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New Member Area - Intro a MUSTNew to Jaguar Forums? Drop in and tell us about you, your ride and location. This is your chance to introduce yourself to the forum.
Hey everyone, I figured I'd join since I bought an XJS a couple months ago. It's an '86 V12 HE, that I'm going to be converting to use a Getrag 290 with the kit that SimplyPerformance sells and a Getrag 290 that's currently sitting in my living room. I'm broadly in southeastern Michigan. Since buying the car, I've read Kirby Palm's book pretty much cover to cover, and talked with Ben Thompson at SimplyPerformance and (briefly) with Roger Bywater at AJ6 Engineering as I work on resolving the issues it has.
The good news of the car is that the engine runs beautifully, and it's had a new radiator put in recently. The paint and exterior are in beautiful shape, and the interior is in pretty good shape aside from some of the stitching starting to let go on the seats. It's really in beautiful shape for a 125,000 mile car. I changed out the injector rail hoses and de-greased/re-oiled the distributor flyweights when I got the car, as well. It drives beautifully, stops decently well once I flushed and bled the brakes, and the engine just sings. It's a joy to drive, be it at 12mph or 125mph. Not that I would exceed the speed limit, of course.
The downside is that the TH400 croaked right around when I ordered the Getrag 290, so the car is more or less dead in the water until I can get the manual in, which isn't going to be until the spring. Also, the windshield wipers and air conditioning aren't working, and there's a couple holes in the forward muffler and the cat-to-muffler pipe. The handbrake linkage is disconnected, and the rear brake pads are pretty much shot and I haven't been able to figure out how to change them without a lift. Oh, and because it's an '86 XJS, the battery is dead from parasitic drain since I can't drive it because of the gearbox failure.
Once I finish the five-speed swap (and doing the rear pads and reconnecting the handbrake when it's on the lift, and installing a battery disconnect switch so I don't have to deal with the parasitic drain), the next big projects will be fixing the wipers, AC, and seat stitching, then performance upgrades -- swapping the throttle bodies and air boxes for the performance ones offered by AJ6, installing one of his stainless exhausts that ditches the reverse flow mufflers, and moving to one of his S.E. ECUs. I'm also planning on trying to find some 1990s 16x7" wheels to put some decent tires on, and eventually moving to a slightly higher performance brake pad than I have now.
New member, 86 XJS V12 HE ongoing manual swap
