Chipping away

I've been getting the annoying, dirty jobs done. Nothing really exciting to see, but will detail progress nonetheless.
The sill is about 95% to how I want it now, it's almost lined up and square. I think I'll cut a front outer skin off another car for this area just to tidy it up and save some time. I could continue to knock it out, but it's quite thick sheet.

 I also managed to get the boot floor straightened out, welded up and that allowed me to remove the fuel tank. Amazing the difference 10mm to the axle hump height made when it came to removing the fuel tank! To remove the tank, you MUST remove the bolt in boot gutter supports. I want to weld these back in when they go in, so I am looking at ways to make the forward supports removable and leaving the angle pieces that run down the boot gutters in place. Also managed to get the crusty old towbar off the car. The boot just needs a good wire brushing and clean up, some seam sealer and it's ready for paint.

I've also removed the side window and C pillar trim/decorative panels. No rust there fortunately. Pretty straightforward removal, although aluminium rivets were used to assemble, meaning the rivets had all but corroded away. There was also a severe lack of sealant around the rivets where they'd been seated, reassembly with Duralac and butyl mastic will eliminate corrosion and any chance of leakage.

 And I'm still waiting on the replacement floor panels. I've got a supplier lined up in Melbourne, but communicating with them is like using carrier pigeons. I'll never understand businesses who want to use websites or Ebay to sell products, yet don't respond to electronic communications!
 You can see the floors here, they would make quite good colanders. One of the only issues I have with Jaguar's assembly and materials selection is the way the soundproofing on the floors was done.
 I'm also pretty sure I need to replace the front torque box/jack support under the front floor on the damaged side, it just looks ratty, so I'll appropriate a part off the future parts car for this as well.
 Here are the holy floors.

 

Porta POWER!

This is a Porta power:

It's a hand powered hydraulic ram. The large cylinder with the hand pump is just a reservoir, the other cylinder is a 10 ton ram. The kit comes with a whole bunch of odd shaped attachments and extensions to allow precise positioning of the ram against the affected area.
Here's how you use it:

Set the ram up against the damaged area, ensuring the other end of the ram is up against a strong part of the body. I used the rear box section at the boot, with a large piece of steel to spread the load. I also kept the ram low down towards the boot floor, so the boot floor would take the load in shear and reduce rear bulkhead distortion. What you are trying to do is set the ram up so it pushes in the opposite direction of the force that caused the crease. You don't want to merely force the bumps down, but move the whole area back into position.
 What you do then, is pump a little until the creases start to disappear. You don't want to go too far in one spot or you'll do further damage. You know the creases have gone as far as they will go when they stop flattening out. Then you move on to the next area. With these creases in the bulkhead, I moved left and right with the ram, keeping the flat end of the ram down against the existing body crease. As I worked it back and forth, the creases slowly decreased.
Once you get to a stage where pushing the ram starts moving the whole panel, then start slowly dressing down the high crease spots with a hammer, whilst load is still applied. I also use a piece of bar stock to hammer down onto existing body creases, to help redefine the panel shapes and build the stiffening back in that the creases provide to the panels.
This is as far as I can go with the Porta power and hammer, this stage, with the Porta power and coarse hammering is known as "roughing out". I will progress to a hammer and dolly once I get my propane torch back to help settle the creases down. I also need to weld a couple of body seams back up, it's common for the Porta power to pop spotwelds here and there, so I can't get the final shape till I weld all the seams back up.
Even at this stage you can see a big difference!

 Now I've got my eye back in with this simple repair, I'll tackle the quarter panel tomorrow and maybe start on the sill, that's going to be the tricky one!

Obtaining an engine.

 I hadn't planned to buy an engine so soon, but one came up VERY cheap locally. I thought about it a few days and decided to buy it.

 The engine is a Holden 5 litre V8. As you can see, I got it with all front accessories, ECU, wiring harness and transmission.

I had to do a trial fit, to make sure it would fit. I was worried about how wide the front accessories sat, particularly the alternator and power steering pump. But my worries were unfounded. Even with the engine sitting way too low and tilted too far tail down, there is plenty of front room and plenty of exhaust room.

 Even the bonnet clearance looks like it will be fine.

The transmission is a TH700R4 4 speed auto and is a pre computer controlled version, so all I need to hook up is a switch for torque converter lockup. The Holden V8 is multi point injected and makes about 50 ft/lbs more torque than the V12, despite being smaller in displacement.
 The Holden it came out of had a 3.08 diff ratio, the XJS will be 3.55. So I am assuming that with the much shorter first gear in the 4 speed auto, shorter diff ratios and more torque, it should be a good match and will likely be faster than a V12 powered car, and get much better economy with the overdriven top gear. The new engine and transmission is also around 100kg lighter than the old combination.
 Plus I won't have to look at the temperature gauge every two minutes as if it were a V12!
 Jaguar used GM automatic transmissions in the V12 cars (Turbo 400) and I'm reliably informed that the shifter will bolt right up to the transmission and converting the electronic speedometer drive on the transmission will be as simple as using factory GM parts as well. Even the tailshaft yoke should slide right in. Tailshaft will probably not be the correct length though.
 The plan is to do all the body repairs and keep an eye out for a cheap donor car for suspension crossmembers etc. Then when I have the rear and front crossmembers, I can fit the engine in, make up engine mounts, wire the engine up and ensure it will all work. Then I will remove everything again, paint the body and engine bay and refit it all. This will hopefully minimise the amount of damage to the body fitting the engine may cause.
 Once the engine is finally back in I will tidy up all the wiring in the car, including engine swap and ensure it all works before I work on the interior. This will allow me full access to behind the dash and to run any wiring I need.
 By using the original Holden wiring harness and ECU, I can take advantage of a few things. The Holden ECU will trigger electric fans, it will engage the air conditioning clutch (and automatically provide idle up at the same time) and also has an immobiliser signal terminal, so I can wire up a simple aftermarket remote door lock kit and automatically immobilise the car at the same time. By using the Holden ECU for air conditioning, I can also bypass the sometimes troublesome Jaguar airconditioning unit, all I need is for the Jaguar aircon switch to signal the Holden ECU when it wants the compressor to run.
 The best part about the Holden ECU wiring is that it's complete. All it needs from the Jaguar is a few ground points and a couple of constant 12v and switched 12v inputs.

Setting up for the project.

I had decided before I even bought the car to run some sort of V8 engine. If you're a Jaguar purist, you'll go into your usual rant about how it's not a Jaguar anymore, I don't care. I specifically bought a shell that needed work and with no engine so I could fit a V8. Let's face it, it's unlikely anyone else would take this car on, so I've left one "pure" V12 powered car out there for someone else to spend countless dollars on that cranky V12 and wonder how a 5.3 litre engine can be so gutless. Seriously, 285 ft/lbs of torque out of a 5.3 litre engine? I know many sixes under four litres that crank that out.....
 To be honest, I think the XK engine is a far, far better engine and so is the AJ6. You have to wonder about the legendary V12, the 4 litre AJ6 engine can be within a half second of the V12 in acceleration figures....
 Anyway, spare me the lectures. I'll build a car with an engine that's more powerful, more reliable, cheaper to run and service and generally more enjoyable to drive.
 So here we are. I have stripped the shell and found the main problem areas. Both floors need replacing. I'm not at all worried about that as reproduction floor panels are cheap and readily available, as are genuine Jaguar parts for very reasonable prices.
 There is some minor rust low down in the quarter panels behind the wheels. Again, an easy fix.
 The rear parcel shelf is also a bit rusty due to a leaking rear windscreen, and so is the floor under the rear seat cushion. They are both easy repairs as well. The XJS has no rust around front or rear windscreens, no rust in the sills or the A pillars, so it's an excellent shell in that respect, and that alone makes this shell worth restoring!
 The big issues are the bot floor and the left hand front sill. The bozo I bough the car off dragged it around the paddock on it's floor and hit a few rocks etc. So I need to push these pieces out. They look bad, but the process is pretty straightforward.  I have the skills, my time is free and I know it will be worth it to have a nice, rust free strong shell.
 Here is the front of the sill I need to repair:

 As you can see, the rest of the shell is amazingly rust free, even up around the cowl where the front guard overlaps. They often rust up there.

 Here is the boot floor. Notice the crease in the left floor and bulkhead. This has also creased the floor under the fuel tank, so I can't remove the tank until I pop this crease back out. bashing on it with a mallet is NOT what you should do here, you need a Porta power. I will detail how to do that later when I get around to it.

Here's a photo inside the cabin, showing the floors. Yes, those bright white spots are holes! Jaguar used  a medium density foam with a bitumen layer over it under the floor on these cars to suppress sound, it worked well. Unfortunately it holds moisture and never dries out once wet. So you get the classic Jaguar floor pan rust.

 Jaguar also used foam backed aluminium sheet sound and heat insulation in the engine bay (thanks to that V12 creating a volcanic amount of heat, due to it's "efficiency"). It causes rust underneath wherever it touches metal, as can be seen on the angle running down from the firewall to the chassis rail. This rust isn't bad, it'll clean up as is.

I also made a cradle on casters so I could move the shell around in the garage and not have it getting in my way. This allows me to push it across out of the way when not working on it, drag it to the middle of the garage for plenty of working room and probably most importantly, allows me to easily clean up underneath after making a mess.

The beginning

 As with any cheap car, this one needed work. This work started when I went to pick the car up. I was promised there would be several people to help load the shell onto a trailer. When I got there, it was me and the owner. Two and three quarter hours of sweating, grunting and swearing later, the shell was finally persuaded onto the trailer and I got out of there!
 I should've taken some photos of the car's location, it was on a hill, covered in grass. I had to back the car trailer up to the front of it, but couldn't get any traction, so I ended up hand winching the trailer up the hill to the car. I very nearly walked away from it at this point!
 Here is the shell on it's way home behind my trusty old 740 Turbo:

 And here are some photos of the car after it was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the garage! That was fun too, lifted one end with the engine hoist and the other with my floor jack. Unfortunately my driveway is not a one piece slab, it's many smaller pieces that have been added over the years. So I'd get a few feet, have to stop, realign wheels etc. Hard work!
Here's the XJS, sitting pretty much just inside the door. I'd had enough by this stage!

 After I had the car in the garage (and let it sit a few days, I was buggered after moving the shell around!), I stripped out all the junk that the owner had thoughtfully dumped in the car (two wheelie bin's worth) and stripped all moving panels, wiring, bumpers etc that would be in the way of further work.
 It may not look like much, but all the important stuff is there. Wiring harness, fluid lines, dashboard etc. The rest can be easily obtained from sedans or another XJS.

How it all started.

 I've always liked Jaguars and particularly the XJS. I used to own a Series 3 Daimler Soverign and it was an excellent car. Very reliable, fantastic to drive and cheap to own. It was a daily driver as well, don't believe the Jaguar unreliability hype, the only thing that makes any car unreliable is the owner.
 This is my old Soverign:

 

 Unfortunately, there are two kinds of XJS for sale, the type that's really nice and worth the $15k the owner is asking, and the type with the quickie respray hiding rust, poorly maintained mechanicals and overpriced for all the work they still need.
 Now, I don't mind work, but I prefer to see what I'm getting in to, I don't like finding hidden rust or dodgey wiring.
 So I haven't been actively looking for an XJS, but I would occasionally do a bit of a search online and see what was for sale, indulge in a little dreaming, Little did I know that dreaming can be dangerous, as can an EBay account!
 An XJS shell came up for sale close to me, I had to have a look. It was rough, had been sitting in a field, but was honest, I could see what needed to be done and what didn't. Armed with previous knowledge of owning Jaguars, I knew the mechanical parts for this car could be obtained from any XJ sedan, as could a large percentage of the interior pieces, wiring etc. Considering rusty, non running XJ sedans sell for $500, I thought it was a good project.
 This is the poor old XJS in the field: