Broadsword

Looks really nice, very shiny. I love the con they are trying to pull off though.. Air lock "probably thermostat M8", no time to fix M8. The cloudy contents of the expansion tank is a bit of a red flag.

It has been very hard to do any meaningful work on the cars due to the very cold weather. Some progress nonetheless on the Jag. The tracking has been done. The place that did it moaned a bit saying the job was supposedly difficult, but completed the work nonetheless. Small pieces of trim have been replaced here there and everywhere. At this point the car is so good that any minor imperfection is amplified, so this last 10% of the restoration will be the biggest challenge I feel. A bigger defect was the sticking clutch pedal. X300 manuals seem quite prone to the clutch hydraulics seizing up. That was the case here. I decided not to mess around and replace both the clutch master and slave cylinder. The original bits are NLA, but simply performance sell a modified slave cylinder from an XJS (the pushrod is modified to make it work on an X300) and I think the master cylinder they sell is XJS, but fits. Fitting the clutch hydraulics was a bugger in my garage and in the cold. The kit supplies new hydraulic lines due to the change in fitment in the slave from 3/16'' to 1/4''. but I opted for an adaptor on the slave. This worked well in the end and with a little bending of the exisiting lines. The slave looked pretty ropey but moved ok. The master cylinder was clearly sticking when moving the pushrod up and down and I think the main cause of the sticking pedal (you could see from the old, recently flushed fluid that the rubber was breaking up on the seals). The clutch is nice now. Weighty but not heavy. The next weakness down the line are the rubber bushings in the gear selector mechanism. I'm pretty sure they are tired because second gear in particular takes a load of reaching for. The way the gear selector mechanism works is that the lever is in a tower which bolts to the gearbox. The rubber bushings attaching the tower to the box get tired and a load of flex is introduced to spoil the fun. I'm eyeing up a poly bush kit to fix this. Another small job was replacing the supercharger idler pulley which suddenly went bad. It's a five min job to replace, all sorted now. The car is pretty much undriveable in this weather around -2 and icy roads. The power of the thing is tremendous, it's just scrabbling for grip. I would really like some better weather to crack on..

That sounds like a pretty intractable problem as it stands right now. The only way I feel I would be comfortable proceeding is with a wiring diagram to rectify the two plugs into one situation and four new oxygen sensors. I wouldn't be surprised if upon removing some of the remaining O2 sensors you find they have melted away due to the catalytic converters collapsing. I've seen that before.

I've had a few and they are usually pretty handy things, I think they are brilliant little cars. Above is a buyer's guide type thing I did on the last one I had which was from this parish funnily enough. I learnt from this one to pay attention to the fuel sender unit. They can have weird fuel leaks there. On this one it leaked like a bastard depending on the angle the car was pointing at. Crazy thing was that the culprit was the return line had just slightly uncliped from the union. I pushed it home and the problem was fixed. If you sit hard on the back seat you can bash the fuel lines out of the sender it appears.

What a turnaround. You are an AS hero!

Jesus what a disaster! I would just be trying to get the sale reversed if it were me. Banks are far more on top of dodgy traders these days. I saw one case where they froze the trader’s bank account and that did get their attention..

Looks absolutely spot on!

Very nice indeed. Let me know if you shift it on. I need a runabout to get in and out of Cambridge for my new job!

Try Slow Horses. Just finished watching the second season and someone has clearly gone to some effort to populate the show with prime AS cars despite the contemporary setting. It's nearly in your face the older than expected cars for a current show. Someone has good taste, I even spotted an X300 in it. It's a good show to boot.

I want to drive an E-type Jaguar. Must be able to rent one for the day somewhere.

Walkaround video. Still lots of tidying up and fettling to do but you get the idea.

A very nice Christmas present, the XJR manual is now back from paint. To kick off I'll just leave you with some photos...

That is an amazing purchase, really well done! I have similar feelings for a long lost R21 Savannah diesel we had. They are extinct now of course, but the one we had was just perfect even though it was shabby. Still miss it and would have another.

Worth it for the velour alone. A truly outstanding purchase!

Well bought! That is exactly how a proper Range Rover should look in my mind. Dark green, slightly muddy, minimal bling. Very purposeful!