1988 Jaguar XJ40 Sovereign 3.6 light resto

[kamilb1998]

Some pics from today, made a start on re-lacquering the wood...

[Adam43]

It is coming along nicely...

[JPB]

There's a lot of varnish on isn't there? A photo could be making it look deeper and wetter than it is, but if that's as thick as it looks, you may need to wait some few months before you can flat it.
The finished job would then be stunningly shiny though. Great stuff, keep at it.

[kamilb1998]

Haven't updated this thread for aaaaaaaaages. The old beast started to run rough, nearly overheated, spat loads of water out of the exhaust (first time its ever done that to me) and blew out huge puffs of white smoke this led me to think that the HG had failed. I ordered a genuine Jaguar top end gasket kit from Black Country Jaguar for £62 instead of £120 from a Jag dealers and got to work! I had one of the neighbours help me undo the tight head bolts, exhaust manifold nuts & gave me a hand getting the heavy head out of its awkward position. It took 3 months to get it running but only because I couldn't work on it for about 7/8 weeks from those 3 months and things like school got in the way. Anyway, I got the car going last Monday but the chain tensioner decided to crack and piss oil out over the engine bay & our driveway. I'm ordering a replacement on Friday and it should be with me at some point next week.

Some pictures;

[kamilb1998]

The eBay chain tensioner (one of the revised ones) arrived along with some Instant Gasket yesterday. I got it fitted today and I can safely say that Oliver is now properly fixed! I was a little nervous at first because there was smoke coming out from the exhaust manifold area at first but I had a look and it turned out to just be some oil left over on the manifold from when the tensioner let go, but I got him up to temperature and he stayed at a steady 90 degrees. I drove him up and down the close a couple of times and the power steering has come back, but the brake pedal has a little more travel than I remember it to.

[Adam43]

Did you do any work over Christmas?

[kamilb1998]

Did you do any work over Christmas?

Apologies for the late reply.

Not so much over Christmas, but just before Christmas I changed a leaky power steering pipe;

[Adam43]

Mine used to leak power steering fluid. It was a result of my own numptiness. I topped up with the wrong fluid, I used regular power steering fluid