Forgot to get a couple of updates posted here - so have a few rolled into one.
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Having been attacked by the reel of vacuum hose I picked up for the Jag today for the umpteenth time when I opened the garage door I figured it was time that I fitted some of it.
This is the state most of the ones which came off were in.
These are the ones that were changed.
A couple were larger diameter ones which I didn't have in stock - there was enough slack in them though I was able to just cut off the perished/stretched ends and refit the hose. I'll get the right hose in stock and then replace them in due course.
I discovered that the little elbow connectors that attach to the throttle body and fuel pressure regulators are a very loose fit. I was planning to stick a couple of hose clips on there to tighten them up but sadly can't find any hose clips of an appropriate size. Will need to get some ordered in.
You can probably tell from that tiny pile of old hose that I only managed to change about 30% of the hoses. The rest are utterly buried and are pretty much utterly inaccessible. I can't even begin to tell where half of them go beyond "vanishes under the inlet manifold." I have to assume a lot of the lines were attached during engine assembly before the inlet manifolds were fitted. Another job to add to the list while they're off then. Unless I find a good vacuum hose diagram which suggests a good number of them can be routed in a less annoying manner.
I've also noticed that I have a very slight weep from the radiator bleed screw.
I'm guessing this should have a copper washer or an O ring under it (currently absent), can someone confirm this?
While working on it I noticed that the nearside front tyre was looking a little soft. Checking it revealed it to be fine and just looking low down to how the car was sitting on the drive. It did however bring my mind back to something else I'd been meaning to investigate for a couple of months now.
I can't remember exactly when it was, but a couple of months ago I think it was our RCD was taken out when I plugged the compressor in. Resetting it immediately resulted in the circuit breaker for the garage socket tripping. Resetting that immediately knocked out the RCD again...so something was obviously amiss.
I was hoping that this would be something amiss with the pressure switch or a bit of chafed wiring. Sadly it wasn't anything that simple and it turns out that one of the motor windings has shorted to the case. Annoying but these things happen. It did quite a bit of hard work back when the Invacar was painted, which was the job I needed it for the most really.
Can't really justify replacing it just now...while it's nice to have air in the garage it's hardly mission critical. A thought sprang to mind though...a while ago I stumbled across an ancient tiny little compressor hooked up to a probably even more ancient motor. It's only a tiny one, but I had established that it would at least move air. Seemed worth investigating whether I could make use of it in some way. It didn't have a receiver of any sort fitted so a bit of improvisation was going to be needed.
Cue some scrabbling around the garage for things I could scavenge fittings from to actually attach any form of outlet hardware to it, finding a plug (as of course I'd nicked that for something else) and cobbling things together.
Then it became apparent that I'd left the tank drain open. This had also helpfully seized. After a little gentle persuasion it started moving...then sheared off. How lovely!
Eventually finding a bolt that was the correct size plugged that, and we could see if the teeny tiny compressor could fill the receiver in a vaguely sensible time. If it's going to take an hour to get it up to 50psi that's not really going to be useful.
The belt tension needs setting up properly as I need to nudge it with my foot to start it just now, but once it's kicked over it sits there going "dugga-dugga-dugga..." quite happily. Surprisingly quietly too. The vast majority of the noise is actually from the intake, so a muffler would solve a lot of that.
Less than a minute in...
Looks promising. After a few minutes we were up to about 70psi, so that's entirely usable for my purposes. I'll pull everything out of the garage at some point so I can actually get at it and then have a think about how to actually properly pipe things up.
Long term I'll need to look at getting a new compressor as this isn't going to have the legs to keep up with any real demand, but it should at least let me do things like checking my tyre pressures reasonably quickly.
Will probably look to install a little shelf above the receiver and use this as an excuse to get some polished copper and brass in the garage. I'll look to add a fan of some sort to blow over the compressor body too, even though it only got vaguely warm during today's test. The hose was quite warm though which was the main reason I called time when I did as it's obviously not really suitable for use in that position.
I was backfilling the tank through the outlet through a random extension hose because I simply wanted to see whether this would even work, the correct inlet and outlet will be used once I set stuff up. No reason I can't use the existing pressure switch and regulator etc as there's nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell.
...Glad I saved this one from the skip at the side of the road now!
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A few people have suggested that it might be possible to replace the motor on my currently dead compressor. I'd originally discounted this myself as being a direct drive unit I expected things to be pretty model-specific. It's only one of those around £100 including a bunch of basic tools jobs anyway so not worth throwing a huge amount of money at. However it's worth looking into depending on what state the compressor side of things is in. I particularly wanted to examine the bore on account of having discovered that the cheap piece of recycled biscuit tin that the air intake was made from was sufficiently poorly made that there was a good 1/8" gap between the air cleaner element and the back of the housing. So none of the air was actually being required to go through the air cleaner. I discovered this *after* doing a bunch of soda blasting and painting a car in the garage! As such I was...curious...to see how much of this gunk it had ingested.
Had to admit to being a bit curious anyway...I've had a few refrigeration compressors apart before so I was interested to see what differences there were in the construction.
Off with its head!
The valve plate definitely shows that it's been breathing more than just clean air...This is the side which faces down into the cylinder, there's a reed valve which sits over the central hole allowing air into the cylinder through there, but forcing it out through the three smaller holes above it. Two of these had a good 1/16" of solidified gunge on them, and the inlet reed valve had about the same thickness of paint on the outward facing surface.
Lovely...That's a large blob of what appears to be a congealed mixture of soda blasting media and compressor oil. I wasn't sure if I wanted to push the cylinder down to examine the bore at this point!
Actually a lot better than I honestly expected. I can *just about* feel the most obvious score you can see in the above photo, but that was the worst of it. With a good clean I reckon it could live to fight another day with a replacement motor - if it's cheap enough.
I knew the older one I was monkeying around with yesterday wasn't performing its best down to how much the belt was slipping, and wanted to see how it compared actually working better.
There was no way to get the tension set properly on the belt with the slots in the base it's currently mounted on being where they are, however I just happened to have a slightly shorter belt in stock, which meant I was able to line things up better. Also meant I could actually bolt both things down with four bolts rather than the original two.
This then meant I could fit a new belt and properly tension it. Doesn't this look better?
Suffice to say it's an awful lot happier with a new properly tensioned belt on it. Not only does it seem to be filling the tank at nearly the same rate as the original compressor seemed to, it will now happily start even with 100psi of head pressure on it (which it wouldn't normally see when starting as there's an unloader built into the tank feed - and of course the pressure switch is set so that it will normally cut in at around 60psi).
Even if it is a little slower than the original compressor, honestly it's so much quieter that I think that's a price I'd be willing to pay. You could certainly happily be working in the garage with this one chugging away, whereas the original one definitely required ear protection if you were in the same room. It frequently resulted in me jumping half out of my skin when it started up - even when expecting it.
I'll have a think about my options and come back to this project I think.
I definitely need to get something set up soonish though. The only two garages near here with air lines in a usable condition are now charging £1 to use them. Sorry...Nope. £0.20 I was fine with, £0.50 I'd grumble but pay, a quid however is having a laugh. The tyres on the van though run at 58/65psi front/rear. My little 12V compressor really isn't designed with pressures like that in mind, so I really need the garage air supply working to keep them topped off (they don't generally lose air, but I like to check things like that weekly).
Only other thing I really got done today was to give the leather in the Jag another going over with the leather feed. I think this must be the sixth or seventh treatment, and it's actually just about starting to not immediately get absorbed. The rear seats in particular felt very dry when I got the car - not that anyone is ever really likely to be in the back given how hard to is to get in and out of!
Looks better for it, though I do at some point need to give them a really good scrub down with the cleaner as they're still quite grubby in a few places. I didn't realise how much so until looking at these photos.
There are a couple of small areas that could do with some attention...so a question to those of you who have dealt with interior trim repairs before (it's a new field for me). Are these things that a specialist would be able to repair, and if so is it likely to be at a reasonable cost? I've never really had a car where it was worth asking questions like this before!
Rear seat has three spots where the stitching is failing. From previous experience with XJ6s, I think there is an element of "they all do that sir" because the thread used in the stitching isn't all that great.
That last one is probably the most important to me as it's really clearly visible from outside the car.
The driver's seat also has a spot where the backrest adjuster lever has rubbed a hole in the side of the seat base. Again I suspect this is something that virtually every XJ-S owner has to deal with at some point just due to the seat base design.
Also there's a bit of wear to the backrest bolster on the same seat - though I'm more willing to just mark this up as the inevitable battle scars of 35 years and 78K miles, it's not really noticeable unless you're looking for it.
If it was going to be reasonably cheap to repair though I'd not say no.
These aren't things I'm going to lose sleep over, but it's probably the first car I've had where it's actually worth thinking about getting things like this looked at. In the long term they will add value, and will obviously make the car a nicer place to be (like having refinished the wood trim).
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Having had a look around for compressor motors I've not really found anything at a price that makes sense. Around £50 is the cheapest I found from a seller I even vaguely trust, and when Toolstation have an entire compressor of more or less identical ratings for £99.98 - that just doesn't stack up. So I'm continuing with my thought experiment about using the working hardware I have.
The idea that there was no real requirement for the receiver and compressor to necessarily be in the same place does raise some interesting ideas in terms of saving floor space in the garage, as it does take up quite a lot of room. There really isn't any reason though that it couldn't be elevated into the "dead" space around or above the garage door frame.
The tank drain valve has always been an utter pig to get at, so this would make it more likely to actually be drained weekly as it wouldn't involve me having to wheel the thing out of the garage, tip it on its side, getting the pliers out to unscrew it and then repeating the process in reverse to get it back inside.
I had always planned at some point to move the compressor itself somewhere else in the garage anyway and to pipe the air to somewhere near to the door...so it's just an expansion on that idea really.
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Did a bit more digging into the compressor today as curiosity got the better of me. I'd expected some sort of coupler between the motor and compressor...however it quickly became apparent that it's all one chunk.
Also became quickly apparent that the crankshaft seal has been leaking, the whole rotor is covered in sticky horrible oily gunge. I thought the golden colour was varnish or something - right up to the point where I touched it.
Getting the fan off the end of the shaft was an absolute pig of a job as it was clearly designed with a correctly sized, keyed fan in mind...however the manufacturer had literally just hammered one on there that was small enough that it was jammed in place. Getting it off as a result required no small amount of brute force.
The receiver isn't all that heavy in itself, so I think the idea of mounting it remote to the compressor is a decent one. Pressure switch, reg and water separator (not currently fitted) can be kept at eye level, and a drain down valve can also be remotely piped in. Reckon a pipe off the bottom of the tank and a ball valve will be more reliable long term than the fiddly arrangement it originally had anyway.
I reckon that the original compressor mounting brackets there may well even be well suited to secure it with (obviously I'd need to modify the outlet pipework, but we can deal with that).
It does take up a good old chunk of floor space so I like the idea of it being shoved somewhere properly out of the way.
At this point I was intending to tidy up from that before moving onto another job - however successfully sidetracked myself en route and still haven't remembered what I actually went into the garage to do in the first place. I stumbled across an ancient bottle of Auto Glym Bumper and Trim treatment which I think I've had since I worked at the garage (which I moved on from in 2005). This reminded me that I noted way back when I first picked it up that the plastics and bumpers on the Jag were looking really dull and lifeless. I didn't realise how bad they were until I started treating them.
I honestly thought that the strip under the radiator grill there was really grey until now!
These vents speak for themselves I think, this is where I started out and realised how badly the plastics needed some TLC.
This thing was a pig to do. In hindsight I should have pulled it off the car, would have been quicker I think.
Can see a few bits I need to go back to anyway. Also I'd always thought that grill was plastic...nope, it seems to actually be die cast aluminium based on the feel of it.
I always forget how much just treating all the plastics and bumpers can make a car look so much tidier.
The one bit of plastic I didn't touch is this one.
Reason being is that I want to go in with a tiny brush and touch in the lettering on the panel between the reversing lights. I'm not sure if this being silver or black is a HE/Pre-HE difference, but I prefer the look with the text standing out a bit. I've seen this panel all black like this, silver with black lettering on a couple of really early cars, and black with the lettering in satin silver. That's the look I'm going for.
The other bit of silver detailing I've seen on a couple of photos of early cars is on the surrounds around the instruments.
I'm guessing this was dropped as time went on as it saved a bit of time on the assembly line, and therefore a few pennies!
Like this (image grabbed from a classified listing somewhere - trade-classics judging from the image watermark - a while ago, and used purely for reference).
I know it's technically not correct for a HE, but I think that the silver detailing really looks nice and breaks up what is otherwise quite a big slab of black and helps define the border between the black and dark grey parts. I need to pull the panel again because the warning light for the rear fog lights has packed in (again, dodgy lamp holder), so might add a bit of early car detailing there. It fits with the overall black with silver piping theme outside too.
