hi there me and my buddy were discussing what to do with my wrecked xk8 coupe and one of his buddies wrecked xk8 convertible mine was hit in front his was hit in rear but didnt damage alot of the car but enough to toatal it out so he was saying that he cud take my coupe and his vert and make mine a convertible does anyone know if this can be done or not because he said he did it to a mustang he had a few years back and if im not mistaken jag is a part of ford right? but my biggest question would be if the conversion did pan out wouldnt you have to register the car at the dmv as a convertible rather than a coupe and how would you go about changing the title to say convertible

 

I suspect that the first level of issue with the DMV is to declare both vehicles as 'totaled'. That will make the resulting vehicle a 'salvage' vehicle. Coupe or convertible is secondary.

 

so even though my car title is not a salvage title i would have to declare it as 1? and doesnt that make the car worthless in insurance ways as to say they wont give you insurance sorry for all the ?s but before i give up 4000 and a clean title to get a vert and have it worthless is scary to me

 

and also wouldnt you have to have this thing inspected by the local authorities after you salvage title it and then put it back together

 

Too scary for me to think about!!

 

Firstly, a little sentence structure goes a long way. I had to read this a dozen times to understand what you were trying to say.

Secondly, Tata has owned Jaguar since 2008ish however, your car was built under Ford.

Thirdly, this kind of conversion is not uncommon. Maybe for a Jaguar it is, but for other makes and models, no. I suggest you do your research before embarking on such an ambitious plan. Doing such a conversion is not cheap, is very time consuming and may not be entirely safe at the end especially as you'll be using wrecked cars to begin with.

As for the DMW thing, the best thing you could do is call, or go in, and discuss your options. They may suggest a salvage title, a kit title, a custom build title or something else. Or speak with an insurance agent off the record.

Lastly, if you do embark on this project... PICTURES!!! And a progress thread of course.

 

Umm....

Let's get this straight. You have two wrecked XK's. One has a salvage title and yours does not. If you build up a car from the salvage titled frame/body, then it would have a salvage title. If you build the car up from the chassis that is not salvage titled, then the car would not have a salvage title... as for needing inspections or anything, you probably don't need anything more than being able to pass smog. That's assuming that it is restored and everything is in working condition... brakes, lights, turn signals, etc...

It would be cheaper parting them out and buying a new car... but if you want to build a running car from two donor cars, anything is possible. People do that all the time.

 

If you are doing it to save money, part out the cars. If it is something you have always wanted to do, keep us posted.

 

I have a cousin who lives in London, and back in the 1980's he had an XJS (V12) that had been "convertibilized" by an outfit in Ohio. This Wikipedia article has a section on what they did to these cars.
Jaguar XJS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm guessing it cost a ton of money, but my cuz is pretty well healed. I remember he really wanted a Rolls drop-top, but his wife (lovely and very proper English girl) told him he was too young to drive a Rolls. I also remember the 1984-ish Cadillac ElDorado / Buick Riveara conversions done by a company in California. They were really nice but they had to beef up the frame quite a bit.

Cheers.

 

ok well anyway im going to let him take the car and do the conversion. now he promise that if i dont like the way the car looks after he's done i dont have to pay him.thanks for all the info everybody and having to read thru my thread and i know its hard because its even harder for me to type it but any how ill keep you guys posted on the conversion, he suppose to start after the holiday so hopefully some pics up soon

 

Ya know, I'm thinking that you probably won't have the structural challenges they had on the conversions I noted above. Those cars were not even concieved with a convertible version in mind. I think the XK8 Vert has some stiffening bars that the coupe doesn't have, but they should be relatively easy to transfer. I hope it's no tougher than that. Structually, that is. I'm sure it will have lots of challenges anyway (and the resulting sense of accomplishment, of course).

Good luck.

 

Joyroadboy
You'll need your floors and rockers off the convertible for structural strength. There is a reinforcement tube that runs up the middle of the convertible rocker on each side and another rocker reinforcement. We rebuilt a lot of cars with salvaged titles in our body shop back in the eighties It can be done and done correctly. You must straighten any damage out and get the frame into alignment before you replace or splice the cars together. It sounds like it's going to be harder to rework the coupes quarter panels to convertible than it's worth, but at two thousand dollars a quarter panel a guy do a lot of metal work.

 

It will NEVER be right if you try to combine the two. JMHO.

 

As quoted by Jagtec1
I would agree it would never be the same as built on the factory floor, but it can be brought into factory specifications and be spliced or repaired with in specs. If properly done repaired vehicles can be a bargain, usually selling for half price with salvage title. My son's been driving a Lexus the was spliced (front & rear). A 1996 repaired in 1998. It's still running today at 220,000 miles.
The key to these type of repairs is they have to be done by a qualified repairman and with the proper procedures.

 

well i went to the shop today to see what he had done and he has my old coupe basically down to bare shell in and out all the glass is out all the trim even the steering coloum. he says he will be cutting car this weekend so i will post some pics this weekend. he says it should take about a month to complete is this to long?

 

That's hard to say without actually seeing the vehicles, but a month or two does not seem to be unreasonable.

 

Without seeing things in person it is hard to say, but this doesn't seem like the best path to go down.

I thought the coupe was hit so hard it was not repairable. Now you are taking a damaged unibody, and straightening it out as well as cutting off the roof? If it didn't make sense to repair it to what it was (a coupe is much rarer than a convertible), how does it make sense to go a step further?

As was mentioned, the convertible floor pan and rockers are very different than the coupe in order to regain some strength lost by not having the fixed roof. If none of that area was damaged when the convertible was hit, it would seem to make more sense to use the back end parts of the coupe to repair the convertible, if a convertible is what you wanted in the end.

Finally, if they stripped the coupe down in about a day, I hope they were careful, and didn't damage any of the parts, so you could sell them.

 

Well I am interested to see how this one works out.. make sure you put the pictures up - you are really trusting your friend here!

 

well comes to find out the project wont work out as planned the guy started cutting and f'ed up the rear quarter shuda known but o well still able to sell all the parts any way so now i got 2 to part out maybe enuff to buy another coupe

 

Joyroadboy
You have a convertible to part out now? If you do I would be interested in a few parts.