When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
There's more than one way to get a "manual" transmission (Quarterbreed + Kilduff)...
Early picture as we're buttoning her back together. It's been about a nine-month process...
Notes: We've added sway bars front and rear, all bushings new on the suspension, new Bilsteins and KYBs, new wheels (17x8), steering has been refreshed, new transmission (GM 700R4 Heavy Duty-spec model), shift kit with custom tuning, new steering wheel (Grant Fibertech with center Jag emblem), new custom wood surround for the shifter (not pictured here)...lots of other goodies.
In this picture, if you can't tell what's going on here (and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't), the far-left lever operates the car as it would normally, P-R-N-D. Pull that lever all the way down, though, and the three rods to the right stand up. Now you can upshift or downshift manually through the gears.
Total cost on this build, all of it, is going to be about half (or less) than what a swap to a manual transmission would have been.
Early picture as we're buttoning her back together. It's been about a nine-month process...
Notes: We've added sway bars front and rear, all bushings new on the suspension, new Bilsteins and KYBs, new wheels (17x8), steering has been refreshed, new transmission (GM 700R4 Heavy Duty-spec model), shift kit with custom tuning, new steering wheel (Grant Fibertech with center Jag emblem), new custom wood surround for the shifter (not pictured here)...lots of other goodies.
In this picture, if you can't tell what's going on here (and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't), the far-left lever operates the car as it would normally, P-R-N-D. Pull that lever all the way down, though, and the three rods to the right stand up. Now you can upshift or downshift manually through the gears.
Total cost on this build, all of it, is going to be about half (or less) than what a swap to a manual transmission would have been.
I looked into that but decided to go with a Speed Dawg product. I currently run their shift knobs in other cars and consider them the best available. The rim of the Grant Fibertech wheel is a red color that matches the interior color of the XJS nicely, and the Speed Dawg knobs I've selected are a red carbon fiber that matches that wheel.
There is a local custom woodworker who has done several projects for my home, and I've enlisted him to design and build something for this car. The Kilduff shifter is pretty huge, which has created a space problem. There will be no room for the ashtrays and probably not for cupholders, either, which I'm not happy about because I had planned on incorporating two of them. We're going to be lucky to get the power window switches, cruise control switch and cigarette lighter back in the car.
The old ski slope was a one-piece thing that wrapped around the shifter; the new console is three pieces. Like an XJ sedan, the portion that houses the window switches (just in front of the center console) will be its own piece. The part that wraps around the Kilduff shifter will be two pieces itself, a left and a right piece. There is no longer any clearance at the front of the shifter; there will be no wood between it and the HVAC slider underneath the radio. The cruise control switch will be where one ashtray used to be and the cigarette lighter/auxiliary power outlet will go where the other ashtray used to be. I am currently using one of those removable cupholders that slide down in the gap between the center tunnel and the passenger's seat, but obviously I can't use that when my wife rides with me. The other possible solution is to have something built to go over the transmission tunnel in the rear seat. That's how I fixed the problem in my Mitsubishi Starion. I had a guy custom 3D-print a bracket into which we mounter a cupholder from a GMC truck. See picture below:
Can you post a video of you shifting through the gears?
I'm planning on it as soon as I get it back on the road. Hopefully we'll have everything ready within 1-2 weeks from today (April 22). I'm not at all experienced making my own videos (especially while driving; I've got to figure out how to mount a camera).
In the meantime, here's the system at work -- SORT OF -- in a 2006 Pontiac GTO. I say "sort of" because the guy doesn't really demonstrate downshifting in the video, and because he's dealing with a modern car with computerized transmission, he doesn't have as much control over the shift as we're going to have with this XJS. We've tinkered a bit with the valve body to get a crisper shift. To his credit, he says his car behaves differently at WOT. He also either has his set up either very stiffly, or he just likes jerking on the rods. Mine doesn't seem nearly so hard to shift. There's another video somewhere out there in the YouTube universe of some old guy and his grandson sort of puttering around town in an older Chevy that has been updated to a 700R4 and he basically shifts up and down with a flick of the wrist.
All that just to shift an Automatic??? Seems like a lot of over kill to me? A B&M ratchet shifter will do the same general thing. (shift one gear at a time) for a whole lot less hassle, and cost? Just can't see the real advantage? In the end it's still an Automatic. Definitely not my Idea of rowing through the gears. Just my thoughts.
All that just to shift an Automatic??? Seems like a lot of over kill to me? A B&M ratchet shifter will do the same general thing. (shift one gear at a time) for a whole lot less hassle, and cost? Just can't see the real advantage? In the end it's still an Automatic. Definitely not my Idea of rowing through the gears. Just my thoughts.
Jack
Well, it's more the convergence of several different things here...
1) I hate GM400 transmissions (or most any 3-speed auto) with the fury of 1,000 suns. They have no place in a car that even pretends to be sports-oriented. Coupled with the factory rear-end gear in an XJS, it takes a car that could be a lot more performance-oriented than it is and reduces it to a boulevard cruiser.
2) The factory transmission finally bit the dust about a year ago. I lost reverse gear completely and could only engage first gear every now and then, so I had to replace it with something.
3) Moving from a GM400 to a 700R4 was a sensible upgrade, as it gives me an overdrive gear and reading experiences of others who had made the same swap, the ratios line up better with the factory rear end.
4) Going full manual in an XJS (Tremec 5-speed) is about an $11,000 - $15,000 conversion from what I've read, takes a lot of custom cutting and fab work, reprogramming the ECU and getting a different rear end under the car to maximize the way it works with the transmission. My build avoids all of that.
5) Most of the upgrade was doable with a Quarterbreed kit, packaged together with everything we needed in a single box without having to source parts. On top of that, the particular 700R4 we used for this build was a model spec'ced for heavy-duty GM trucks, which meant a sturdier case and other internal beefiness. And, given the amount of GM performance aftermarket available for a 700R4, we were able to further customize the performance with a shift kit to make shifting crisper.
6) The Kilduff shifter is reasonably priced and allows for up- and down-shifting with more control than a standard ratchet (as I remember them); the real goal here is to be able to have the most control possible.
7) While doing all this, we were able to modify the suspension, beef it up (two of those last four pics are of anti-sway bars; I bought a factory rear bar from a Sports Pack car that had been parted out, and the front is new from Jaguar Specialties), put new bushings all around and service the handbrake, which had become inoperative.
The only extra expense incurred regarding the transmission conversion is the Kilduff shifter is large and I am having to have some carpentry work done on a custom console surround. Still, everything listed above, plus labor, is going to come in substantially under the near-$15,000 estimate for converting to manual (I'm thinking about $8k, all told), and will allow the car to be driven as an automatic if I so choose, a nice feature to have in city traffic.
I wouldn't have done this had I owned an all-original XJS, but this car was not 100% original when I got it.
Theres an interview with a Jag engineer where he?states rear sway bar tends to lift the rear end off on hard cornering on the track and thats why they dropped it after the initial parts order was used up.
Theres an interview with a Jag engineer where he?states rear sway bar tends to lift the rear end off on hard cornering on the track and thats why they dropped it after the initial parts order was used up.
Theres an interview with a Jag engineer where he?states rear sway bar tends to lift the rear end off on hard cornering on the track and thats why they dropped it after the initial parts order was used up.
I went back and forth on the sway bar issue but I didn't really have the time or the budget to do a lot of parts-on/parts-off testing with the suspension until we got it to optimum levels. I needed to sort of pick one approach and execute that, so I picked what I hope is the best available approach out of many I studied. I found most feedback on the rear sway bar to be positive, especially if paired with a specific-size front bar. The larger wheels/tires, the stiffer bushings, and the choice of shocks (Bilstein up front, KYB Gray in the back) were all about seeking a certain road feel and firming up the chassis. Having said that, I have no intention of really taking this car to its limits. Spirited driving, yes, but I'm not going to race it. I hope I never have to replicate what the engineers were seeing on the track.
My car was incredibly soft before, almost crabby in corners and certainly with more understeer than I wanted. For that matter, my XJ6 sedan cornered better despite narrower tires (and all-season, on top of that). It had better manners especially mid-corner and would rotate whereas the XJS would tend to plow.
Now, how much of that was just the effect of a 30-year-old car riding on tired factory shocks and bushings that probably hadn't been changed in decades (if ever), I don't know. I'm certainly expecting a different experience once I get the car out in a couple of weeks and can test it extensively. Mostly I wanted to end up with a fresh take on the XJS while maintaining the V-12 engine; the shop doing the work here has tried to get me several times to put an American V8 under the hood but I resisted at every turn. The car is still in reasonably good shape mechanically, and the engine is strong. Hopefully the changes in transmission will help it perform in a way more fitting of its potential, and the changes in suspension and wheel/tire package will inspire more driving confidence.
There's more than one way to get a "manual" transmission (Quarterbreed + Kilduff)...
Just my thoughts.
