1957 Mark 8 - at least it's the right age!

[rlane]

Pro:

Right age.
Aussie-made sunshade.
Big Twin-cam Inline-6 up front.
Original 5-speed! (sort-of: 4-speed + electric over-dive)
Full rego and I use it every week (almost daily driver)

Con:

It's a Pom!

Penance:

Wanting to find or build an FB/EK Wagon with modern mechanicals (V6 Commodore VS?) for the Mrs.

[EKjimmy]

i love old jags. you should be able to find a damn good EK to trade with that!

[rlane]

Queen Victoria is not for sale! :

I'm the 3rd owner, she's had 40,500 miles on the clock when I bought her a year ago, I've put another 2,500 on in about a year - which is ten times the mileage she's been doing for the last 30 years.

Never apart, never restored. The head's never even been off, compression is still spot-on. She has a Luminition electronic ignition fitted by owner #2, otherwise she's bog-stock and completely original.

I've rebuilt the front suspension completely, replaced the rear shocks. New carpet is on the boat from the UK and with the Aussie so strong I'm going to get a full set of body rubbers from the states.

I'll hide some Dynamat under the carpets to drop the noise levels a little, and do some tidying up of the inside and a detail under the bonnet.

Last upgrade is a set of 6.5 x 16 Coker Classic Radials with a fat 3-inch whitewall. They're raidial - but have the full 100% aspect ratio of cross-ply tyres and should drop steering effort by a fair bit.

[Trev]

Very nice, how would you go lowering it , Trev .

[Cal]

. The head's never even been off, compression is still spot-on.

Thats rare for a Jag

Lovely car

[rlane]

Very nice, how would you go lowering it , Trev .

No idea

It's the last separate chassis Jaguar - has a massive big cruciform thing - 6-8 inch section, boxed in, multiple cross-braces and a huge X-shaped brace across the main area. Chassis is thick enough to hold the drivetrain - there's no transmission tunnel behind the box, prop shaft runs inside the chassis.

Double-wishbone independent front end with torsion bars – front ride height is adjustable ex-factory.

Rear is a pretty standard live-axle (Salisbury) with semi-elliptic springs.

Telescopic shocks front and rear.

Biggest issue with dropping the ride height would be the massive rear overhang and the tire size: 16x6.5 is ken-huge.

. The head's never even been off, compression is still spot-on.

Thats rare for a Jag

Lovely car

Jaguar were still building decent cars back in the 50’s and 60s – this is when they were still winning tarmac rallies and endurance races like Le Mans – their stuff was bullet-proof. Just don’t ask about oil leaks... In the 50s they were still hand-matching pistons to the bores to get the tolerances right. In the 70s, they were still using the machinery from 1948 (bought second hand!) and they’d stopped hand-building engines and just blew the tolerances out so the things would fit together, however sloppily. They’d also bored the engine out from 3.4 litres to 4.2 with siamesed wet liners and changed the bore spacing but didn’t bother to alter the head, so the combustion chambers aren’t even centred over the bores... They also stopped bothering to flow the heads properly which meant the best 3.4 litre spec engines from 1958 were producing more real power than the 4.2 litre engines from the 1970s, regardless of what the spec-sheets may have been claiming.

1970s and British Leyland was when everything went to hell. Didn’t get better until F#rd bought them and upgraded everything to “F#rd” quality. With Jag prices....

Now Tata India own them...

I'll stick to 60's and earlier stuff when buying British, thank you very much...

[Cal]

Yeah, the 70's and 80's weren't Jaguar's best years. The thing that irked me with Jag, is how they had to make everything over complex. A work of art to look at, but impractical and a pain in the arse (and expensive) to work on.

I still remember the mate who had an XJS (over 20 years ago). They wanted 6 grand to do the head gaskets on the V12 . For the same money he got a 350 Chev V8 dropped in. The thing had more power, drank less fuel, and he actually had to lower the front, as the Chev was lighter than the Jag V12, even though the V12 had such things like fuel injection and overhead cams.

Jag were already using the T400 gearbox, so it was quite an easy swap.

[bootlegger]

Ive got a 3.4 litre dry sumped race engine out of an old hydro. Its supposed to have ac type head. I'm hunting a triple webber manifold. Someone stole the carbs and I'm trying to replace them to put back into a hydro that will be a recreation of grace walkers "dianne". She is one of my boat racing heros.
Ive also got a v12 daimler quietly rusting in my yard.

[rlane]

I'm hunting a triple webber manifold.

They're available new - about US$800 for a bare manifold. Over $3,000 with carbs, fuel rail, linkages, etc. Mostly built for 3.8/4.2 litre engines, I'd expect a 3.8 litre version to be pretty easy to adapt to a 3.4 - the 4.2 will be more difficult.

http://www.classicjaguar.com/webers.htm

http://www.xks.com/shop/jaguar/ACCDetai ... catID=5271

I've found www.xks.com to be very helpful, though a little slow to respond to emails.

[bootlegger]

Thanks for that. Im really hoping to find a home made one.
Like I said I'm trying to replicate them on a racing hydroplane and I'm pretty sure they made everything themselves. I have the webbers.
I even have a six amal set up. Im not even gonna try and put them on. Tuning them would be a nightmare

[Stygian]

I even have a six amal set up. Im not even gonna try and put them on. Tuning them would be a nightmare

Dave,
A short story. There was a 1930s British raciong car driver and builder called Freddie Dixon. His 6 cylinder Riley specials frequently beat the factory Riley team cars at events such as Brooklands. He ran either 6 Amal or SU carbs - one for each cylinder - which worked very well with the Riley's 12 port crossflow hemi head. Thing was, no-one knew what his tuning secrets were until after he retired. How he balanced all those carbs was to get the race car in his shed after warming it up and taking the exhaust manifold off. He made the shed as dark as possible and then started the engine. He would then tune and balance the carbs such that all the flames coming out of the exhaust ports (there were 6 of these of course) were all of equal length.
If I remember rightly this was in a book on pre-war Rileys that has long gone out of print (my father is a Riley enthusiast and he has a copy).
Andrew

[rlane]

I even have a six amal set up. Im not even gonna try and put them on. Tuning them would be a nightmare

My dad has a 1960s V12 Ferrari.

With six twin-choke Webers on it. One choke per cylinder.

It is apparently a little challenging to balance the carbs...

Looks and sounds awesome, however.

[bootlegger]

I even have a six amal set up. Im not even gonna try and put them on. Tuning them would be a nightmare

Dave,
A short story. There was a 1930s British raciong car driver and builder called Freddie Dixon. His 6 cylinder Riley specials frequently beat the factory Riley team cars at events such as Brooklands. He ran either 6 Amal or SU carbs - one for each cylinder - which worked very well with the Riley's 12 port crossflow hemi head. Thing was, no-one knew what his tuning secrets were until after he retired. How he balanced all those carbs was to get the race car in his shed after warming it up and taking the exhaust manifold off. He made the shed as dark as possible and then started the engine. He would then tune and balance the carbs such that all the flames coming out of the exhaust ports (there were 6 of these of course) were all of equal length.
If I remember rightly this was in a book on pre-war Rileys that has long gone out of print (my father is a Riley enthusiast and he has a copy).
Andrew

I bet this guy Frddie Dixon was a mechanic in the RAF. In my Rolls Merlin Manual they describe tuning the carb in the field the same way. Luckily the carb in my Merlin had just been done on a flow bench before I bought it.

I restored a 49 Riley Roadster for a guy a few years ago.

[rlane]

What on earth are you doing with a Merlin?

Dad had a Meteor (tank version) crated up for a few years, but we couldn't work out what to do with it, so he sold it on. Only thing we could think of was a boat, but the running costs would have been astronomical. Meteors were only good for about 600 HP as well.

[bootlegger]

You tube type in aggressor 10 starts 10 wins or dave on collectors and yeah the costs are astronomical.
Every run is $1000 and thats if nothing breaks.
Im rebuilding the engine at the moment as exactly that happened. I hope to have it running again by the end of the year.
.