I had a chance to take the car out tonight and test the throttle cable adjustment.

All I can say is Whoo Hoo!

Now it is much more like my 05 VDP. Very responsive.

 

I took the engine cover off and found a small bit of oil. I am guessing that it is just the result of a sloppy oil change since it is right by the filler tube. If I am wrong let me know!

 

I would say yes to poor workmanship when changing the oil.

 

So while cleaning and inspecting the intake I found this misalignment in the bore. If this was on my Triumph motorcycle I would want it aligned smooth for optimum flow. I am guessing that here the same applies.

It looks as if the body could be loosened and moved to fix the alignment.

What are the consequences of loosening it enough to center the bore of the two housings?

Is there a gasket in there that can stand the tweaking?

Or should I get a new gasket and pull the body off completely before aligning it?

 

Never had this issue. I did reuse a TB gasket (metal) one time with no issues.

 

I loosened the TB and nudged it till it felt more aligned. Tightened it back up and all is good.

I know I will never "feel" the difference a smooth bore makes but at least I know it is correct now. I am pretty sure the engine designers did not say "let's put a lip midway thru the throttle bore to f-up the flow".

 

I ordered shock mounts from PartsGeek for $106 each. Also read about the covers that were dropped from my model year.

I decided that I would rather have flat covers than those tall humps that I undoubtedly would bump into all the time.

I had some 2mm dense foam left over from the A pillar recovering so I cut me a couple pieces 3 inch in diameter. Popped them in and they look fine to me.

I will probably tackle replacing the mounts in a week or so. Until then at least I don't have to look at the crumbling old mounts.

 

I heard back from the seller. No go on getting a 22mm version. Oh well...

 

Mine are crumbling too. How much ride improvement can I expect if I replace? It's not a cheap job but my ride is a bit knockish over a bad road.

 

It seems cheap enough if you can do the work yourself. I'll have about $225 invested in parts when I do mine.

I have to believe that the ride will be much more "stable" with new ones fitted. Currently mine feels solid but erratic at times. I am guessing that I am crumbling my mounts the more I drive it.

 

My shock mounts are bad as well. Vacillating between doing them myself or having them done. Method is simple, I've just had bad luck so far with frozen nuts when doing front end work. I still have brand new rotors for the front sitting on my work bench that aren't on because I couldn't break the nuts on the caliper mount loose.

If one of you does this soon, let me know how it goes. maybe I'll be inspired.

 

I removed the header panel to fix the loose material from the crumbling foam.

It was pretty bad as expected. First step was to remove all the old foam like I did from the A pillars.



The panel itself is some kind of fiber board. Here it is scrubbed clean. I will let it dry overnight before I apply adhesive to it.



I handwashed the fabric to remove the old foam rubber bits. I used a little dish soap and cold water. Results were same as the A pillars. Good enough to reuse.



I went to the fabric store and bought some headliner material. Got the end of a roll for $6.

This stuff already has fabric on it but I intend to cover over it. I covered the panel with adhesive and applied the fabric.

Here is the cleaned material with the covered panel. One thing I discovered is that the panel and pillars are actually Oatmeal color while the rest of the interior is Cashmere. Are all XK8s like that?



Next I covered the new material with adhesive so I can bond the old material to it.



Finally I applied the old material and smoothed it out. I ironed it before applying. I also snipped a piece of the old material from the back and used it to cover the cheap looking plug for the manual latch release. All looks great now.



Before I reinstalled it I took some of the scraps of the new headliner material and fixed them to the inside of the panel for sound deadening and to act as a "sponge" should the latch lines ever leak.

 

nice work - will need to do the same to mine shortly - noticed the A-pillars starting to come loose

 

Forgot to add a pic of the finished header panel installed.

 

I think I am done with the interior. Next up is the front shock mounts.

 

Very nice. I'm jealous.

 

Today I replaced the mounts that I noticed were starting to crumble around the edges where exposed under the hood. I wasn't getting any clunks yet but the handling was a bit dodgy. I figured better to replace them now before it severely affected alignment and tire wear.



Wheel off and surveying the situation. All of the hard rubber bushings still look great - almost like new. Hmm....I guess the previous owner must have sprayed black paint wherever he could reach with the tires on.



You can see the start of some crumbling and rubber dust around the shock and also how the shaft boot has fallen and just flops around inside the spring. Not that bad really but still going to fix it.



Removed the fender liner and found evidence that Jethro Bodine had a hand in building this car. Note the "extra" plastic clip stuck in the rubber insulator blob and then painted over.



Only real issue I ran into when removing the shock was that (on both sides) this bracket that held the brake line and wire wheel speed sensor had been mounted so that it blocks the upper wishbone bolt from sliding out.



In order to get the bolt to clear I had to bend the large tab up and the small tab down.



Removing the mounts was pretty easy after I got the spring compressed using the free loaner tool from AutoZone.



Heres the old mounts with a new one. The rubber has not crumbled away - yet.



Before reassembling the shock I fixed the boot so that it would not drop again. I stretched the top over the lip on of the bottom of the mount. Now the shaft on the shock will stay cleaner.



Finally I cleaned up all the crazy black spray paint so that it looks better now. Scrubbed the wheel well liners and cleaned/tightened everything hidden behind the them. Cleaned the wheel speed sensors too.



I read in another post that there is fabric in the door panels. I checked and sure enough the foam rubber backing is crumbling there too. I guess that is next up.

 

Did you buy OEM upper mounts or did you buy the kit from Welsh? I am in need of this repair and OEM assembly is $250 (said they would cut me a deal to $160 per mount) but saw the kit through Welsh for $115 - just wondering which is really the better deal. OEM is still the hard foam so leaning toward the kit.

 

I bought complete mounts from PartsGeek. They were cheaper than the kits. 04 2004 Jaguar XK8 Shock Mount - Suspension - Eurospare, Front Upper - PartsGeek

The part quality seemed to be on par with the OE mounts I removed.

I followed ReverendSam's suggestion in his video about not going with the kits to rebuild them. I agree that it is not worth the trouble.

The Welsh kits may have some small advantage in better materials but the OE mounts lasted 10 years and that's good enough for me.

 

Thanks - looks like I will have to call them as they only show 1 in stock - but cheaper than Welsh and local