Many, many thanks to Jim and his family for their hospitality getting my old bus rolling again - I'm sure that if the car was in that state anywhere else, even back at my place, the next stop would have been the auto wrecker. I saw the stub of that broken bolt and the balled up aluminum attached to it when I arrived back at his place Saturday morning - bloody miracle that bolt came out in one piece.

From the state of it and with it jammed in there so firmly I think drilling and easy-outing would have resulted in a snapped easy out lodged in the block. Fun.

Lots of folks would have given up on that stuck and broken bolt after so many no-go's, but Jim persevered and built it up enough to literally wrestle that sucker out of there. Of course the threads came out with it, so Jim re-tapped the block flange and put a helicoil in. Even though only the two lower bolts were corroded, Jim went the extra mile and tapped all four threads into the block and put inserts in all of them.

Putting a straightedge on those flanges, there was no way Jim was going to reinstall that water rail without truing up the mating surfaces.

Re-assembly without gaskets and draw filing the flanges on the engine block (both over 20thou out of true horizontally and vertically) may have been futile and almost guaranteed to leak again, but now, gasketed and trued, she's buttoned up again nice and snug and in Jim's words, the car is "drier than a popcorn fart".

So, disaster 100km from home turned into a positive experience after all. She's better than ever, new manifold gasket and even a gasket for the throttle body where no gasket lived before. The only drips under the car now are the drips from the ice-cold A/C.

..and boy, was I ever in need!

Thanks again Jim, you're the best!

Larry

 

Great job, Jim & Larry, and thank you for posting the great pictures for the benefit of the rest of us!

As far as I know, Jaguar never used a gasket between the throttle body and intake manifold. Is adding a gasket a modification to cure potential air leaks, or were the mating surfaces on yours scratched, making the gasket necessary?

Cheers,

Don

 

NO problem there (at the throttle body) Don, had the body off lots of times and never fitted a gasket before ..this time though, we were in "ultra seal" mode so we scotch-brited everything and went for a belt-and-suspenders approach, eliminating all possible unwanted 'ins' and 'outs'.

The manifold gasket was replaced of course and as we were ahead of schedule, thought may as well fit one at the other only metal to metal joint in the intake.

Larry