Electrical excitement.

 As it always goes with these large projects, I'd finally thought about the electrical system long enough, and done enough staring at wiring diagrams, to get in and have a go at the last of the really big modifications- the wiring harness.
 The new engine and ECU needed a few connections from the Jaguar to be hooked up. The main ones were switched power to the ECU and ignition module/engine itself and a new starter circuit. I could've used the existing Jaguar starter circuit, but the Holden V8 has the starter on the other side of the engine bay and I didn't want to run wires across from the existing relay as it would've been messy. The stock Jaguar wiring harness on the RH side of the engine bay only seems to have run the starter, brake warning circuits, alternator and a few engine connections, which I think were oil pressure/ coolant etc.There was the big EFI harness but that's now gone. I think I can remove about 70% of the wires on that side of the engine bay now, it's all over on the LH side.
 I'm also taking advantage of the Holden ECU to trigger cooling fans, the stock program turns the fans on at 91c, as determined by the engine coolant sensor in the Holden ECU system. This trigger point can be changed with a new tune if I ever desire to do that, which may happen in the future, long after the car is running and sorted out! The ECU can also command fans on with aircon compressor, but I will just wire that off the A/C compressor. Less wiring, less connections to go wrong and simpler.
 So, I needed to provide four relays for the new systems. One for starter, one to power ECU, one for Ignition module (I could've piggybacked the EFI relay, but two separate circuits make things easier in the future) and another relay for a new dual cooling fan setup. I'm not going to reuse the Jaguar electric fan system, it only powers one smaller fan and the wiring is old, so new relay and power to the fans. I'm already running wiring so no big deal! Back of the new relay block:

 Front of relay block, half finished:

 There's also a fuse block going in next to the relays to take care of the power supplies for fans, ECU, ignition module and a couple of spare blocks for future expansion.
 The sensor sub harness of the engine needed shortening a little, all wires were cut, soldered & heat shrinked so I could forget about those joints forever:

 I also went out and bought a new battery a few days ago and dropped that into the cradle. It needed modifying of course. The bottom flange of the battery is designed to be bottom clamped and is just a little too wide for the battery tray. Some gentle trimming fixed that.
 The fuel pump and it's relay are all wired up now and I have also run a 5 core cable up to the fuel pump/ rear battery area, one wire is the fuel pump trigger from the ECU and the other four are for any possible future expansion. Remember, I removed the complete Jaguar ECU and harness from the boot, so the only wiring past the rear seat now are tail lights, main power and fuel tank sender, so a few extra wires may be needed in the future. With the ECU triggering the fuel pump, I no longer need the Jaguar inertia switch as the ECU will only run the pump for two seconds after it loses an ignition signal, so no need for it for crash safety. More clumps of wires and relays I can remove from the car.

 And the finished battery and fuel pump area. Ended up reasonably tidy, unfortunately that was the only place I could mount the pump. It has two rubber mounting points so should be pretty quiet. I might fashion a light plywood box for the battery and pump, depends how bad it looks with the rest of the boot finished. As I said before, all the fuel line is now E85 rated and 250psi line, should be no problems well into the future:
Went a little overboard with the earth straps, but as the XJS has a long cable run from the boot, I wanted to reduce resistance as much as possible. Plus, EFI engines like lots of earth points for consistent voltage for correct sensor readings etc. I have about 600 amps of ground strap capability, battery is only good for 540 amps, so covered for any corrosion in the future. There will also be another earth strap off the transmission extension housing for the transmission electrics, so well covered for earths!:

 Two earth straps run from the firewall, one to a cylinder head, one to a bell housing bolt. The third runs from alternator bracket to LH front swaybar bracket. This ensures a good earth for both alternator and front lights.
 It's getting a little crowded on the LH side firewall, but some conduit and tidying up will make it look better. Not that stock XJS wiring is particularly neat anyway! That brass hose elbow is the fuel return, I've run the steel lines up and away from the engine:

  Of course, I have also decided to replace the headlight fuse block, like everyone else does. I looked at it, thought it would be OK, then once the new fuse block went in at the firewall, it looked terrible. Plus, all the plastic terminal covers were disintegrating in my fingers.
A quick video of the engine cranking over. Spins nice and fast, definitely no resistance in the system:

 So for aesthetics, consistency and reliability, I got rid of the ancient corroded fuse block and replaced it:

 The exhaust is also slowly coming along. After searching for at least six months, I have realized there is a huge over supply of RH front muffflers, but LH mufflers are non existent. So, I bought another RH muffler from the same guy I bought the other one off and set about cutting the outlet off, flipping the muffler over and making it an LH muffler:

 It was actually a lot simpler than I anticipated. The OEM mufflers are good, heavily made units and galvanized as well. The engine pipes are also now in their final location and have flanges welded onto them, so I can now mount rear mufflers and cut the intermediate pipes to size and finish that off. The flanges and cats look like they hang a long way down. but they are no worse than factory. I'm not sure about having enough clearance for the flanges. If they hit in operation, I'll go to inline clamps or similar:

 The shifter cable is also hooked up after some bracket making. This bracket simply bolts up to the back end of the transmission oil pan using two existing bolt holes and two longer bolts:

 These photos aren't great, but you can sort of see the bracket in there:

 And while I was there, a photo of the stock XJS right angle speedo adapter screwed right onto the TH700 transmission. It's great that GM kept everything standard across so many transmissions!

 I still need to put a pulse generator for the ECU on there, but there's more than enough room there to do it now. I also have to run the three wires to the torque converter/ 4th gear/ trans temperature switches on the side of the gearbox and will make these and the speedo signal into a sub harness for ease of future maintenance. The trans temp sensor locks out 4th gear and overdrive when cold and also allows the ECU to "baby" the gearbox if the trans temp gets too high by unlocking the converter and dropping overdrive out. The ECU will also do all the locking and unlocking of the converter once it has the speedo signal, plus it will go into a lean cruise mode using the speedo signal. All in all, it's better to wire in the speedo signal than use an aftermarket switch as you get many driving benefits from the speedo signal, with just as many wires to hook up as using an aftermarket lock up converter kit.

 Plenty more to do, stay tuned!

Pass the plate.

The steel plate that is!

I simply traced the old bottom plate, drilled out the holes, cut off some bits and offered it up to verify it would fit:

The stock bottom plate on the IRS was toast being cracked at two corners, bent all over the place and generally in a very sad condition. It had also been welded at some stage and I was shocked how flimsy it actually was when I started dressing it back into shape:

So a trip to the local metal yard had me return with some 4mm plate and I set to it with the trusty 100mm angle grinder. Do not under estimate what a 100mm grinder can do, especially if you have a lot of spare cutoff wheels on hand! Yes a plasma cutter etc is best, but for a one off, it worked just fine.
 I've also added a bracket on the front of the plate for a torque/reaction link that will run to the floor of the car and a rear bracket for jacking the car up. As the plate is 4mm, I can't forsee any issues jacking under the IRS. The torque link is so I don't end up with a repeat of pretzel IRS cage in the future.
 The bracket that will hold the front of the torque link to the body will also double as an intermediate exhaust hanger to hake the weight of the rear mufflers. Jaguar felt it necessary to add an exhaust bracket in this location on later cars and Aston Martin also thought it necessary, so I'll put one there. It will also allow me to tie the two exhaust intermediate pipes together at that spot, making everything a bit more rigid.

The old plate and the new:

The rear suspension cradle is finally in place and I have the radius arms etc all hooked up:

One rear hub has been assembled and measured for the correct shim, the other, I'm waiting on a second hand outer hub to arrive as the old one had seen the bearing race spin on it and make the bearing surface undersize. Someone has previously attempted to restore the hub to the correct size by whacking it with various punches, chisels etc, but it was still too far undersize.
I've hooked up the rear brake hydraulic line and handbrake cable as well:

  Wiring has also been run through the side footwell for the GM ECU. There is only single skin in this area, it is protected from the elements and there is enough room on the inside for the ECU and any extra wiring hook ups needed. Of course, once it is all installed, the harness will be taped and protected with conduit, but final routing hasn't been done in the engine bay as yet and I may need to snake a couple of extra wires through the firewall:

 Some cool parts have also arrived recently, but no photos of them at the moment. I have a brand new shifter cable, speedo cable and found a good used 90 degree speedo drive for the gearbox.
Also have a fair chunk of the exhaust system here ready to modify and fit. I'm going with NOS parts up to the rear mufflers, then have a pair of nice stainless hotdogs I picked up cheap.
 As you may know, rear mufflers always rust out first due to them running the coldest and collecting the most condensation on shorter trips.
 But all that cool, fiddly stuff will have to wait until next update when I get some photos and do some more work!

Rear ended.

 The XJS has been the attention of plenty of work the last couple of months. I've even surprised myself with how much has been done. I've been getting smarter with ordering parts and ensuring a good lead time for them to arrive. I've also been setting things up so I have a few things on the go at once, so when parts arrive for one, I can keep going on that whilst I wait for other parts to arrive. Another little trick that has helped is trying to get a small task done one evening a week.
 If you have ever disassembled a Jaguar IRS, you'll know there are a lot of sub assemblies that need to be reconditioned before you can start reassembly.
 As you know in my last post, I had straightened and reinforced the rear suspension cage. Once that was done, it got thoroughly cleaned & painted in an epoxy mastic I bought from Rust Buster: http://www.rust.co.uk/epoxy-mastic-rust-proofing-paint/c28117/ 
It's pretty tough paint, but it is definitely not a coating I'd recommend to someone new to painting. Unthinned it is far too thick to flow well when brushing and when thinned enough to brush well, it has poor coverage.
However, it does spray very well with a gravity fed gun, but is very sensitive to being thinned just the right amount. I'd probably opt for their fuel tank coating if I wanted to paint anything I'd ever see regularly and wasn't hidden under the car.
 Having said all that though, you can see the finish you can achieve is more than good enough for underneath a car!
 Anyway, here are some photos of the painted cage and lower arms:

And here's a photo of the cage, lower arms and unpainted half shafts (minus the outboard ends, which are off so I can set bearing end float in hubs) You can also see the unpainted trailing arms top left of photo- they have had new bushes pressed in and just need paint:

My phone hasn't been coping well with high contrast and low light shots lately, so I apologize for some of these photos. Having the sun coming into the garage of an afternoon makes for lousy photos and I'm too impatient to wait to take photos of a morning!
 Next up were the rear calipers. They got new pistons, seals & a coat of paint:

Of course, nothing on a 40 year old car is quite that simple! Some nice person before me had stripped out the threaded holes for the hand brake caliper pins on one caliper.After plenty of thinking, I bit the bullet & bought a UNF helicoil kit to repair them. I am absolutely sure I'll need more helicoils as I go along.
 Helicoils are dead simple to use, I won't bore you with a how-to, there are plenty online, but here are some photos:

Helicoil assortment kit. The more helicoils you buy at once, the cheaper they become. I liked this kit as it included nice HSS drill bits and came in a steel case. I'll own it forever.
And the helicoils in their new home. I was initially concerned about getting the hole I had to drill for the helicoils dead straight, but the bottom hole the handbrake pivot pin sits in is quite oversize so is very forgiving of misalignment :

New stainless handbrake pins (with a little white lithium grease to ease assembly):

New springs and lock tabs:

Once that was done, it was on to the differential. The carrier bearings were fine, but the front pinion race had some light pitting, so I replaced it. Do not believe anyone online who tells you that it is easy to collapse a new collapsible spacer onto a pinion gear just using the nut to torque it down- it is IMPOSSIBLE! You need to put so much torque through the nut the levers become unworkably long & the thread just isn't designed for that. I used my press and it took a LOT of pressure to do it correctly.
 Anyway, rant over!
I also replaced the output shaft inner and outer bearings and seals. This is a straight forward job, but has a definite process needed so you don't end up backtracking.
 First step is to drive out the bearing races out of the hub & drive new ones in:

Then drop the outer tapered roller bearing. Both inner and outer bearings are identical, so you can't get them wrong:

Install new seal. I coated my seals with a bit of aviation gasket as the bores were old and scored:

Then drive the seals in flush. It is important to get the seals flush as we don't want the seals to be too far out and riding on the radius of the output shafts-they'll leak if that happens:

Once that was done, we could install the output shaft into the outer bearing. here is the output shaft ready to go, a little grease on the seal area to prevent seal damage. I use a white lithium grease in a spray can, it's so easy to use and keeps everything including my hands nice and clean!:

Once that was done, we can press the output shaft into the outer bearing. I made a short video to demonstrate how easy the press makes things. Previously I would've been doing this in a vise with gigantic hammers and a lot of swearing, this makes it so much easier!:

 Once that was done, it was a matter of dropping the new crush sleeve onto the shaft, then the new inner bearing:

 Using the press, I then loaded the bearings and collar up until I got the right preload, then tightened the shaft nut from underneath the press. Simple, neat, no swearing and foolproof:

Job done:

 I don't have any photos of assembling the lower arms into the cradle, but it's a tricky job. Not so much aligning everything, but getting the fulcrum shafts through everything as the friction builds up means you need to tap them in with a hammer and watch how everything is going.
 I also decided to buy the bronze bushing kit for the lower arm pivot points from Classic Jaguar http://classicjaguar.com/cjparts/systembronze.php
As you can see, they are absolutely beautifully made and fit just as well as they look!

Don't worry- once you price up a kit for all new bearings, spacers and then work out the time needed to shim it all up, you'll end up realising these bushes are great value!
So, the rear suspension and differential, as of today, is at this point. Diff in, lower arms in, brakes done. All it needs now is for me to finish the outer hubs, then install the shocks and half shafts.I think I'll install the outer hubs and halfshafts in the car. It will make the rear end much lighter to handle and those parts are easily done on the car. I'll hang the shocks before the cage goes into the car though:

 As you can see, I also splurged on an aluminium rear cover in the hopes it'll keep the differential a bit cooler. This brand new piece was half the price of what wreckers ask for used Jaguar alloy covers! It also has a much better breather setup, allowing me to run a hose off the cover into a loop, reducing the chances of oil blowing out as is common on Jaguar differentials:

 I should also mention that one of the brand new handbrake pads I bought disbonded merely under the force of installing the brake calipers over the new rotors. They weren't even a tight fit at the time. So I had to buy new handbrake pads and install them in cage. You may wish to avoid Powauto handbrake pads....
 The fuel tank is also in and completely plumbed up with my E85 friendly lines:

A few things to note; that kinked inlet line to the pump has been replaced with a 180 degree AN fitting, the new pump is  a Bosch 044 which was about the same price as a stock replacement, but offers much more scope for any future modifications, and a Bosch 044 will NO WAY fit in the stock pump location!
 I made a simple bracket that hangs off the battery tray for the pump and it's a nice spot for it. Out of the way.
 Also, the stock hard lines with rubber links in them can easily be converted to new rubber by simply cutting off the old band clamps, installing new hose and using proper EFI clamps. I didn't want to go to all the trouble of renewing the fuel system and have those tiny bits of 40 year old rubber be my undoing!
 Rear brakes:
 The rear caliper bolts are a royal pain to install and may well partially strip on you when installing them. I didn't need to do this, but the new aftermarket rotors you buy now have an access hole that aligns with the outboard end of the caliper bolts. When I need to remove the calipers in the future, I will drill out the threaded sockets for the caliper bolts in the output shaft carrier, install the bolts from the disc side through the caliper and put nuts on the inboard end.
 It eliminates the threads in the output shaft carrier and means you only need to fit a nut inboard between diff housing and calipers, not a whole bolt!
 I've also bought some new, stock replacement intermediate exhaust pipes for the car and have one new old stock over axle pipe and front muffler. I need to chase up a RH over axle pipe and a LH front muffler. I won't fit rear mufflers till I hear how loud the car is, it probably won't need them.

The last of the dirty work.

 As seems to be the way, I have had a bit burst of enthusiasm for the XJS the last couple of months.
 With the rear suspension in the car, I was able to measure up for a driveshaft. I had it made by Denny's Driveshaft in the US. All the local driveshaft guys wanted to tell me what the driveshaft had to do- they all wanted to have half the slip yoke hanging out and build it out of 3" tube for example. It told me they had no idea!
 Considering I want this car to be reliable and at least as refined as new, I went with Denny's. They provided everything from the slip yoke to the differential flange, assembled with premium Spicer long life universal joints. I can't say enough good things about Denny's, the whole process was simple and they replied to my emails very quickly. The result was a perfect fitting (and great looking) driveshaft, made on the other side of the world and in my hands within 14 days of order:

Once the driveshaft was trial fit and confirmed, it was out with the rear suspension cage.
I pulled the extension housing off the TH700 trans to change to a mechanical speedo gear, change the speedo ratio, replace the rear seal and replace the driveshaft yoke bush. There's no point running a nice new driveshaft with an old bush, the slop wears the slip yoke quickly, and the play makes the rear seal leak.
I used some online calculators to arrive at the correct speedo gears, I also took a guess at the revolutions the Jaguar speedo should turn (there is an industry standard that this model Jaguar may conform to, or not, we'll see!).
You can see the speedo gear here in green, it is held onto the shaft by being a tight fit and also by a spring clip which engages a hole in the output shaft.The gear selector lever also looks like it will work perfectly with the TH700 transmission, the speedo cable is a drop in to the TH700, luckily GM kept many things the same on the TH400/TH700!:

Once the extension housing was done and reinstalled, I pulled the rear end out of the cage and set to work
removing the rear brakes, output shafts etc. There's no point being this close to the output shaft seals and not replacing them. I'm currently waiting for seals and crush sleeves for the output shafts and pinion shaft:

 A word of warning: the differential as you see it above, weighs 71ks. Do not even try and lift it unless you know exactly what you are doing, use a hoist, jack or a friend. I am used to lifting very heavy weights and due to it's shape, it was all I could do to just barely get this thing onto the bench- I had nothing left to give!
Of course, to get to the pinion seal, the centre section and ring gear need to come out. I don't get why people say Jaguar rear ends are weak, look at the size of the thing:

The output shaft bearings I already have, they are identical to a very common front wheel bearing on a very popular car here in Australia. Easy choice, bearings to fit "Jaguar" at $20+ each, or premium Koyo Ford Falcon inner wheel bearings at $9.50 each!
 Here I am using the press to knock the shafts out:

I also have a cast aluminium differential cover to go on to help dissipate heat and a couple of metal brake shields off another car I am hoping to modify and fashion to fit between the rotors and differential on the Jag, to reduce radiant heat moving into the differential in the hopes of a longer service life from the seals.

 The battery tray has also received some attention. Acid had created a corrosion issue. I didn't want to buy a new tray or cobble up some aftermarket piece, so as the stock one was still structurally very sound, I ground/wire wheeled out all the rust I could get to, soaked the whole tray in a mild alkaline solution to neutralise any acidic corrosion still going on, then laid in 4 layers of 6oz chopped strand mat and polyester resin. More than strong enough and acid proof!
Luckily no one sees the underside once the tray is in. The white bits are left over masking tape that need to come off. I masked all the holes over from underneath so I had a firm surface to work with when laminating:

I was in a fortunate position to have two fuel tanks to choose from. My better half gave me a really handy borescope camera for christmas, so I used it to peer inside and see which of the tanks was in better condition. Internally, they were almost identical, with surface corrosion but no major issues.
I chose the one out of the parts car as the black tank I had out of the current car had been repair ed in some way along the bottom.
 After I stripped the green parts car fuel tank, I found out why the black tank had been repaired- the fuel tanks rust from the outside in! The tank was chemically stripped of paint, sanded then treated with phosphoric acid in preparation for the epoxy and after that the epoxy etch primer.
 This epoxy is used as an internal tank liner for leaking tanks. It sticks like mad to coarse steel and pitted, rusty steel. Of course, nothing sticks to loose, scaling rust, so as with anything, preparation is key. The tank also received a coating of the eopxy internally to the base of the tank. The white patches are some epoxy filler over the few small pinholes the tank had.
 I was surprised how much the single layer of woven rovings stiffened up the base of the fuel tank. With the bad corrosion it had, it was quite soft and would oil can readily when pushed, the rovings stopped that completely. I used the rovings just to give the resin more body and to prevent the resin layer from cracking, but the extra stiffness was a huge bonus.
 This is after the bottom of the tank received a layer of woven rovings and phenol novolac epoxy resin. If you look closely, you can see the outline along the edges where I've sanded the edge of the fibreglass back. 

  And this is the main and surge tank just after stripping:

 Whilst the rear end was out, I cut and fitted some heat shielding. The product is called Zero Clearance, it has a heavy embossed aluminium face, then an insulating layer of fibreglass and ceramic mat, then an ultra strong adhesive. I'm using it as a substitute to the stock, heavy, bulky, FLAMMABLE masonite and fibreglass shields. The Zero Clearance, as the name suggests, can be used with no air gap if necessary although in practice, an air gap is easy to achieve. The makers claim it can also briefly withstand naked flame, which it should be able to with the solid aluminium face. I really like the stuff.
 It is super easy to work, cutting with shears or a sharp knife (several passes needed) works very well. I've used a few washers and rivets in strategic places to keep it in place, the adhesive is great, but a few extra fasteners never hurt:

The rear suspension cage was also pretty warped. Remember, this cage came from the donor car which had previously had some sort of engine swap. There were obvious signs of it having a hard life, with some serious buckling here and there. None of the edges of the cage were straight and there were a couple of small cracks developing near some of the cut outs. Most alarmingly, a crack had developed out of one of the four top bolt holes securing the differential to the cradle. Bent flanges:

The way the cage has bent has clearly reinforced my belief that the front of the cradle wants to rotate and climb upwards under hard acceleration, the cage had warped and bent in that direction. So I decided to straighten the cage and reinforce it with some 20mm, 3mm wall angle.
The process was simple enough- cut the angle and trim it to fit around the various places, then starting at one end, tack weld, then clamp along the flange, heating, bending and whacking with a mallet as I moved along the flange. It has worked very well, The cage has now gone from being 50mm too narrow across the bottom plate opening when relaxed, to spot on. Cage stiffness is also WAY higher, with only about 25-30mm of flex when separated across the bottom by hand, previously I could easily open it 150mm:

The repair looks fairly neat which I really wanted. I need to open up the small cutouts around the lower plate and control arm pivots a little with the die grinder, but overall has been very successful. I'm in the middle of deciding what to do with the bottom plate as it is as badly warped as the cage was. I want to run a torque link forward off it to the floor pan, I'm currently designing a bottom plate to have laser cut, it will be about 4-5mm steel so it is strong and can be welded to. A side bonus is to use it as a jack point.
 The half shafts have also been rebuilt, but no photos of them yet. I wire wheeled them free of all paint and they have new UV joints in them now. The hub ends have been left off to ease rebuilding of the hub carriers, all the half shafts need now is a final clean and paint, but that can wait till I have other parts to paint.
 I'm still undecided as to whether I should reinforce the lower arms, Aston Martin deemed it necessary and the racers swear it makes the car more stable. I'll think about that!