Jaguar donor disassembly

I managed to get a bit of spare time over the Christmas break, so the rear suspension assembly and differential are now removed.

The diff ratio is the one I needed so that's great - I won't have to worry about getting another centre.

Also pulled the dashboard and instruments out of the Jaguar.

The original Jag engine was picked up by its new owner - it's going in to a 1969 E-type! Cool! 8) He drove all the way from Brisbane to pick it up! :shock: I thought I was the only nutter who drive thousands of kilometres for car stuff!

Some other exiting news on a personal level: I am starting a new job in the new year! I will be working at the Lithgow Small Arms Facility as a Technical Officer in Weapons Systems Research and Development. Basically I will be working in a small team of engineers testing and researching the Australian Defence Force's small arms weapons using heaps of high-tech gear like high speed video, thermal imaging, ballistic trajectory tracking and stuff. Testing guns and sometimes blowing them up! Makes Mythbusters look like a bunch of pussy cats! :lol: I am over the moon. I originally applied for a Technician job, but after reading my resume they wanted to interview me along with a handful of other hopefuls for a more senior position that hadn't been advertised yet! :shock: I still can't quite believe it! It's much better pay than I am currently on in the Police Force and it's only 20 minutes from home! (I currently drive over 90 km to get to work) They are just getting all the paperwork together and going through all the security checks and stuff, I should be starting with them at the end of January.

Bring on 2012! It's going to be a great year! :mrgreen:

Happy New Year everyone,
Andrew.

Front cross member removed.

Steering column removed.

I would have had the rear end removed also if it wasn't for four seized nuts on the prop shaft. Cor blimey that was hard work - I had to chisel them off. :evil:

A successful weekend in all, I'll sleep well tonight and do it all again sometime soon.

Andrew.

I pulled the engine out of the XJ6 yesterday. Glad to have that job out of the way.

Today I'm going to pull the front end and the arse end out of the Jaguar. When I jacked up the back end I discovered it doesn't have an LSD but I'm not surprised really. So if I am using the Jag diff I might save up for a LSD one day.

Off to the shed to find any remaining muscles that aren't aching yet! :lol:

Andrew.

Well things are finally starting to move with my build.

I've found a decent engineer - I'm working on a meeting in the new year to lay out the engineering details for the entire build. Before this happens I have the following to do:

Remove the front and rear suspension assemblies from the Jaguar XJ6 donor vehicle that is taking up valuable room in the shed.

Finish mock building the Wolseley to take a heap of measurements and photos of how everything lines up. Remove the front and rear axles from the Wolseley to investigate how to install the Jaguar suspension and the Holden engine and see how everything lines up in the chassis.

Then I have to pull the body off the chassis so I can take measurements and document what I want to do with the chassis so this can be presented to the engineer.

Thanks to the wizards of engine management at http://www.delcohacking.net I have sorted some questions out regarding the Holden V8 Powertrain Control Module (PCM). VL400's BCM Simulator will give me complete cooling fan control, air conditioner compressor control and subsequent engine idle increase, check engine light and transmission mode indicator. This is a breakthrough as I was stuck how to get these items to work without using the original Holden Body Control Module (BCM) computer. Yeah, I know - that's why most hot-rodders go for good old fashioned carby engines! :roll: I'm convinced I'm going the right path and the benefits in fuel consumption, power output and reliable running will be worth it.

By some strange miracle, I managed to pick up a 1998 VT V6 Commodore as a parts donor car for next to nothing. The car runs and is complete (I drove it 300 km home on a permit!), it had been hit in the rear quarter and the owner decided to pension it off as it has done 245,000 km. The engine is strong, quiet and doesn't blow a whisker of smoke - so I might offer it for sale. This VT will be my donor for heaps of things like the wiring loom, fuses and relays, brake master cylinder and booster, throttle linkage, floor and firewall, seats, evaporative control system (charcoal canister) and heaps of other miscellaneous bits and pieces.

Having a working VT in the workshop has allowed me to test a bunch of things to see how they work on the VT V8 engine and computer, because the V6 and V8 are very similar in their engine management configuration.

I tested my AutoMeter speedo and it works perfectly on the speed signal coming from the PCM. I tested the temperature gauge and the PCM isn't happy having it in parallel on the line to the temperature sender - no drama though, all I have to do it fit a dedicated temperature sender for the temperature gauge and everything is happy. I tested putting a low oil pressure warning lamp in parallel with the PCM and everything is happy.

Having a close look at the cruise control in the VT, I think I'll be able to adapt it quite easily for my project - so she'll have cruise control too! 8)

The other thing I'm going to do with the VT is use it as a test bed for my V8 engine - that will allow me to test it all hooked up before I start putting the wiring loom in the Wolesley - this will be great to hear it running and sort the gremlins out before I start ripping the wiring harness to bits.

So I've got plenty happening and plenty to keep me busy over the next few weeks. And my health has improved no end so I'm happy to report that I'm spending every weekend up and about doing things. :D

Sorry for the lack of photos, nothing much to see at this stage.

Cheers,

Andrew.

How long will this take?

Someone on another forum asked me how long I thought the project will take.

Ahh! That's the magic question.

As it stands I have a great deal of the hardware needed, engine, trans, suspension and such. I have to appoint an Automotive Engineer to certify my work so that is the next step - held up by the fact that our woefully useless state government registration authority are changing the entire certification process - with very little information being released to the public. The new scheme was advertised to commence in February 2011 but still nothing has been announced. :x As you might be able to tell, I'm a little frustrated with this.

Once I've finished mock assembling and documenting, I'd like to clean up the chassis and make some drawings/plans to take to the engineer.

Other hurdles were to build my shed (140m²) and that is now pretty much complete bar some lighting in internal fit out. Then I had to sell off my collection of cars (Rolls Royce, '49 Morris and '59 Morris) and that is now just about complete, the '49 get picked up this week.

Then there's my health. I've lost months and months and tens of thousands of dollars to my health problems, but I am determined to not be beaten.

Anyway, all things being equal, I'm setting myself three years, although I should be able to complete it in less time than that. As I've never carried out such a project before it is a little difficult to estimate. I've heard stories of others taking 10 plus years and others taking 18 months. Given I'm doing everything I possibly can myself, except the upholstery, progress might be a little slow as I hone my skills.

Enough of my waffle for now!

Andrew.

Further Progress and mock build

Further Progress: Mock Build

There has been a little progress on the Wolseley. I have sold my '49 and '59 Morisses, so I have a little cash left over for this project after paying the bills.

I started mock building the car to see what's missing, about 2/3 way through. It was a great buzz to see the pile of rusty parts start to look like a car.

Dad was up visiting so we headed up the shed to have a tinker, what better way to spend my birthday! :lol:

My health has been dragging me down still unfortunately, but I refuse to give up - I will get there, wherever it is I was going! :lol:

I used some of the money from the '59 Morris sale to get a few items from overseas while our Aussie Pound is strong.

I got a set of instruments from Auto Meter:

And I got a Lokar automatic shifter and indicator boot:

Mine is a bit like this except the boot base is round.

Soon I will get an order off to the UK for my Moto-Lita steering wheel! Nice - can't wait.

It seems a bit strange buying bling when I haven't done much building yet but I want to buy while our Dollar is high as I think it will eventually fall again.

Cheers all,

Andrew.

Suspension and Driveline

I had originally decided to use a Holden HG front end, modified Holden Commodore steering rack and a VH Holden Commodore diff with LSD and purchased all these parts ready for when I start to build. The steering rack needed modifying to suit the front end and my choice of Commodore 15x7 steel wheels weren't going to fit without modifications.

My steering wheel choice is a British Moto-Lita but trying to match these to an Australian steering column was proving difficult.

I shopped around for a Jaguar steering column but they were few and far between on eBay. I phoned a Jaguar spares place and they wanted $450 plus postage for a complete Jag steering column. :shock: So there were a couple of challenges to overcome with the Holden front end.

Then a 1984 Jaguar XJ6 4.2 came up on Ozrodders and eBay. After difficulty communicating with the seller things finally worked out and I got the vehicle for just over $700. My plan being to use the steering column, suspension and look at what else I could use and sell/scrap the rest.

The car was the result of a botched restoration job and had been left with the windscreen removed in the weather for years. But on the good side, it has only done 130,000 km so the mechanicals should be in reasonable order.

The Jaguar design is a popular choice with rodders, modifiers and racers the world over. The suspension seems very well designed and manufactured, and the more I read about them the more I like the idea of using the Jaguar gear in my project. Some quick preliminary measurements show the front end should fit easy in the Wolseley, and it has a power steering rack which will be good if the Missus ever drives it.

The more I look at the independent rear suspension and differential, the more I think it will be a good fit for my project. The Jag rear end shouldn't be any more difficult to fit to my chassis than the Holden live axle. In fact it might be easier, the frame bolts on in four places and there are two trailing links that run forward to the chassis. No upper link, panhard bar or shock mounts to worry about. And the handling advantage the IRS gives will be nice too, just have to see how it all fits!

Andrew.

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED

I got sick of changing html to BBCode and back so from now on I will only update this blog in BBCode here:

http://www.ozrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=460599#p460599

Unless someone can tell me how I can dump BBCode into blogger.

Cheers,

Andrew.