I started with what we thought was a near perfect body but we found a handful of minor repairs needed that required more time but we are close to paint! This car was almost rust free but we found a small amount under where the rear spare tire is stored.

Also the previous owner just hacked the engine bay to route lines, etc. for the previous Chevy 350. We have since sealed up every hole that is not necessary making sure to spend the time to make it look like there were nevery any holes made.

To ensure no tire rub during hard racing with the much wider 245 size tires front/rear we "rolled" the fenders. We also did some subtle pulling of the rear fenders to increase the spacing just a tad. Nobody would ever notice it but it provides plenty of clearance. These Jaguars are build like a tank as most cars that modification would be easy but these required the chains of a frame rack to pull them cleanly.

We also noticed that the car must have had a minor front end accident as the grill was pushed slightly in which prevented the perfect spacing gaps for the hood. We had to use the puller again to pull the nose out just a small amount and now it fits perfectly

The entire undercarriage has been sanded down to bare metal and everything has a POR-15 protective coating with their Metal Prep as the base coat. This will make it rustproof. We are also painting the interior floor boards and trunk with a special Quiet coating which works much like Dyna-matt but in liquid form. We are going to repaint all of these areas back to the stock light blue metalic type of paint. We will paint the engine bay black as well as the trunk. Pretty soon we will start re-instlling the new GM aluminum block/head V8!

 

Looking good, please keep posting your progress.

What series are you going to race in?

 

Oooh, Yes !! I wished you lived down the road from me, it is very obvious you know how to do bodywork. I wish you the very best for your project, as a person who rebuilt a Mark 2 from a bare shell, and an XJ6 from almost that.

I was younger and fitter then !!!

 

While I am building this to be a performance car it is first and foremost a daily driven street car. I have no plans to race it other than possibly just autocross as I do not plan on outfitting the Jaguar with any roll bars. The goal is for this to be a reliable sedan with a comfortable interior outfitted with my mobile office that will look relatively stock on the outside yet have the hidden performance to smoke most other Euro sedans on the street. The car should get somewhere in the mid twenty miles per gallon yet with the 450-460 Horse Power, better suspension and wider tires I hope to smoke a BMW M5 or at least be a draw? Either way it should be the perfect commuter sedan to give me enjoyment and luxury...

 

Almost there, just a little more prep work on the bottom edges of the body, a little more smoothing of the welds at the motor mounts, and a few more minor areas and we will finally be ready to shoot her with paint. I am going to paint the entire interior with the liquid version of Dyna-matt and just finished the trunk which looks good.

FYI, those cheap mags wheels are just to roll the car around as I do not want my new rims to get any overspray, etc. The rear fenders came out great as they look stock yet that subtle pulling really increased the clearance which will make fitting the large 17" x 8.5" rims with 245 size tires easy.

 

How about a full length shot to show off the overall lines?

So this is sort of a British flavoured hot rod Lincoln then? (the two rear quarter shots)

 

Not a hotrod but a sleeper as there will very little from the exterior to enable anyone to think this is not just a stock Jaguar 3.8s. I'll probably post some new pics the end of this week. This lines of this 3.8s are stock as these modifications are so minor that the only things that one can see that is slightly different will be the front seats having head-rests and the car having a wider wheels/tires. Other than that when this is car completed it will look like a stock Jaguar but underneath this stock exterior will be enough horsepower and handling to put most stock performance sedans in my rear view mirror.

 

Here are shots from the first coats of paint, still a lot more painting to go but once a car recieves a coat of color it really starts to look like it is getting close to completion.

Plums - I think you can see the overall body, it is hard to get a shot as these Jaguar 3.8s's are a very long car. Anyway you can see if you compare this body to any stock body you really cannot see any noticable differences. Yet this Jaguar will be riding on 17" by 8.5" rims with 245 size tires and that kicks *** over the stock narrow 185's!

Still have to give more coats and the clear, and lastly painting the engine bay. Then color sanding, buffing so that everything looks clean and blended. Hopefully by next week all that will be done including new weatherstripping so we can start the hard work of putting all of the running gear back inside, and the last modification for front coil overs, rear "Watts Linkage", front Wilwood disc brakes, interior, etc. I pray we can get it on the street before the summer ends but it has to be complete as this will be my daily driver....

 

Finished the other exterior coats of paint, clear, and just painted the engine bay/trunk. Just a little more to do on the bottom sides, inner fender wells, painting the inside hood black, and then buffing the entire car's paint.

 

Well worth logging in, if only to follow this thread.

Thanks for the continuing updates.

Looking forward to the mechanical and trimming phases.

Great colour, don't know what you call it, but it really looks the part.

 

Translator, Once I take some pics after the car is buffed you should see that the color looks either the same or very close to the ones I listed here below which I believe was a factory color? I really do not care if it is a factory color or not, for me my car was that color and the quality of the body and paint was very good so I did not want to change the color or repaint it completely.

It might look like I painted the car completely but we are feathering in the paint to blend to match the roof, doors and upper fenders that did not need any body work. It was a toss up to paint it completely but this is a daily driver not a show car and I thought the old paint was still in good enough shape to blend rather than strip the whole exterior completely. My car also had the factory blue interior but I am changing that to a very light cream color to give it more contrast.

this is from Wikpedia listing it as factory opalescent silver blue paint which this and the links below seem pretty close to how my car will look like when finished.

SALOON Data - 1B78695BW - Jaguar, Daimler classic saloon (sedan) information, articles, photos and register
DANIEL SCHMITT & CO CLASSIC CAR GALLERY PRESENTS: 1960 JAGUAR MARK II 3.8 SALOON for Sale in St. Louis, Missouri
brucemc

 

Looking forward to the buffed pictures.

Not sure that after all this work I wouldn't have blown over the whole car, you will now be using different water based paint technologies that were not around in the 60's.

Do you have Sodium street lighting where you are, these show up blending like a biologically washed bra under UV at a disco. Not bad for the onlooker, but maybe not so good for the owner.

 

Translator, sure new paints are water based but we made sure NOT to use that type of paint and made sure to computer color match the existing paint. Here are some shots during the start of buffing and everything is looking nice. Not all of the car has been buffed yet but it clear to see that once it is all complete there will be no noticable issues to distinguish where the car was repainted versus the original paint.

Still have a lot more buffing then waxing to get the exterior paint done. Then we still have to paint the interior with the liquid version of Dynamatt and the front wheel wells but it is finally looking like a real car!

 

Well done so far. Will be keeping an eye on this one as it progresses ! The right exhaust system will define this as a sleeper or not

 

Yes, I am trying to set it up all stainless to prevent rust but also not get the typical performance muffler types that are too loud as we want it not to sound too crazy at idle and low speeds yet still free flow well but that is something much further down the road and I cannot wait to get to that point so I can start driving this Jag!

 

We just finished buffing the car, now we have to take the carpet out so we can paint the liquid dynamatt paint, finish putting the trim on and painting the front wheel wells.

 

It looks great. Bravo!!

Ho hum, there appears to be an interesting old truck in the background.

Do we get an added bonus as well?

 

That is my friends old Chevy truck...

Here are some shots of the engine bay. Previously the engine bay looked like Swiss cheese as it was riddled with holes. Also we had to cut a small section of the passanger firewall for the LS1. After the welding, grinding, POR-15 paint it now looks new and clean. The new engine mounts were welded and welds smoothed so it looks like it came factory.

Just removed all of the carpets so next week the interior will be painted with the liquid dynmatt type paint. Then the front wheel wells will get a heavy under carriage coating to hide any of the welds still slightly visible after the sanding/grinding. Then the installation of the glass and we can start with the long process of the interior, drive-train, and front suspension/rear Watts linkage.

 

just finished the painting of the interior floors with the sound reducing liquid version of Dynamatt. Now just need to pain the front wheel wells with undercoating, put on the hood trim, install a new front windshield rubber seal, and wash and wax the car. It never goes as fast as you hope but it is looking nice.... and I cannot wait to put the car back together and really drive the car hard!

 

next week the bumpers should be back from the chrome shop, a quick coating of undercoating for the front wheel wells and then we are done with the body work! The headlights will be replaced with Zenon HID lights.