Cleaned up the surface with a wire brush to remove the oxidized old plastic. Applied rubberized putty. That's curing now, 48 hours it says on the tin.

Phil

 

That looks very well done. My past experience with degraded plastics is less
than stellar. If this works for you, I would be very interested in the patching
material used.

 

It's holding water so far.

Ace Hardware. $15

Longevity test begins today.

 

I have had my 01 VDP for 2 months. It drives so well and has almost no issues. I have A Garmin for nav and a backup back up camera. I had an oil change last month along with a break flush. My friend and his uncle kept this up.
back story, my friend lost his wife, he was selling a home in California and call me if I wanted it. I said yes and met him in CA. I put it in storage then shipped it to the Seattle area in March. I have all of the receipts going back to 01.
major fixes were done, always stored covered.
I have taken it to OR coast and north to Bellingham via Chuckanut Drive. Great ride.

 

Nice. Your friend gets a gold star on his chart. Questions: 1) what brand is the backup camera and 2) how is the signal sent to the front, wifi or direct wire. If by wire, how was it routed. Many thanks.

 

The backup is Garmin and uses WIFI.

 

Use cd changer line to forward signal straight to the radio (if you have it)

 

We installed engine from crashed 2001 xj8 into 1999 Vanden Plas. The install was pretty easy, THX to engine leveler.

I replaced chains, guides and tensioners (THX to Philip A) , rear main seal, trans input shaft seal, AC o rings, etc. (I feel very good about all that.)

Now I have drive shaft and a jillion things to reconnect and little space to work. I hope to turn the key by end of July.

THX for guidance and encouragement, Jeff xj8

 

Excellent progress! All I did today was change the tensioner pulley and accessory drive belt.

 

Changed my sub speaker, it works great. I had gone through two stock Alpine 6x9 subs but they were both fragile and I damaged the cone when trying to repair the surrounding foam so I installed a cheap Chinese sub speaker that was 4 ohms and soldered the inputs from the stock to the new single voice coil sub speaker connectors and it actually works pretty well. Total guess on which side was positive and negative but I seemed to have guessed correctly. Just gotta put the seats back in now!

 

Wow.....that is pretty amazing. How does it sound?

 

It sounds really good. I wouldn't mind even more bass but this is about as good as a new stock system I would guess

I read somewhere that it's a little less loud than the dual voice coil 6x9 alpine but I just turn up the subwoofer in the settings lol. Maybe a big sub speaker in the trunk will be in my future but it's not really necessary cuz it's a really decent system as is.


I didn't really take any photos unfortunately but the way I did it is kinda ghetto, we'll see how long it lasts lol.

 

Something I remember from playing with car stereos years ago.
Put a battery across the terminals, we normally used a 9v. If the cone moves up, away from the speaker frame & into the car, then you've got it the right way around.

 

Replaced the windshield wiper. Putting rainx seems to have helped the auto wiper but looking at it, does the sensor look like it's become unbonded from the glass?

It certainly looks like the sensor has shifted with relation to the plastic. I'm guessing that really needs to be correctly centered?

Phil

 

Phil, your rain sensor has cataracts. Likely replace the bonding pad and it should work good again.

 

Are those still available anywhere?

 

LJD3850AA

 

The engine swap odyssey continues.

Heat shields on CATs were a puzzle.

A clever, if I do say so myself, solution.

I used a ratchet strap to pull slip together exhaust unions together.

I'm getting close to turning the key, but keep finding more things that need to be figured out and connected up, radiator / hoses, power steering, AC dryer / lines.....

I'm stoked, Jeff xj8

 

It will run with the exhaust disconnected.

It's not quiet. Ask me how I know.

Don't forget the hard line that runs all the way around the throttle body base for the brake booster. It does not run well with that disconnected...

 

Well, "I" did not do it, but someone created a nice transformer video, where the XJ8 features as well: