So recently I posted about a 1989 VdP I bought recently. After jacking the car up to work on some rust in the floors I discovered that the radiator support panel was totally rusted through.
Unfortunately this panel in the 1989 car seems MUCH more complex than the similar panel in my MY94 car.
Here are a couple photos of the rusted out panel I removed from this car.
BTW, as far as I could tell the ONLY way to get to all of the bolts holding this panel into the car was to remove the radiator first.


view from front

view from rear

In looking at an older thread it seems this panel from the 1989 car might be the same as the panel from a MY90 - MY92 car and the part numbers might be CAC9699 or CCC2670

See the following thread on Jag-Lovers XJ40 forum where Bryan N had some good info about the panel:

XJ40 radiator support panel discussion thread from 2012

I pulled this rusted panel out of the car since I was afraid the radiator and AC condenser might fall out if this were driven any further in this state.
Unfortunately in doing this I might have damaged the radiator since the lower transmission cooler line retaining nut was totally frozen to the aluminum nipple sticking out of the left hand side of the radiator and my attempts at loosening this frozen nut seems to have resulted in damaging the trans-cooler inside the radiator (trans fluid started coming out of the lower radiator water connection).