I installed the 4 row radiator and the coolant filter and filled the cooling system with water after flushing out the remains of the thermo cure. I started the car and let it idle until the fans came on. And then the fans did something that I had not seen before. They actually turned off after a minute or so . This is great news because it means the cooling system is operating as it should. I gassed up the car and took it on a 50 mile drive on the freeway at speeds averaging about 70 miles an hour and the car performed flawlessly. When I got home I shut the car off and then turn the ignition on just to see how long the fans would run and they ran for maybe 5 to 10 seconds and shut off. Therefore, I deem the cooling system issues fixed. I feel so good having resolved these issues. It took a tremendous amount of work and I felt like I was chasing a lot of different problems. But at the end of the day, the problems got solved.

I'm going to drain the system and fill it up with water until the water stays clear. Then I will drain that again and fill it up with coolant and distilled water. Right now I'm using Rainwater.

the next problem I'd like to address is the charging system. If I drive the car on the freeway, or even on a highway, the charging system is in the normal range. If I sit at idle the charging system drops and I don't want it to do that. It has an alternator and I believe an external voltage regulator. What do you guys suggest I do to have A-Reliable strong charging system? I want the charging system to read normal at all engine speeds but I don't want to burn up the wiring or overdo the power going into the wires. I would like to drive this car up north so I can show my dad. My plan is to do it Saturday and Go part way and then finished the drive on Sunday. There are no existing pictures of the jaguar and my father together so I would like to make that happen. He is not in good health and is going to be 95 in June so the car has to get 420 miles to where my father is

 

The combined load of ignition, radiator fans and head light high beams is enough to use most of the capability of the alternator at idle. So expect the battery to drop to about 12 volts fairly quickly and that is as good as it gets. If you get much worse results, check all battery alternator and regulator connections. After that there is a process to check whether the alternator or regulator is at fault; my own experience is that the regulator fails quite often. If you pass this test but are not satisfied, an uprated alternator will do the trick. I have been using the original alternator for over 50 years and have never been stranded because of it.

 

The alternator seems to be charging better lately. Perhaps the extensive rain that we had weakened the charging system somehow. What I'm going to do is disconnect the battery and clean all the terminals in the charging system and see if that makes it more reliable.

I drove the car 94 miles today, just about all on the freeway and the car ran nice and cool. Temperature gauge stayed at about 40% of the white zone which is not even at the normal range. It's interesting because when I get off the freeway and drive around town, the gauge goes up about a needle width. It did the opposite before. I'm very pleased with the way the cooling system is running now. I will continue to drain the water and refill until it stays clear and then I will drain it one last time and fill it with an equal amount of distilled water and coolant.

Does anyone with a 1968 or later 2+2 car know if you can bleed the brakes by removing the two panels underneath the rear seat?

 

From memory: I changed the main brake pads as well as parking brake pads from back seat, but had to go under Car on rear jack-stands to bleed. ...Dirty... skinned knuckles and a few choice words. It is great to have helper refill reservoir as you are bleeding... other-wise you may introduce an air bubbles
Rgds
David

 

David... did you have to remove the shock absorber and spring on the rear suspension in order to have access to the bleeders or could you do it from underneath?

 

From Memory: No removals to get to bleed fitting, but may have heated and bent an old wrench to get the right angle.

 

Bleeding the rear brakes on my car was actually not that difficult. The rear bottom seat cushion pulls out and the pad above it plus the two outer rear seat belts unbolt and that exposes two rear panels. When you unscrew the panels the brakes are exposed. Jaguar should have made the panels about an inch wider because a regular spinner will fit on the brake bleeder but there's not enough room to loosen and tighten. I went to Harbor Freight and bought a set of spanners with built-in ratchets. The 3/8" size fit the brake bleeders.



With respect to the charging system, I replace the battery cables with new cables, and I cleaned all connections from the battery to the alternator and cover the connectors with Dielectric grease. The charging system still seems to be a little bit weak at idle with headlights on. Maybe the Motorola aftermarket voltage regulator can be tweaked a little bit.

 

I unscrewed the Motorola voltage regulator from the car and saw that it is not adjustable from the outside. A check the voltage at the B+ terminal of the alternator and compared it to the battery and it's very close, only about a two or three tenths of a volt drop. It seems that the alternator is at about 11.7 volts at idle but just off idle it raises up to normal. What would cause the alternator to be low at idle?

 

I think this is normal for a mid-60's design... Alternators idle at 2000 RPM and put out max-power at 6000 RPM ... battery covers shortfall during night "stop & go" idle driving with lights, heater blower, wipers, radio etc all needing power. Once you are cruising there is enough extra to recharge battery.
I bought my 68 S1.5 in 1989 and the PO had already upgraded it to one wire Motorola, so, I don't have actual experience with original Lucas unit.
Rgds
David
PS: there is a story that "Lucas" started the common practice of turning off headlights at intersections as you waited for your turn, as a " Gentleman's courtesy to his fellow Drivers " in reality he didn't want you to see the needle peg out to the left.

 

My father replaced the original alternator and voltage regulator sometime in the late sixties or early seventies. Can anyone identify the alternator?

 

It will be easier to identify if you show the back of the alternator where the leads connect

 

Ok. Ill get a picture when the rains quits.

By the way, I forgot to mention that all the cleaning I did of the charging system terminals and replacing the battery cables did benefit the charging system. Before I did that, the car voltmeter went to the C of CHARGE when I was driving. Now it goes to the H. The original problem of low charging at idle still exists.

 

I did some research on some of the old receipts in my father's records and determined that the alternator is a Motorola alternator. If I can read the tag on the top, I should be able to determine the output of the alternator. I should have gotten pictures yesterday when the weather was nice but I was replacing the rear differential oil.

while I was under the car, I noticed that the twin exhaust pipes that come from the center Mufflers to the rear Mufflers seem to be squashed from the factory. Is this done to increase ground clearance and clearance from striking anything above it? Is there any benefit to replacing these pipes with larger diameter pipes to increase the flow? Is there any modifications that can be done to the exhaust system which will improve the performance some but not necessarily make it that much louder?

is it beneficial to replace the starter motor with a lighter weight higher torque motor? I'm just starting to look at other improvements I can make to the car to make it more efficient. I'm considering replacing lights with LEDs also. Are there some efficient improvements that can be made to the headlights? I have the original Lucas units.

 

The beautiful weather here in Southern California allowed me to get some things done with the car. I drained the water and it actually looks pretty clear finally after the thermocure anti-rust treatment. I checked the clear Gano coolant filter that I installed in the upper radiator hose. It look kind of Cloudy so I remove the upper radiator hose and removed the coolant filter. It had a lot of dark bits in it and the sides were coated with rust.

It took a bit of work but I backflushed the filter to get all the bits out and I cleaned the rust coating on the inside of the filter so I could see through it. I use the Q-tip too try to clean down next to the filter but it would only go so far. I'm so pleased that I discovered this filter and used it because it clearly works. I think anyone with an older car that has ever had and unmaintained cooling system should have one of these in the system. It's cheap insurance.

The pictures below show some of the bits but it doesn't do it justice because there were a lot more bits in the filter but couldn't be seen in a picture. I would say I've driven the car somewhere around 200 miles since I installed the filter. I'll be curious to see if any more bits get knocked loose after another few hundred miles.

 

The alternator is a Motorola HA12N-850.

 

Check these out on:

1. E-bay and see if the mounting will match your current Motorola HA 12N 850 alternator. Pulley alignment is important also.

"Re-manufactured Alternator Generator 7140-9 for Replacement of 78A Delco"

2. Amazon:

NEW DELCO TYPE MOTOROLA REPLACEMENT ALTERNATOR FOR MANY MARINE APPLICATIONS 105 AMP Price:=13px $119.40

50 amps max, will always be marginal at Idle

Rgds
David

 

I was trying to accept that the charging system on the car was fine when driving but unacceptable at idle, but overall, barely acceptable. But after reading about alternator upgrades, I decided to pull the trigger and go with a more modern integrated system. There is a local alternator shop and I brought them my Motorola alternator. They found a Delco alternator that was similar in mounting and did a bit of customization so that the mounting would be exactly like the Motorola one that I have. It is 80 amps which seems pretty good for our cars. Anything more is just a waste for a factory E-Type. In retrospect I could probably have gone for a 60 or 65 amp alternator but I wanted a bit of cushion. The wire from my alternator to the battery looks like about 8 or 10 gauge which should be adequate.

I installed the alternator and got a slightly longer belt. After running the car, I was disappointed because it's still doing the same thing as the old alternator. At idle the charging system drops very low and then it goes High when the RPMs are above 2500. I did notice that it seems to be more solid when driving than the old system. In other words that seems just a little bit higher.

One possible answer is that the water pump belt is slipping causing the alternator belt to slip on the water pump pulley itself. I can rotate the water pump pulley by hand without the water pump to crankshaft pulley belt turning. There is a belt tensioner that holds the water pump to crankshaft pulley belt on. I believe this is different than the series 1 System. I suspect either the tensioner is bad or oil is getting on the belt and the pulleys from a leak in either the valve cover gasket or the timing chain cover gasket. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

Sounds like you've found the problem. It should not be easy to turn any of the pulley wheels driven by the belt. Has the belt been replaced ? Has the tensioner been checked ? How does the belt "feel" when you give it a waggle, reasonably tight or seems loose ?

 

I replace the belt last year so it's fairly fresh. I have not checked the tensioner but I'm not sure what I would do to check it. Clearly it applies tension to the Belt but the question is how much tension is it supposed to apply? Would a slightly smaller belt put more tension on the tensioner? The belt actually seems fairly tight but I also notice oil on the crankshaft pulley and that's where it's slipping. My thoughts are to take the front part of the engine off, meaning the alternator, the belts, and the brackets, and then clean everything up and see if I can get the belt to stay on there nice and tight. Again, wondering if a smaller belt would the tighter than a larger belt? Does the tensioner have an adjustment? My guess is probably not because it's probably just a spring.

 

I don't think the tensioner is adjustable, but the installation process may involve setting the belt to a specifed tightness with the tensioner "locked" in some way, then when its all set up, the tensioner is released. However, my Jaguar Mark 2 s never had a belt tensioner. Might be worth having a look here: -

Series 2 - Water pump belt replacement - The 'E' Type Forum