This is mounted right where the transmission has to be filled and fluid level checked, simple idea and I do like simple things most of the time. I put it down to my prehistoric upbringing, and it is also where we change from Jaguar to Ford. For my next trick, I needed to get the shift cable extended a little as the mount for the Ford was a bit further away from the selector arm. For this little job I fond a couple of 50mm coupler as they seem to be called. They were 50mm long with an M6 thread, mem being me decided to get about 6 of them in case I needed any more later on. Then put a length of M6 all thread, and placed the Jaguar swivel on the end, now it is adjustable as well. sometimes I manage to surprise myself.

 

After a bit of mucking around trying to get ther right place to drill and mount the cable, I hooked up one of the shifters I have in my shed and checked it all to see it was doing what it was suppose to do. So I started off with selecting Park, then into Reverse, after a bit of a tweek I got that to sit where it needed to be.

 

After that was done I moved it down to Drive to make certain it was going to do the sideshift to allow a manual selected shift to at least 2nd gear, I have no idea why Jaguar did not go that extra click to enable 1st gear to be selected. Anyway I cycled it through all the gears several times and it all seemed to be working as it should, so I was more than happy with the results.

 

Now I have finally got around to doing the transmission and the selector. I also have to wait for the extension housing gasket and seal, and it appears to have a bush for the driveshaft to be held in place during operations, I will probably forget to take any pictures as I will forget where i was, and I am pretty sure everyone knows what that is all about. My next job is addressing the front frame rails as they needed to be altered to allow a good fit of the engine bay components, get them all welded together and repaint under the bonnet, and re lay the heatshielding on the lower section near the exhaust, but you will see what I mean when I get there.

 

Well things are going a little scattered right now, I have decided to rebuild the engine completely, and so I am going to dress it up a little. I am going to smooth out most of the casting lines and give it a nice clean look, and occasionally I will be also doing a bit under the bonnet, so things might seem a bit mixed up, because that is how it is coming along for the moment. First of all is the clean up of the engine before I send it to the machine shop for the final work is done.

I will be working on the cylinder heads for now, and when they are done the block should be ready to be machined. I am not going to make this engine a high performance engine, just something a tad better than stock, the heads as I have already pointed out are GT40P heads, they look very much like the normal heads but I have noticed a size difference in the ports. I have read that they should have double valve springs where mine only have a single spring, I will need to find out for sure before I go ordering a heap of parts I may not need.

Once these are done, the engine will hopefully have a bit more kick than standard, but not enough to go racing, I am getting too old for those games nowdays. The extra capacity oil pan is mainly because I will be using a high volume oil pump, which is not recomended if you are using a stock oil pan.

 

The next thing I am going to be doing is changing the front chassis rail, or at least that is what I would call it. Some of the parts on the engine, Mainly the air conditioner pump are only about 15mm of clearance and according to the engineer everything under there needs to have at least 25mm, or enough to easily slide your index finger between.

I will be using 2 pieces of RHS stacked on top of each other to give a bit of strength, and that fits just nicely into the part I have cut away to make the modifications. It will also need a bit of trimming as it goes into the radiator supports. This is partly because the top piece will have a peak as it comes into the radiator support. These RHS parts are 40mm square sections and there is only a bit under 1mm clearance when they have been stacked. I will also make the peak right up front so it all has plenty of support.

This will get a whole lot more snug when it all goes into place. That is all I have for today, I will not be able to make any progress tomorrow because I have another appointment to attend, but I am sure I will have something else by Monday.

 

A rather miserable day today, and things were not going quite as planned. So rather than get short tempered I opted to get out of the shed and grumble away to myself. The thing I did do was get some of the subframe done in order to see how it would look, and it didn't look too bad to me at least. After welding the RHS into place, I bashed the relay mount flat at the bottom to give it a way of being mounted not too far away from where it was.


I had to move the relay holder away from where it was because the radiator was too wide to leave it there. I only needed to move it about 100mm rearwards to make room for the radiator, it is just clamped there for now just to make sure I didn't foul anything else up, and it appears that I will need to make a small brace to go into the rear as well to give it a bit more rigitity.
As you look at the next picture you will notice I have a little bit of room to put a small brace at the bottom without actually getting in the way of anything. I was going to cut a few other parts for this little job, but like I mentioned earlier, things are not playing nice today.

 

Hello everyone. Today is a fairly slow day, but when you are grinding it usually is. (At least for me anyway.) and finding things may not have been given the care they deserved is a little disheartening I have decided to tear the engine down and prep it for machine work. So to start things off it will focus a bit on tearing it down and showing how much care was not really there.

I was not aware of the cylinder number marked as it was not clearly visable, however I did notice that the next one should have been number 2. and this certainly did not look nike the number 2 to me. It turns out that only cylinders 1 and 8 were where they should have been.

So I decided to write down the cylinder numbers so you can see what a mess it was. Fortunately I am going to probably need a rebore and new pistons, so I can put the rods back in the order they should have been. The other thing that was quite re-assuring was the pistons all seem to be the original pistons, inside the pistons was the Ford logo and the letter "S" . This I am assuming is the mark of standard size, on the other side it had the brand of TRW. I never took a pic of that bit.

Not a very good picture but I think you can see what I was looking at. I also thought the pistons didn't look that bad, however the cylinder walls had some scratches in them so I am going to guess it will need a rebore after all so it will still need new pistons.

With the pistons all removed and set aside to be sent to the machine shop, I started on the mains bearings. greatful to see they were where they should have been, even though I would imagine that only 2 and 4 might have a chance of getting mixed up. The mains bearings were in pretty bad shape, needing to be replaced at best, however the journals were not so lucky this time, so again I think it will need a regrind and polish.

I removed the freeze plugs and found the water jacket was fairly clean. I am still getting it all hot tanked and new cam bearings fitted, just to make sure all the oil lines are clear of any obstruction. Pretty sure the engine will outlast me. (Not quite the rev head I once was.)

As you can see in this shot I have started tosmooth away the casting lines and some of the lumps on the sides of the block. In the shot above you will see one of those protrusions that I am going to get rid of. You will see what I mean in the next shot.

Then it will be time to clean up a couple of other areas before I start on the oil passages that allow the oil to drain back to the oil pan.

This is only the start, and this is really burning time. but I don't have much else to do right now.


That will do me for one day, I will continue ironing all the wrinkles out. I have also got to prep the cylinder heads I will be using as they have a bit of muck in the water jacket.

The cylinder heads will also get a bit of a clean up as well. I am hoping they look good in green, all the alloy will be in gold where possible.

 

Hello everyone, today I was quite busy with all the grinding I am doing on my block and heads I took a break for a while and made these up. Theyare made from 100mm x 3mm cut from a sheet, then shaped and bent to give me the shape I am looking for. These are to go on the outside of the front chassis rails I have shown you earlier on, these will give the area a lot more strength than it had originally and hopefully make it look a little tidier.


Once these are in place I think I will need to remove the K frame from the car to ensure it will all fit into the places I am planning on. I will need to re assemble the front suspension so I can move the car into position the replace the engine to make sure all that goes where it should as well.

These are the sections that you see cut at a 45 degree angle as it makes it way to the front, and then the next picture will show you the section that will secure it at the front.


You will see when it all gets done, sometimes my explanations can cause more confussion than showing any picture could.

 

 

Things will be short and sweet for a while. I had to abandon the large sump for something like the orignal size as the room is getting a bit tight. The dipstick mount was originally fitted and secured by 4 rivets, so I drilled them out,tapped a thread into it and now it is a bolt in unit.

The original sump was fairly beat up so it wouldn't do it any harm putting a new one in its place. I took the measurements from the old oil pan, used aircraft gasket goo. My Father used it all the time, so I figured it must be good stuff. Because I am using an oil temp guage now I also need to weld a new collar for the sender to be screwed in.

The engine is being cleaned up a little, going for a fairly clean look.

Then clean out a couple of oil passages to allow the drain back to be a little better, this is not a performance engine. I am doing these things for fun as I wait for the other parts to arrive.

Some of them are to guide the oil into other areas with a little more efficiency. This one will go to the cam plate.


And the next one to the distributer shaft and oil pump drive. Try not to get too concerned about the dust getting everywhere, it will all be cleaned out before it gets machined, I don't think it wise if I had it all machined then started grinding. As soon as I can get the block and crankshaft ready and start preparing it for paint, well the crank is already waiting. This grinding is taking a little more time than I expected, but I have started now, so pretty well committed.

That will be it for now.

 

I realise this has been a while, sadly my engine block has not been done yet, so progress has been even slower than normal. I done a phone around trying to get someone to fit my windscreen and other windows that are glued into place. The 2 side windows on the rear pillar are still glued to the stainless frame and don’t need any clips or moldings to be added to them. The Windscreen and rear window however are posing a problem, I am told they have some hard to find metal clips for the trim. This may have been the case when they were made, however I think they have been altered because none of the 3 cars I had had any such clips.


More like a rubber mold that covered the outside edge of the glass and straddled across to the bodywork. So I set out in seach of anything that resembled such a rubber cover strip, for a while the widest I could find was 18mm which was too narrow for my needs. I eventually found some that were 25mm wide and they looked like they may do the trick, so I cut a few small pieces of th see if they would in fact do what I hoped they would. So with the help of my darling wife we put the window in place with the small pieces on different places, and I am happy to say they appear to be just what I needed.


Here is an example of the rubber strips pieces in the test locations to see how much overlap I would have if I used it for the fitting of the rear window. The gaps on each side were quite good and done really well in covering the gap between the glass and bodywork.


This was the gap on either side of the window, and as I said I was pleased with how it went. Because this was only a test fit, I did not have any packers to sit on the bottom of the window and so the gap at the bottom was very small while tha top was quite large. The next picture will show you how the gap was at the bottom of the window.

Then on the next picture you can see the rather large gap at the top of the window.


While you may not be able to see the edge of the glass, take a careful look at the rubber at the top and you will see that it has made the bridge, but only just. I will get some packers and put them in place later on and this will tell me how much I need to lift the glass to make it all look like it should. That will do me for now, I am also working on the door panels inside, and I am not sure how they will look just yet. The armrest and pockets are in a pretty bad shape when you are up close, so I am considering covering them with a velvet type of upholstery fabric in a Jaguar skin pattern for these 2 parts. I have only sewn the armrest for now, and the piping i am thinking of using, as you can see I have not glued any of it in place yet. I have also got to put some wadding under the fabric to give it a bit of a cushioned look.



This is on my drivers side looking at the top section. I also replaced the speakers in the doors and so you cannot see where the grills will be just yet, they are the original grilles, and the switches for the windows will all be sent away to get an inspection and repaired if needed.


If I decide to go ahead with this idea, I will also do the rear doors as well. There will be no need to bore you all to death with with any pictures of the instrument panel, but it also being sent to be checked and if needed will be repaired.

 

Things are going very slowly for the moment. The company I was working for has gone into administration, Making funds rather tight for the moment. However some packages have arrived and so another little bit of progress can be seen.


This my new crankshaft where I am stroking the engine to a different size. It was a 302ci engine and it needed some new parts to refresh everything. This crankshaft will take it to 347ci, with the aid of some new conrods and pistons. The pistons were given to the machine shop to do the final hone to match the pistons. I have decided to use scat crankshaft and connecting rods, and using Mahle bearings to hold it together.


I have also used a scat harmonic balancer to hopefully stop it all vibrating to bits, and needed a new flex plate so it could all be dynamically balanced.


Not really able to show you the pistons as I was in a hurry to get the engine block back home, hopefully at the end of next week I am told. So I can only show you the box, but I had to get everything out and dry them all and spray some WD40 to try and stop the rust from setting in as the boxes were all soaking wet and falling apart.




This is the bottom of the crankshaft box, the brown cardboard was falling away from the out side and you can see the wet line, but I fortunately was able to get it all dried and some rust prevention put on everything.

Because I am back to waiting to see the engine block again, things have quickly ground to a halt. The counterweights on the balancer and flex plate on this engine is now 28oz as opposed to the 50oz when it was the 302.

 

Well we have all seen how dirty an engine can get, and with a lot of frustration I finally got my block back again from the machine shop. So I am slowly putting it all back together now, and hopefully soon it will look like an engine again. The item you see in the number 1 position is a piston ring square, it alloys me to sit the rings at a prescribed depth and measure the gaps needed for each ring.

I figured the first job to get out of the way is to squirt some engine primer onto it and then paint it what they called Ford green, not sure about the green so much, anyway it doesn’t look awful to say the least with my eyes anyway. the next thing I need to do is put the crankshaft into place. So grab the mains bearings and fit the upper bearing halves in place, with the engine inverted the upper bearings will appear to be the lower, so I have gone completely mad, not yet (I hope).



I was told by a few people that fitting the 1 piece rear oil seal is best don before bolting the other half of the bearings, so I did that, I must admit I can see why it is easier this way.

I have put the pistons onto the conrods I didn't need to do a left then a right because Ford decided to count their cylinders 1234 on 1 side and 5678 on the other side, so all the cylinders on the left side were on the front of the crank journal and all the right side are on the rear of the journal.

 

Not much happening today, just getting it all prepped for when the engine goes back in. 1st up was putting some heat shield in place where the exhaust is getting a bit close to things. I am not sure if this stuff will actually do anything but better than nothing I suppose.


I think I did mention about attacking my stickers earlier in the piece, the engine information for the engine replacement was not at all accurate so I used the Ford engine information sticker and grafted a Jaguar logo in place of the Ford one. I kind of figured it would be better to have the correct information for the engine in the car, and it is in the Jaguar so here it is.


I realize the clear has a couple of imperfections, but they are not worrying me right now, I will sand them down every couple of days until they are all nice and level. Then I will prep it for the final coat.


Same thing with these, hopefully they will look half decent when they are done. Once all this is done I will then squeeze the bushings out of the K frame, get it powder coated then squeeze the new bushings back in, then I can get the front suspension put back in.That will be all for now, until next time.

 

Fantastic build! Keep us posted, although i dont reply often, i thoroughly enjoy this thread!

 

It is quite wet here for the moment, everything you do makes you spread the water around the garage, and everything you touch has to be dried. It would appear that this will continue for the rest of the week. I have the K frame finally bolted in for the last time, and a couple of engine parts ahve also turned up, sadly I am unable to go to the shed and bring my transmission to the garage so I can get the engine and trans back together again.

I still have to clean a few things up a bit more, then it will be time to start getting ready to make the new engine mounts and fit it all back in hopefully for the last time. I finally got the rotating assembly installed and the stud girdle put into place.


That is about all I can do for a while now.

 

You really cut out a lot from the k frame. Are you putting in extra support later on? It seems weak from the pictures.

I have confidence in your skills, just wondering!

 

Yes I have removed quite a lot of the K frame to allow me to fit the front sump of the Ford engine. I did put it all into a jig before making any cuts and then used some 75mmx6mm flat bar to replace the metal removed and I have used 50mmx3mm flatbar as fish plates both inside and out to support the bends of 90 degrees, There are also a couple of gussets attatched to give support to the sides of the frame, it may not look very strong, but a piece of steel that size is quite strong. I think from memory the K frame was made from 2mm pressed steel it may be even only 1.2mm. They are relatively easy to damage, the one on the red car actually had a tear on either side at the bottom where it probably hit some rocks at some point. There is a bolt on brace also supporting the steering rack, it actually goes under the rack, I have not yet decided to keep it as a bolt on item or weld it into place. I will need to consult with Dept of transport engineer if I need to do more. He did advise me to use better than 3mm thickness of steel for any of the modifications. I would think that going to 6mm in thickness would suffice, because this needs to be compliance inspected before it gets a compliance plate needed for registration, if more needs to be done he will let me know in due course. There is also a brace that bolts to the front of the frame to keep the front suspension pivot points at the right distance apart, this was put there by Jaguar but it did need to be lowered a touch to allow clearance of the front plate. Fortunately I am a boilermaker by trade so I have a small amount of knowledge about what is really needed for this modification. I will post some pictures if you prefer so you can also see how it all goes together.

 

I didn't remember if I had pictures of the front being changed. Sadly I did not have any before I started to make the modifications, but you can at least see the jig used to hold everything in place as it was changed.

Here you can see the front brace on the lower spindles of the front suspesion.

This picture shows it was all braced as it was being built, note no gussets in the front as yet.

This picture shows the front gussets used to support the front of the frame, it also shows the fish plates used to strengthen the 90 degree bends in the 75mm flatbar inside and out. You can also see the rear support that goes under the steering rack.

This is the bolt on brace I was talking about earlier, this goes under the steering rack. I have not made up my mind if it needs to be welded in place or if bolting would suffice.