flanges will have to be trimmed as they are being chopped up and swapped around (RH front to LH rear etc...) & the 'bulges' which originally covered the holes have to be cut off for clearance, so the holes will be exposed.

1. What is this hole actually for?
2. Can the holes be blocked off (i.e.: tapped and sealed with a machine screw or a self tapping screw)?

Many thanks in advance

 

OK,

Hopefully the following will clarify what needs to be done.

Rogan's just had a message from a friend:

"Federal (American) cars run a thermactor pump which blows air into the combustion chamber on the exhaust stroke to reduce Nox emissions. It does nothing for performance and is not required on UK cars so the standard UK manifold blocks off these little holes...
Hopefully the feet of the manifolds should block them, otherwise just tap them out and bang in a grub screw".

So, it looks like I'll be tapping these out...

Thanks Pete!

 

WOW, nice going to your son and mates, that looks awesome. A lot of parts in the US a car like that is also known as a Rat Rod. Again congratulations to your son and I am sure your proud of him

 

Thanks for the comments; just glad my ramblings are loosely of interest...

Too shiny to be a Rat!

Just picture this though... National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham; Day one of the STEM Competition last year. The Rod is physically too big to fit in the 2m x 1.5m allocated exhibit space (despite given the organisers ALL the dimensions). It gets moved.

Into the row of 'Eco-exhibits'!

Placed opposite a design for an 'eco-pod classroom' a 1/4 scale electric buggy prototype and various pieces of eco research, one of the teachers from the 'pod' school came over and asked Rogan what such a big, horrible car was doing in "their" area?

He smiled and pointed out that, apart from the braking system and windshield (which met all European safety standards), EVERY component was re-used or recycled, including the 300HP engine; also that the car had been built by hand, avoiding the massive pollution impact of purchasing a new factory-built car!

Teacher from the other school went off 'huffing & puffing'. She was speechless!

Priceless. :icon_imnotwor thy:

BACK TO BECOMING MORE JAG...

Back a step as we’re getting out of sequence a bit..

A few weeks ago, we’d been given a (new to us) old Chinese DC TIG set with a busted torch. We were told it 'should be ok with a new torch', but at free it was cheap enough to give it a go!

Rogan having only ever used my very old (1978) Cebora MIG, this new stuff was going to be ‘interesting’.


New torch sourced; Argon added to contract; now he needed some practice.

His first job was to start on the exhaust pipes for the engine. Phil at AB Stainless in Hereford had given Rogan an 8' 'offcut' of pipe and a dozen bends for him to have a play with, so off he went:





This is genuinely what he did the first time that he picked up the torch. Freehand, no filler; in 4x 1/4 rotational passes.





12x stainless elbows to 12x stainless pipes later & he’s currently waiting for the individual exhaust port flanges to be laser-cut so he can TIG them on at the right angle to give 12x individual stubs kicking up and back at about 45 degrees (Hmmmm, maybe NOT FOR ROAD USE!!!!).

 

Yeah, weather has been lousy, I'm getting rid of a bad head cold. Add in cabin fever, and as such I devour all reading material paper or on screen.


But, not to detract from Rogan and his pals work. Absolutely fabulous. I appreciate that.


I've a son with tremendous talents in the field. Three tales follow:


1. Early on, he invested a lot of money for a slightly used Lincoln TIG. State of the art at the time and really big. Taught himself to use it to the point that an professional welder offered him a job. One of my projects involved serious cutting and reforming the frame from Model A Ford. I did the cuts and bolted and tack welded the members in place. I also cut and ground the reinforcement plates to size. Tom took it to his shop aboard his car trailer. It came back neatly stitched in perfect alignment.


2. While still living here and barely over 18, he decided to scratch build a T Bucket roadster pickup. The power plant was a much heated up 460 Ford. A big feature was no radiator up front. Two astern one cooled by an E fan and the other by road air. Well, to get a plate it had to go to the Highway Patrol for a rudimentary inspection and numbers stamped in to the frame. It went aboard his car trailer. The young CHIPS admired it. A grizzled motorcycle cop opined that when he saw it on the roads he would paper it with mechanical deficiency tickets !!! A Young CHIP opined, "yeah, sure, if you can catch it"!!! It was well capable of 140 MPH ands more.
Oh, me!!!


3. Now, approaching 60, he ahs turned to modernizing older CNC mills to electronic controls. Three now doing production of alloy and plastic products for on line sales.
Clamp in the material. Select the program on the laptop. Fire it up, It mills out the product. EFi and carb spacers, alternator brackets and the like.


Oh, and an alloy lower control arm for the T' in a much updated form.


Carl

 

JagCad,
Puts our attempts into perspective..

A quick update:

OK, Rogan’s now sourced a set of extra injection intake manifolds & is chopping them about to make a dual-quad intake using a pair of Edelbrock 4-barrel, vacuum secondary carbs (he prefers Edelbrock to Holley).
Oh yes, he’s only just picked up an AC/DC TIG set for the first time last week…

Collected the Intake “kit” last night

on the way up to a small car meet in Stourbridge - daft thing is, it was a 'local' meet & we still did nearly 150 miles by the time we'd arrived back home



Original manifolds being chopped and reversed.Obviously we'll have some parts (deliberately) left over now...


They’ll then be mounted on the engine & cut back to take 8” x 6” plenum chambers which will have the original runners grafted in. Once they’re welded and die-ground out, the tops will be welded on.
Plenum chamber base boxes made. This is Rogan's second attempt at Ali TIG.


Each box took about 2 hours to weld inside and out; they've been water tested & don't leak, so we should be OK
You know, once the intake manifolds are removed, the Jaguar is a very neat, narrow engine. This pic gives you an idea of how the intakes will run:

 

Better angle, this really shows just how narrow the V12 really is.

The base of the carb will sit about 3" above the top of the intake pipes.

By the way, can anyone explain why the water crossover pipe on this engine has no filler neck? I'm thinking we'll have to make one as this will be the highest point in the cooling system (radiator will be in the back of the vehicle).

Rogan's pal Darren has a machine shop with a Laser Cutter; so, in the future, we'll probably play around with a long-tube 'Tunnel Ram' style of intake (made in stainless) to see how that affects power (would be interesting to compare power/revs correlation between the (necessarily) short runners above & a long-tube setup.

As the car is being rebuilt for 1/4 mile use specifically to give paraplegic drivers a genuine experience on track, the practicalities of being able to see around the intakes is less of an issue

 

Whew, indeed there is commonality, all across!!


1. The TIG welds are super, whether by Tom, my son, or Rogan, yours!!!


2. Tom's T is powered by a Ford much modified 460 CI. Tunnel ram with two four barrel carbs atop.


3. Tom's T has no radiator up front. But, two astern. One horizontal in the "truck" bed with E fan for air. The other vertical arears, relying on road air.


When fired, It is like ground asking thunder !!!


Carl

 

Thanks for the compliments, Carl. Have passed them on to Rogan - he blushed!

Apologies for going quiet for a bit; packing and sorting for our trip... fly out tomorrow.

Yippee!

Will post relevant pics as we find stuff for the engine.

BTW, Darren Hardy down at Unit Engineering in Kent has just sent up the stainless exhaust flanges. Having asked for them in 8mm, he sent them up in 10mm as he had some spare - thanks mate!

Looking at sorting mark 2 intakes before mark 1's are finished... will explain when we get back.

Cheers

 

I know many people believe that young people learn new skills faster than older folks, but despite not being a welder myself I like to believe I can appreciate good quality welding.

All I can say about the photos of young Rogan's first TIG welding attempts are Wow that looks great!

Seriously I have seen professionally manufactured items with welds that had far inferior appearance.