Rear License Plate Holder

All of the extraneous holes in the license plate holder have been filled. I also had to fab two of the capture nuts on the back side. From here there needs to be a Non-industrial Smoothing Party to flatten the weld areas and prep this for paint.

Front brakes

The front brakes arrived. First shot is of right side, second is of left. Drum is on the right also. From here I can mount the front wheels and drop this beast back on to the floor.

Seat slides

Since the car is getting so close to drivable, I thought that it would be a good idea to redo the seat slides. The first shot is of three of the four slides and the mounting bars that go below the plywood floor. They were very stiff so they were taken apart and the balls that act as the bearings were rusty so they are being replaced. Next shot is of the sandblasted pieces. The last is of the painted pieces. One of the mounting bars was missing so I fabricated one of those. I'm going to allow the paint to cure for about a week before the slides get reassembled. There is certainly no rush on these and it is likely that replacing the little slide balls will cause some paint chipping.

Front brake scoops

I couldn't find a useable set of these front brake scoops, so I made these out of some stainles steel and aluminum screen. Notice that this is designed to force the air into the brake drum area through the hole in the backing plate. There is another hole on the other side of the axle to let the air out. Apparently these scoops were often pulled off because they brought in as much water in the rain as they did air.

The brake shoes should be here this week, so I'll be able to finish the front brake assemblies.

Rear Clip

I continued a bit on the rear clip with some smoothing. The first shot is of the left rear toneau where the bumper bolt goes through. Fairly beat up but as you can see in the second shot it flattened out fairly well. The next two shots are of the rear clip after this repair.


On other news, the head went to the machine shop to start the valve job. It gets cleaned, then pressure tested, then the valve guides get removed and the seats get checked for height. This head has been rebuilt and the seats have been ground before. The exhaust looks pretty meaty yet but the intake not so much. The number one and six spark plug holes need to be checked that they can be properly heli-coiled as they were stripped out and a very short coil was inserted. In any case, I'll know more next week. One thing that the machinist noted is that the cams are not stock so I was wrong in saying that they were reground. Apparently Jag cams have numbers cast into them when they are made and these don't. There are no other markings of any kind that I could find. I don't know who made them or what they were designed for. Looks like we will need to bolt it to the top of the block and with a degree wheel in place check the valve action and duration. It's really interesting that this engine was hot-rodded back in the 50's. I wonder what the carbs and distributer were (they are missing)and if they were hot-rodded as well. If they were a hot item it helps to explain their going awol.

Water Pump

The front cover and the water pump installed.

Since the sanding parties are still lightly attended, I've decided to steal a line from Seinfield and change the name of the gatherings to Fat Cat Non-Industrial Smoothing. The shots are of the rear clip where some smoothing activities have occured. Can you tell where the smoothing happened? Interesting in that the paint inside the trunk was painted over the rust.

Cylinder Head 7

Finished up on the porting clean-up. These are a couple of shots of the number 1 cylinder with different light then number 3. The others are similar. I didn't realize it earlier, but someone has been in here before as the valve guides (as you can see on close up) are nicked on the ends. Seems to be a perfect fit to a burr from a die grinder. Note that the lumps and bumps have been for the most part removed. I also measured the camshafts and found that they have been reground once before. These older cams should have a 5/16" lift, but they have an 11/32" lift. Definately not factory correct. Later c-type heads featured 3/8" lift. I'm not sure what to think of the ones I have at this point. Some of the older cams are exchanged for later xj type with 3/8"lift and less abrupt valve action that primarily makes the valve train quieter.

Finally the front engine seal conversion arrived and I installed it as well as the front chain cover and the water pump. By the way, the nail has been replaced with a proper pin and the wire holding the pulley housing together has been replaced with a proper snap ring.