Steel Beam in Door?
 

I have a passenger-side door dent that cannot be removed by a very reputable paintless dent repair guy, because the steel safety beam inside the door is in the way. Does anyone know if this beam is welded or bolted in? 1994 XJS 6-cyl conv. Thanks!

Most definitely welded. But not right along the length of the door. In theory a puller of some sort could do it, plus some filling and finishing, unless the dent is right on a weld. The door skin is applied in manufacture to the frame, so doors can be reskinned, so the dent can be fixed without junking the door.


Greg

Thanks! I was hoping a paintless repair could be made, but the beam doesn't allow access behind the door skin. Oh well.

What about stick on puller systems. I have seen some amazing paintless repairs done with them on blind panels.
The beam might seem like an inconvenience now but you will be glad it is there if you ever get T Boned.

Greg,

Did you lucky EU (and UK) guys have crash beams from the start in '75 or were they added for export market and then further at facelift?

Just curious.

Thanks,

Jeff

I don't believe they were fitted to any other market.

Fitted to all markets. The XJS was such a low volume build, it would make no sense to change things unless absolutely necessary. Just like those horrible impact bumpers ROW got because the US had that stupid 5mph law.

Actually......

If you look carefully you'll see that all cars did not got the impact bumpers. Besides lacking the actual impact absorbers themselves, the entire bumper structure was significantly different.....and the non-impact type had a much slimmer and better looking bumper pad.

Non-impact-absorbing type:

Bumper-Front-Non Energy Absorbing - Parts For XJS from (V)179737 to (V)226645 | Jaguar Heritage Parts UK


Impact absorbing type:

Bumper With Absorbers-Front - Parts For XJS from (V)179737 to (V)226645 | Jaguar Heritage Parts UK


Cheers
DD

All markets got the steel beam in the door, just as Typhoon said. Jaguar did a huge amount of safety design incorporation on the XJS to make it a much safer car and it was at a level above the safety requirements of the day. This extended to aerodynamic stability which at speed is far better than the E type. Compared (for example) with the E type, the XJS is a much safer and more passenger protecting car.


Just as Doug said, the UK and Europe and (I think) RoW did not get the huge US-style bumpers.


Greg

Thanks. You'd think after building 115k cars they would not have (meaning would have only provided crash beams to US spec), and the massive body and body structure changes the face-lift got via the £50MM investment Ford made / as they changed, what half (or close), the panels in terms of the monocoque (total structure panel change was less than 200 out of close to 500 total originals IIRC).

I just wish they would have continued with the four wheel drive development prototype they built in the mid 80's.

With all that, four more spot welds within a door (or lack thereof), seems pretty easy to omit.. ;-)

Jeff

Jaguar usually watched the pennies closely. That fact that the beams were installed on all cars suggests that the engineers really felt it was a worthwhile safety enhancement. And it probably is.....although I've never seen (nor sought out) any research on that matter.



Can't quite figure out what you're trying to there ! :)


Cheers
DD

Doug,

When the facelift coupe et al came about, Jaguar replaced / changed approx 180 of the almost 500 chassis panels it took to build the body. These changes simplified the process in many ways, but lots of line changes to say the least. Ford dumped £50 million pounds into that transfer. BL being the bloated pig it was, I'm surprised they didn't negate beams for ROW applications back in the 70's, as it would saved £100 in steel but added £50 to someones pay packet - HA! Bad math = good (caveman voice). ;-)

Jeff

Australian vehicles got the early impact bumpers.
As for Ford spending big dollars on the XJS reskin/ modernisation, I used to wonder about that too.
Then I realised Ford also owned Aston Martin at the time, and both Jaguar and Aston Martin needed a "new" platform for their vehicles, and the DB7/ XK8 was born.

Apparently Calum designed the DB7 to be the then F type or XK8 (XJ-S replacement) whichever you choose, but the brilliant brass in Dearborn decided it would compete with Aston and they removed the Jaguar badge, or so the story goes. Being that is shares the platform, it seems to hold water. Thus why we were alsodeprived of third pedals.. Of course, they "blamed it" on marketing research saying no wanted manual transmissions.

I'm glad Ford saved the Titanic, but I'm not a fan of the polyester curtains they installed while she was still taking on water.. ;-)

The Tata marriage seems very good from a distance..

Side - impact resistant doors became a construction requirement throughout the developed world in the 1970s, that is why all XJSs have them. It may come as a shock, but UK buyers are just as keen on surviving a crash as any of our cousins across the pond! It is just the (in my view fairly pointless) 5mph resisting bumpers that we were not worried about.


As people have mentioned, the DB7 and the XK8 were indeed built on the XJS platform and their running gear at the front is pretty well identical, the front subframe is interchangeable between those cars and the XJS. The rear axle is close to identical with the XJ40 saloon.
I have always assumed that because the XJS was selling so strongly, and because a replacement was a long way away, Ford had to update the car. Also there was a skills problem as many of the skilled craftsmen that were needed to put the original XJS together were starting to retire, and the original XJS body was incredibly labour intensive to put together. The facelift simplified this aspect of the car's construction hugely. For those who are interested, a book called "Jaguar XJS" by Rivers Fletcher comes up on Ebay quite frequently and is full of archive photos of every aspect of the original car's construction. A really interesting find for those who want to know how the car was built. It is listed here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rivers-Fletcher/e/B001KCGQIW


Greg