Hi All,

For those of you who haven't met me, my name is Jason Griffith, and I am the Engineering Director at Nameless Performance, one of the vendors here on JaguarForums.com. We develop a wide variety of performance parts for street cars and race cars, primarily for European and Japanese vehicles.

About four months ago a customer came to us to purchase a set of our high flow catalyst downpipes for his XJR and mentioned that he had been participating in a number of track days and HPDE events with the car and was looking for some other track oriented products to benefit his lap times. We took on the challenge, speeding up development of a prototype front mount heat exchanger for the XJR & XKR.

The wish list that our customer had for his car was a mile long, and unfortunately at the time we either didn't have the parts cross reference verified from the XKR to XJR or we didn't have access to an XJR (or the time to take one on) for taking measurements and developing fixtures.

That has changed. Next week we will have a 2000 Jaguar XJR in our shop, and we will also be getting the front and rear suspension out of our other local customer's 2000 XKR. We have some lofty goals in mind. Hopefully our timescale will cooperate with our ambition.

What I'm here to ask from you, is this: While we have these items available to us, what kinds of parts might you be interested in having us design? Some of these things are as easy as taking some quick measurements with our 6 axis digitizing arm and we get the CAD data we need to develop prototypes in the future...so the sky is the limit here.

So far here are our goals in order of priority:

1. Catback and 'back-half' exhaust systems with configurable center section.

2. Intercooler Upgrade Bracket Finalization.

3. Test Fit Braided Brake Lines

4. Intake Pipe Designed and Test Fit

5. Lowering coil springs & adjustable shocks.

6. Ride height adjustable coilover kit with adjustable camber plates and in-cabin digital damping adjustment.

7. Front and rear sway bar upgrades with upgraded urethane and optional spherical bearing endlinks.

8. Urethane Bushing Kits

9.



Go ahead and add to the list in your replies! No need to keep it to performance parts either, you want a fix for the shallow cupholders? We can work on those types of things also.

If you haven't seen our work before, here's a post over in the XF forum showing some of our manufacturing capabilities: Introducing Nameless Performance, Inc.

Thanks for your help! We're eager to get our catalog of XJ parts updated!

 

you might make some good doe off of this one :-) we do seem to spend lots on our Jags...i'd like to see
- better cup holders
- slike and discreet mechanical temp gauge (maybe moutned in the change holder to the left of the steering wheel...where you only need to glance at it every now and then
7. Front and rear sway bar upgrades with upgraded urethane and optional spherical bearing endlinks.
4. Intake Pipe Designed and Test Fit
8. Urethane Bushing Kits

 

I'll take a look at the cup holders and see what I can come up with.

By mechanical temp gauge, you just mean an analog gauge, correct? Not necessarily one that uses a mechanical sender. We would prefer to use an electric sender for ease of routing and cleanliness. Of course, I have another possible idea as well along those lines to provide a multigauge of sorts including wideband air fuel ratio readings.

Jason

 

convertible frame stiffening improvements?...the X-brace underneath surely can be improved

 

hey nameless...no i meant one where the coolant comes to the gauge...like the temp gauge we have i'd like to be able to doublecheck any gauge that is electric...

 

I would suggest putting a gauge in where the analog clock is. Most people generally wear wrist watches, anyway.

 

I'd love a digital 'multi-gauge' where the analog clock is to make up for those missing in my XJ - selectable for oil pressure, coolant temp (with sender somewhere other than the poor OEM location) and volt meter come to mind initially.

Something like this:

http://tunertools.com/proddetail.asp?prod=PLX-DM-100

 

Do you know if it is the same brace on the XK8 & the XKR? We could most likely do that quite easily. I was working on a rear subframe brace that tied the transmission/driveshaft tunnel shear panel into the mount points on the rear subframe when Jonathan's 2004 was here in our shop. From my cursory evaluation of the various floor pan and subframe designs, these cars really look spectacular in the suspension and subframe department, but the connection to the chassis appears to be a point of potential improvement.

Jason

 

So the multigauge solution sounds like a popular option. We had been discussing making our own OBDII logger and heads up display for a little while now and we have the engineering resources to pull it off. But for now I think I'll just investigate using an off the shelf unit and building a nice black anodized adapter to house it into a factory appropriate location.

I'll snoop through Dan's XKR this weekend also and see what I can find in it while I drink beer and watch him slave over pulling his rear suspension.

Kidding. I'll be helping in the tough spots that require the 10lb BanHammer.

Talk to you all soon. I'm calling it a night.

Jason

 

How many convertible XJ's have you seen?

(I know, you're probably talking about the XK's)

 

Yah, busted...you caught me putting my wish list item in the R&D thread...but I didn't see one in the xk8 area...so tossed it in here.

Jason, this is what the parts list is showing...looks to be different. If I can help, let me know (measurements, etc)

 

I would love number 5 or 6 on your list. I do not want lowering springs though as I think the height is already perfect, any lower and I would be scraping curbs, etc. I actually have a VDP and not XJR though. Anything you make that would update my car w/ better newer technology is a definite purchase for me!!

 

Bigger brakes and a limited slip diff would benefit the XJ/R's. Then more power!

Maybe add the Quaife diff pack conversion, and a powersteering on/off switch.
Big brake kits your side of the pond? who makes good brakes? Willwood? Tilton?

Jason, what's the story on the intake pipe?

 

>Lowering coil springs & adjustable shocks.

This would be my top priority.

>Front and rear sway bar upgrades with upgraded urethane and optional spherical bearing endlinks.

Combined with this.

Choosing spring and bar rates is easy, but developing the dampers is costly work.

Add some decent tyres and brake pads into the mix and you're laughing.

Standard brakes are plenty sizeable enough but lack feel due to the flexible pedalbox/bulkhead. Bracing this would do wonders for confidence.



The rest of the items on the list won't do much for lap times. I wouldn't go near polyurethane bushes on the Jag personally - the geometry goes to pot due to body roll, not bush misalignment.

 

I vote for the chassis reinforcement bar set; the springs/dampers seem suffecient, but there seems to be a lot of scuttle shake in my 1999 XJR.

Questions:
1) Will you ship to Toronto, Ontario, Canada?
2) Price range for the set?
3) Group buy options?
4) Material: aluminum, poweder-coated steel?