Yes it is, but we're looking at the forward side of the rad in the pic. If you stand in front of the car looking at it, the fan is toward the "left" of the car, just like in the pic.

 

Dead right, apologies all round! But my view is, like yours, it is the fan position, not the side of the road, that affects the debris buildup.

 

Put back everything together, with the new (re-cored) radiator. Planned to do it last weekend, but turned out I forgot the transmission oil cooler hoses at my other place. So, had to wait until today to finish the job.

Filled it up with coolant. (Boy, is this cat thirsty or what. It felt like 12 litres/4 gallons went into it.) Checked for leaks -- so far so good.

Took the car first around the neighborhood. Then made a longer trip to town.

Don't want to jinx it, but so far the difference is like night and day. In the past, I avoided driving on hot days for the fear of being stuck in traffic. Today was 34C here. One of the hottest days of the year. According to the coolant gauge, the car handled it quite well. I was driving in traffic light to traffic light traffic for maybe 30 min or so. With frequent stops and idling at the lights. In direct/punishing sunlight. At most, the gauge would be approaching the bottom of the N, but it did not come close to touching it! (With the old radiator, I would have been at the top of the N, with lower ambient temperatures.) And then, as soon as I left town and hit open road, the gauge went down to just mid point to N, or even slightly lower! And this is during the hottest day! Wow. (Knock on wood -- again, don't want t jinx it.)

I will keep extending the radius of my trips to test it more thoroughly. But so far the results of swapping the clogged radiator for a refurbished (recored) one are very encouraging! Will keep my fingers crossed...

 

Well done.

Another SIMPLE repair toa SIMPLE car, goodo.

34c, damn, I need a jacket, add 10c and we are on the same page.

When you pull the engine and strip it, the thing will need about 25ltrs of coolant, remember that one.

 

I feel very fortunate that dealerships and others hate working on V12's and the likes of the XJS's. That's how I found my '88 XJS for a very reasonable price. The dealer wanted nothing to do with it, .....just wanted it gone. But, this car was physically in immaculate exterior condition with original beautiful paint and trim, no accidents, .....not even any paint or body dings. It had definitely been garaged most of its life because there was no rust anywhere underneath and that was the purchase reason for me. The fact that it drove well with cold A/C was enough for me to take the chance to buy it and drive it home, 3 1/2 hours away. BTW, when I got home I got out of it and kissed the ground that I made it home without issues. BUT, ......that's when the mechanical work started for me, stuff I can handle and enjoy on weekends. I'm pretty experienced with body work but in this case there was NONE. I've replaced all the wheel bearings inner and outer on all four corners and now finished the complete horn steering column rebuild. I'll drive it to work a couple of miles away for a couple of weeks and then start the next installment, this time will be fuel system with new hoses, fuel pump, filter etc. Drive it a while and then complete diff rebuild. .....and on and on and on till it's all done.
We live in a major university town with 66K students. I think it is really interesting that these kids drive some pretty nice upper end new cars that mommy and daddy buy them and yet I get constant positive comments from them like, "That's awsome, ....what is it? or "I love that car!". In retrospect, I think it isn't so much that my big Healey or the Jag is such a beautiful car but rather most all the other car manufacturers today don't have anything to offer in new styling except "bar of soap" body styles with slant-eyed headlights and tail lights. They all copy each other with no originality in style.

 

 

Sorry, but this should probably be a new thread. But, classic era Jags and old Brit sports cars definitely stand out here, but instead of it being seen as old, they see it as something different and cool, even if it's not polished up. Pickup trucks are very plentiful, more and more so the $60-70K priced ones with big tires and everything one can bolt on them. There are so many trucks in this town that they blend right in with all the soap-bar shaped cars and only stick out more if their huge oversize tires are bigger than the other guy's oversized tires. Then, enter the Jag XJS V-12 or my Healey 3000 MkIII and you get the "thumbs up" every time. Soooo, ....my question to this forum is: What happens when this beautiful Jag machine (or Healey) ends up embarrassingly stalled on the side of the road? Where is Joseph Lucas when I need him? Where is your pride at that point? If interested, from experience I can tell you what's happened to me in the Healey (Jag is next) every time here in TX.

 

Start a thread! Any car can break down.

1. preventive maintenance
2. AAA

 

Brief update on how things are going after swapping radiators.

I drove around some more, trying to capture a variety of conditions. One day I drove primarily in town for almost two hours. Traffic light to traffic light. Relatively low speeds. Coolant temp stayed below N all the time. Then yesterday I took a longer trip which required me to drive up and down the mountain, twice, in the middle of the day in almost 40C conditions. On the ways up, under load, when approaching the top of the mountain pass, the needle was approaching the bottom of N, but it did not even get touching it. (Maybe if the mountain was 2x higher, it would have gotten there eventually. Or maybe not...) On the way down and straight lines, engine cooled down very quickly with needle hovering in bottom quartile of the range.

I think I am ready to conclude that replacing my old, clogged radiator with a recored one helped mitigate the overheating concerns. As some (many) have stated many times, the stock radiator appears to be quite sufficient to handle V12 cooling needs even in harsh conditions. The key is to periodically clean and service it properly. There should not be overeating after that.

 

by the looks of the before picture no wonder why it was overheating.

the stock radiator does cool pretty good clean though. im still running the stock radiator on my v8 jag and it runs cool as a cucumber making 400hp witch is something everyone says wont work. i did clean the radiator out with muriatic acid and it has 2 BIG electric fans and a shroud on it. i intended retaining the stock radiator as only temporary for a few test drives but it has not even gotten the slightest bit warm so it still remains.

 

Have you considered a proper coolant filter to catch the rest of the sludge? There are options from motorbike in-line washable units to high-capacity stainless steel remote filters.