Body building

With the car right way up, things have been progressing fairly well.
I tidied up the insides of the floorpans, primed, seam sealed and sprayed them with gravel stop. Once the inside of the shell gets a couple of coats of urethane in body colour, those floors will be bulletproof! The metal work in the interior of the cabin is done now, so once I spray inside pillars, floors and roof, it'll be masked off till I complete all the exterior bodywork, just to make cleanup of all the dust from paint removal etc much easier.

I've also cut the lower quarter panel extensions off, the LH side was very rusty, RH side had been replaced before at some stage (with a genuine Jaguar panel). My conclusion on seeing both these panels is the factory did a very poor job of ensuring no rust in this area. None of the seams were sealed, either inside or out. So water, whether from inside or outside, could wick into the seams. If your car isn't rusty there right now, spray as much anti corrosive treatment of your choice as you can into this area as frequently as you can.

 Not only does this area get moisture from the rear tyres flicking up water, but if your fuel filler, rear window or side windows leak, the water will work it's way down the inner wheel arches into this area. Also, those lovely big sail panels will form condensation and it will run down the panels into the lowest point.
 Jaguar should've also provided a drain at the lowest point, which is the front intersection of inner, outer lower quarterpanels and the wheelarch extension. Go ahead and drill a decent hole here on your cars.

This is the lower quarter removed and some primer splashed on. Note my heat shrinking of a dent above the seam line. These lower quarters aren't too hard to remove, I didn't drill the spotwelds, I cleaned all paint off the seams ( so I could see the welds) then ground down the spotwelds from the old lower panel side. This meant I kept the surrounding panels intact with no holes in the seams. I have a pair of fibreglass lower quarters that I will epoxy on, they are non structural panels and originals are expensive and hard to find. It also allows you to keep the front bumper extension brackets intact on the inside of the panels this way, keeping this point nice and strong for the replacement panel.

And this is a view up and inside the cavernous XJS quarter panels, looking up into the buttresses. Most of you will never see this! I am leaving the lower quarters off so I can thoroughly paint up into this area, especially so I can get paint and anticorrosives into the inner buttress/boot gutter seam and around the wheelwells and fuel filler. I'll also put a coat of acrylic stone guard on the panel to reduce drumming and condensation.

And here is where my bodywork is up to at the moment.

 I have repaired a rusty corner above the tail lights and filled the antenna hole. A great way to let water into a car is with an antenna, plus modern powered antennas do a better job and can be hidden inside the car.
I still have to repair the lower part of this tail light housing and a couple of smaller repairs (front of sill, lower boot gutter and a small coin size hole behind door), then I can start stripping paint and re fairing the body.

Notice the nice small heat affected zone, whoever says flux core MIG welding is no good for bodywork doesn't know how to weld, and this was me also doing deliberately hot welds to ensure strength.
 Ground up and awaiting some final dollying then filler.

Pipes etc.

 Some people hate the idea of plumbing hard lines, I don't mind it too much.
 The hardest part is deciding where to run the lines. I didn't like the way Jaguar ran the lines over the floorpans towards the rear of the car, I've seen too many damaged fluid lines on jags to know it's a dumb idea.
 So I decided to follow the recess in the transmission tunnel that the exhausts follow. I'll be adding heat shields to either the pipes themselves (most likely) or the floorpan to protect the hard lines from heat.
 I've left the ends open so I can finish them off to length later. The fuel lines are interesting, Jaguar used crush olives on the tank ends, which are super easy to use, so I'll use them again. The other lines will be double flared.
 I bought some really cool stainless steel line clamps:

  I didn't buy stainless for wank factor, it's just really, really hard to find cad plated or zinc plated clamps!
  I bought 3/16" for the brakes (will use a few in engine bay) as well as single 3/8" for fuel lines and the double 3/16-3/6" items for the long runs under the floor. I couldn't find a double clamp in a 1/4-3/8" size for the charcoal canister line, so I just opened up the 3/16" double ones I bought, which worked out great.
 Previously I wanted to use Cunifer line for the brakes, but I got a great deal on zinc coated steel lines for all three sizes so I went with it. The originals were zinc plated and lasted 36 years...
 So, here is the line you'll need to fully replace all hard lines on a Jaguar:

  Each coil is 7.5m. The brakes will use all of a 7.5m coil, fuel likes almost all of a 7.5m coil  and the charcoal canister line about 4m.
 I found bending the 3/16' and 1/4" lines easy enough, they can be bent around your thumb with hand pressure, only using a bender for tight or compound curves. The 3/8" steel line, well, it's very easy to kink in the bender for some reason. If I was to do it again, I'd buy aluminium line without hesitation. The steel is too stiff and prone to crushing in this size.
 So anyway, the lines took about a half day to bend up:

 I used a pair of powerful disc magnets I have to help hold the lines in place when bending.
 And here are the finished lines, with the pretty stainless clamps:

  So now the car can go back onto it's "wheels"!
  The inside floors, trans tunnel etc will now be finish ground, primed, seam sealed and coated in body deadener, then I'll start stripping paint and doing cosmetic body work.
 A couple of weeks ago I bought a complete interior minus headliner, C pillar covers and roof rail covers, so all I need for the interior now is those parts and an instrument panel.
 And yesterday I found a complete rear end at a very good price:

 It's everything I was after, 3.31 ratio, LSD AND a factory rear swaybar. This has saved me quite a bit of time and money hunting those parts. I was considering going with a slightly higher diff ratio, but I'll see how the 3.31's go with the TH700 ratios. 
 With a combined ratio of 10.1 in low gear using the TH700/3.31's as compared to the combined 6.896 of the stock XJS/V12, I think I should see some significant acceleration improvements, and that doesn't even factor in the increased low end torque of the Holden 5 litre.