Next we tackled the fabric panels on the back of the front seats.

I should have mentioned before that we were not looking forward to dismantling the seats to enable depressing the headrest clips and removing the headrests. We expected that some upholstery, staples and/or stitching had to be removed, as on many other seats. But as I guess many of you know, those rear panels come off easily with a screw on each side, and a few panel clips on the edges of the back. And then the headrests are easily accessed.

The seat back panels appear to be covered by the same kind of fabric as the headliner, but in a different colour to work with the seats and interior trim. So again, as the foam layer underneath the fabric turns to dust, and years of use stretches it, the fabric becomes unglued and sags.

The surrounding piece is a combination of a thin fibreboard panel with two metal sides attached, the fabric glued and stapled directly to it. The inner panel is a thin board too, but includes a soft pad which also provides the indention that forms the inner rectangle on the back of each seat (if only the fabric was still attached). That pad is stapled to the outer panel using approximately 1 billion staples, each of which was carefully pried out with a small screwdriver.

Our fabric was poor in that its foam backing had disintegrated and the fabric was faded, highlighting the original indented shape. But, it wasn't torn and wasn't stained. So, not wanting to start a process of trying to colour-match new fabric, and remembering our prime directive of not replacing anything unless we really have to, we decided to clean up and reattach the existing fabric.

This little project was all pretty straightforward with the following notes:

• As we were using thin old fabric that no longer had any backing, gluing it to the indented pad had to be done very carefully to ensure there was no bleed-through of the spray adhesive.
• Second, while worrying about the glue, the fabric needed to be lined up so that the variation in colour fade around the indentation was located properly.
• Finally, when getting ready to re-staple the inner panel to the outer panel, we realized that we were going to be stapling outward (towards the rear seat passenger), and that we had to choose the staple length very carefully. After much fruitless searching for 3/16" staples as original, we used 1/4" ones but inserted some automotive vinyl fabric strips under each to take up the extra length.

It's nice to be making progress through these little visual flaws. We'll do the simple dash trays next and, oh, we haven't talked about the seat leather yet...

 

You mean seat material - vinyl? No leather stock S1 seats.

 

Finally, when getting ready to re-staple the inner panel to the outer panel, we realized that we were going to be stapling outward (towards the rear seat passenger), and that we had to choose the staple length very carefully. After much fruitless searching for 3/16" staples as original, we used 1/4" ones but inserted some automotive vinyl fabric strips under each to take up the extra length.[/list]It's nice to be making progress through these little visual flaws. We'll do the simple dash trays next and, oh, we haven't talked about the seat leather yet...[/QUOTE]

Nice!
I did this once before but it did not look 50% of your result.
This car seems in very good hands indeed!

Keep up the good work!

 

As always, thanks for the comments, advice and encouragement, everyone! Jamie and I are enjoying documenting this little project, and hope that it's useful or at least entertaining for the forums.

We'll wrap up the main interior effort here, even though we haven't yet tried out the sun visor ideas.

One tiny thing, we replaced the soft black velour/felt-like fabric in and around the dash trays where necessary. Unlike the seat back fabric, some of the dash tray material was stained, torn and otherwise not usable. We found a fantastic fabric at a local Hobby Lobby store, a perfect match for the original. This continues our very good fabric luck!

We have invested a lot of hours in trying to gently clean up our seats. And yes, they are leather seating surfaces, as promised in the USA-market brochure for '73 (though Roger and I have had a great sidebar conversation about identifying the material, the terrible factory spray colouring and sealants, etc.). Our seats don't have any tears, holes, burn marks or split seams, which seems a small miracle. Our efforts were in trying to find that balance between serious cleaning vs. damaging the old finish. We tried a variety of techniques and are happy with the result for the most part. No wisdom to impart, and hard to show much in photos except maybe to try to give a feeling for how it was when we got it and how it looks now.

More interesting, maybe, is the situation with the rear seat back. Cleaned up and in place in the car, the casual observer would be very unlikely to notice anything amiss. But, with the seat pieces out and under harsh light, the rear seat back seems noticeably different in colour. And it doesn't appear to be just sun fade, as it is not confined to the top of the seat and seems consistent even in "shaded" areas. If there was only one "tan" family interior colour, we probably wouldn't give it any thought either, but knowing that there are tan/cinnamon/biscuit options, it makes us wonder if this could be non-original? The prior owner (part of the original single-family ownership) is not aware of any reason it would have been swapped. So, just a little oddity on our car.

We don't have great photos for any of this, but attached a few anyway.

 

Maybe you have they are perhaps different dye lots that fade/change color differently or at different rates.

If you don't show it in Concourse (where some picky Judge will be sure to notice just to be, um, Picky), and you don't mention it to the Common Man, No One will probably ever know!!
(';')

 

J: The heater fans squeak.
P: It's an old car.
J: We have to fix them.
P: Why?
J: Because they squeak.
P: I don't want to.
J: Why?
P: Because it's a hassle and not important.
J: But we have to.
P: Why?
J: Because they squeak.
P: I don't care.
J: Yes you do.
P: I don't care ENOUGH.
J: We have to fix them.
P: I like squeaking.
J: No you don't.
P: I do now.
... 2 weeks later...

On the plus side, they actually looked pretty good, good brushes, no corrosion, etc., so a little cleaning and some grease and all is well. Meanwhile, as we've been driving our car a little more, some new things have started leaking (shocking, right?)... details to follow.

 

My only "good' ear does not hear the high frequencies! The aid can only amplify sound not create it. But, as the ENT Doc swabbed out my ears, I hear, yahoo. But squeaks remain undetectable to me???


Way back when, I recall a "fix" for old critter's noisy blower motors. Drill a very small hole on the bearing end. Squirt in a "sewing machine" oil. I use one to lube the clippers I use on my whiskers.


Billy is off his tether again. Son and I patched the back fence. He found a way to squeeze through a gap in the badly detiorated fence.
My former neighbor made it "very clear" to me that it was not my fence ands to not mess with it? He is gone and his son is much easier to get along with, albeit a bit "lackadaisical" . More into Big Suburbans 4x4's than property fixing.


Carl

 

Congratulations on completing the Nastiest job I have yet tackled on Any car!!
My blowers also squeaked, but I didn't grease the motors, I oiled them.

On the Plus side, you won't have to do that for another 40+ years!!
(';')

 

We've got a few hundred very enjoyable miles on our XJ6 now and, no surprise, some leaks are surfacing. First, while it really doesn't leak much oil ('zero' is not a realistic goal...), it has developed a pretty good coolant leak. Drip... drip... drip... A little cleanup, tightening of hose clamps, and so on, and it wasn't hard to trace it to the water pump shaft. So, we ordered a new pump and gaskets, along with new coolant hoses and belts which we had planned to do anyway as part of general freshening.

At the same time, we found some brake fluid on the protective rubber mat we have over the carpet on the driver side (smart move, Jamie!). Of course, there's been fluid leaking over time anyway, evidenced by the typical exposed primer under the master cylinder in the engine compartment. But now it was leaking enough to get out to the pedal and down into the interior. We pulled the master cylinder and, as you'd expect, found pitting from corrosion from what we suspect was 10+ year old brake fluid in there before we flushed it. We sent it off to be resleeved, and ordered new seals.

Both items are in transit, so we're suffering Jag withdrawal over here!

 

Pete, where did you send it for resleeving?
(';')

 

We sent it off to the good people at Apple Hydraulics in New York. Super easy to deal with, no issue with the "stepped" cylinder type, and sleeving in brass which we prefer for this situation. And a fraction of the cost of a replacement Series 1 master cylinder, which we really had no reason to replace.

 

This has all been very helpful and useful. Thank you for taking time. Also noting the places you obtained some of the items and restorations such as hobby lobby and the shop in NY you are having the master re-sleeved etc.

I may send a message asking some details on replacing the rear windscreen seal as both front and rear on mine require replacement. Did you use the rope method? ie. fitting a thin-ish rope inside the seal and pulling it out slowly once over the metal lip on the car body, going slowly around?

I have never done it before, breaking the glass (as I have seen on line doing an E Type) is probably the only thing that terrifies me on these cars. All else is rebuild-able or replaceable, you know?

Anyway, thank you again.

 

Hello Demian and thanks for the comments!

Regarding the rear window, yes, we used the tried and true rope method. Hopefully some more competent forum members will provide better advice than we can, but here's our experience: This time, we tried to get fancy and use smooth nylon coated clothesline cord, thinking that would pull nicely. FAIL! The nylon coating is slowly cut by the metal lip of the window opening and becomes a big issue. Back to the fine-strand rope, probably 1/8" to 3/16" (2-3mm) thick. Works better. We used lots of water and dish soap mixture - a professional restorer friend of mine swears by silicone lubricant spray, but we amateurs had better luck with dish soap. We also made the pictured tool out of thick sheet metal. It's about 6" long, for reference. The "handle" remains flat so that it can be inserted from the outside, and then the curled lip on it can be used to pull the seal in should it develop a little cut, or the the rope "gets ahead" of the seal. The tool needs to be sanded very smooth with rounded edges to minimize any paint damage it might do to the lip around the window. (the hole in the handle allows a screwdriver to be inserted to allow more pulling force if needed. But, with a good seal, good rope, prepared window opening and a good lubricant, the tool shouldn't be needed.

Personally, I've probably done half a dozen windows and never broken one, so I'm probably not as careful as I should be. But I can imagine how mad I'd be if it happened.

 

When you go to pull your radiator to begin replacing your water pump and you're actually a little nervous because, although you are pretty confident, you don't really know for sure that the notoriously rust-prone lower radiator support cross member isn't filled with holes the size of house cats, then THIS is what you want to find under the grime.

 

See!? All that grime did its job as Automatic Rust Protection!
That looks Really Good!!
(';')

 

Our freshly resleeved master cylinder arrived right on schedule. We gave it a soapy bath like the instructions said, rinsed it,and dried it out with the garage heater.

We separated and cleaned the pistons and pieces, installed all the new rubber bits from the kit, and reassembled the cylinder. We attached the remote reservoir, "bench bled" the cylinder, and installed the whole assembly. We'll want to do a proper bleeding session, but we have solid brakes again already and hopefully no more leaking.

Now to finish the water pump replacement. At times this thread has been a couple of weeks behind, but right now it's "real time" and we're pushing to get the Jag running again for this weekend. If water is not pouring out of the sky nor the waterpump (), then we might head out to cars and coffee at Griot's Garage in Tacoma on Saturday. (yeah, yeah, "Fuel and Caffeine", whatever)

 

It's more of a hassle to pull the water pump than we wish it were. But then, it's not a Lotus Elan at least. And yes, it would all have been easier had we pulled the bonnet again, but we didn't.

We drained the radiator and hoses, pulled the radiator top cover, moved the A/C radiator, and pulled the radiator itself.
We removed the crankcase breather from the front of the head, as it was leaking oil. We needed to remove the A/C hose brackets and air pump tension rod mount anyway, to provide enough clearance for moving the air pump and A/C compressor.
We removed the air pump pipe, the heat shield below the air pump, and then undid the bracket for the A/C compressor and air pump, as that bracket mounts partly to the water pump.
We removed the fan shroud.
Then we unbolted the water pump and removed it and the fan as a unit.

As per a previous post, we inspected the radiator support cross member very closely and were pleased to find no rust at all there, either. So, we set about cleaning everything, and then replacing coolant hoses from the kit we bought.

Then we started preparing the new water pump. The hose fittings (three of them) had to be moved to the new pump - as the two small ones weren't provided with the new pump and the large one (1" maybe?) was smaller than the 1 1/4" adapter that our car has. Easy enough to move the small ones, but the big one wasn't going to come easily and we were worried about damaging the adapter or the pump somehow. So we shipped both water pumps off to a local machine shop to let them worry about it. Back tomorrow, hopefully, though with all the rain falling, it hardly matters when the car is running again.

Speaking of "local," we need to give a shout out to our local NAPA autoparts store, Westbay. Our water pump gasket is backordered from XK's Unlimited, where the hoses and belts came from, and still isn't here. Jamie went off to the NAPA store and they put in the effort to hunt down a gasket available somewhere in California, had it shipped overnight and in our hands the next afternoon. Total invested, $1.92. Lesson learned, don't always have to go to the Jaguar houses.

 

NAPA is one of our Major Go-To parts suppliers, even though Nix has a Chevy Heart! NAPA sells Lots of other stuff she has needed; Real Jaguar stuff.

I *Like* NAPA!
(';')

 

Last post we indicated that there was a discrepancy between the size of the bypass hose adapter on our new water pump vs. our old water pump. A cursory investigation led us to believe that the underlying size/thread of the hole in the water pump casting was the same, and we could just move the adapter from the old pump to the new, and be on our merry way. Wrong.

We thought that the factors for finding the right water pump were the year (72-74.5 supposedly being the same), the part/casting number, and the single-pulley vs. dual pulley (ours is dual pulley). But, apparently the size of the bypass adapter (and related machining of the casting) is another consideration. So, the new water pump wouldn't work . We briefly investigated dismantling the new water pump for parts to rebuild the old pump, but abandoned that approach. We couldn't find a reasonably priced rebuilt pump anywhere and didn't want to take the time to send our pump away. In the end, we bought an NOS rebuild kit and rebuilt our original pump ourselves. This is mostly straightforward, with the hardest tasks being having the right puller to remove the front pulley, and upon reassembly ensuring that the impeller is pressed on just right to provide the narrow clearance between it and the housing, and then pressing on the pulley without messing anything up. One small silver lining, the machining/finishing on the original pump is better than on the replacement we'd bought.

All done, water pump installed, new belts and hoses in place, just need to get the radiator back in and we're back in action.

 

It's nice to be up and running again after our brake master cylinder and water pump rebuilds. Such a delightful car to drive, these XJs!

Well, it's nearly time to wind down this thread. We'll do one more chapter with our final updates, and maybe another little video, but this little revival is nearing its (successful!) completion...