Interior motives.

I've been thinking about the interior for ages, considering how I wanted to go about it. Colours, originality etc.
The interior kind of snuck up on me as something that was next in the schedule. I have been fitting underfelt, but only as a fill in task whilst I waited for things to arrive.
Being close to christmas, and with a birthday close to christmas as well, my missus asked me if I would like some money to put towards the interior. This kicked my mind into gear and forced me to firm up the colour scheme for the car's insides.
I had been kicking around beige (safe, easy to match, every other Jag is beige....BORING!). A second option was a biscuit/coffee sort of colour. This goes really well with blues, and fairly easy to find decent colour choices. The third option was cop out black. Simple, easy to colour match everything, goes with all colours, but makes an interior look very dark and depressing.
I'd also been considering blue of some sort and after looking into the various blue options, went that way. I've also owned a few cars with blue interiors and I quite liked them.
This is a photo of  a Supra I owned in blue. You can see the seats, not bad and the overall blue look I sort of have in mind for the XJS :

Ordered some cut pile carpet and some interior and headlining material. The carpet is already here as it was locally sourced, but the cloth and velour for the headlining are coming from the US, so I am waiting for them to arrive.
The blue carpet I chose. The darker colours looked a bit too dark for my liking, and carpets work better if they are lighter than the upholstery:

All the interior carpet is cut out now and all the permanently attached carpet is glued into place. The floor mats have been left oversize until the vinyl arrives, so I can final trim and bind them. The floor mats will be removable, as will the floor underfelts, to ensure I can dry the carpets out in the future if they get wet. No photos of the carpets as yet, the job isn't finished and I just don't have any photos to hand.
I have also started on the seats. The rear seats appeared in good condition, but the backing boards needed stabilising urgently. They had both been wet in the past and had formed into weird bends and generally deteriorated. The hand stitching holding the listings in place were also pulling through the cardboard, ruining the appearance of the upholstery.
I decided to apply a layer of fibreglass to the back of them to stabilise and reinforce them, and it worked very well.
This is the back being set up. I clamped straight edges along top and bottom to get the back squared up again. I glassed up the majority of the back, let that cure, then the stiffness of the new glass helped hold the back in shape whilst I finished off the top and bottom edges:

The base was in really bad condition. It was torn right through the transmission tunnel area where it is very narrow and a bad repair had been done here before with contact cement and vinyl.
I started by clamping this area up and repairing it first, again using battens, but this time the batten also ensured the front of the base was square and parallel before repair:

Once that repair was done, I stapled a piece of wood on the face side of the front edge of the seat. This allowed me to glass right up to the edge and keep it square and straight, then the wood could be simply twisted off the staples and then  the staples cut flush. Again, this worked well. I don't seem to have many photos of the base, but you can see it was in quite poor condition. In some areas, the board was almost disintegrated and it was a matter of laying the glass up over it as best I could. It all held together though, so a win:

The front seats were good and bad news. The passenger side is in pretty reasonable condition, but the driver's side is bad, really bad. The diaphragm is torn badly and the base foam is terrible, again with dodgey repairs. The seat back frame was also cracked, I am not sure how it hadn't failed, but the crack was 95% across the main support!:

Ended up repairing and reinforcing the crack. I'd like to say it was a design flaw, but I don't think Jaguar designed the seat to last 37 years!

To be honest though, considering I still need to repair the seat base with either webbing or a new diaphragm, plus build up all new foam for it, and the fact the stock early XJS seats are terribly unsupportive and plain to look at, I am seriously considering other seats for the car. I need to work on and retrim what I have now anyway, so why not find and modify something much better to fit?
Later XJS seats are out, as the sellers seem to think they are rare and worth $750 a pair.....
I'm leaning towards early Supra or Celica seats as I've owned a couple of early Supras and they were extremely comfortable seats and adjustable (not power seats either), they are cheap and they suit the interior of the car. They are also out of a 2 door vehicle so are slim and tilt forward. We will see......

The wheel deal.

These wheels, I have been looking at them, knowing restoring the wheels would be time consuming and tedious.
How right I was!
The factory GKN Kent wheels are pretty solid things and the coatings applied to them equally so.
The stock gunmetal metallic paint looks and behaves like powdercoating, which is impressive if it is, as this would surely be one of the first times powdercoating was used on factory, production line wheels. The stock clearcoat is pretty weak though and comes off with just a bit of a nasty look.....
I started off with these ugly things:

 They look really bad because the stock clearcoat yellows off after 37 years of exposure.
 Applied some stripper and waited:

Also found out something interesting about Kent wheels- they were x-rayed during manufacture, presumably to check for porosity or cracks in the castings:

Then I took them outside and water blasted off the lifted paint:

 That process took three goes to get 95% of the paint off, the rest was removed with scrapers and a wire wheel, then finished with a file on the damaged edges of the rims and then progressively finer abrasive papers until finished with a green scotchbrite pad.
Not sure if I want to go with a brushed look or polished as yet, but the back and insides of the rims have been finished in my favourite 2k epoxy etch primer and will be left in that finish.
This photo shows how yellowed the old clear is, you can see patches left that the stripper didn't remove:

 Wheels painted and polished. I kind of like the recesses on the face in the natural cast aluminium finish:

And of course, it wouldn't be an old car restoration without a problem. One of the rims had a ding on the edge, I have knocked out far worse before with no problems. And this one cracked. So I will either have this wheel welded (which should be a simple enough repair as it isn't major) or just buy another Kent:

More odds & ends

Chasing up loose ends under the engine bay, mainly cooling and hoses.
I've plumbed in the power steering and transmission coolers, have also fitted an external cooler in front of the radiator to supplement the cooler built into the radiator. Automatic transmissions can't run too cool.
Here is the cooler fitted:

As you can see, I had to drag out the lower valance panels to trial fit, to ensure they wouldn't foul the new cooler. That was a good time to strip, repair and prime them in epoxy. They are finished except for gravel stop and topcoat and hung up out of the way:

Have made up a new high pressure power steering line as well. The parts are readily available to DIY this job, and it means you can choose the best route and fittings for how you want the line to run, and cut to fit on the vehicle. For those interested in making their own power steering lines, the fitting on the Jaguar rack is a standard GM size- 1/2 x 20tpi inverted flare.

 I fitted a banjo bolt and right angle fitting to the pressure side of the pump for clearance. These took AGES to find in the right thread size, but they are out there. These were from a specialty circle track race car supply business:
 

And fitted into the car. The cut lines are the A/C compressor lines:

Have also sorted out an air intake and filter. Bought a Range Rover classic air filter box and a universal 180 degree silicone hose bend. Worked quite well and fits in the gap perfectly. The metal box also gives a more factory look than a later model plastic one:

Another annoying task was sorting out the last of the cooling system. I wanted to run a remote header tank at a high point, so the system would self bleed and be much simpler than the factory "keep adding parts till it sort of works" cooling system.
I ended up with a VW coolant reservoir and mounted it up where I had mounted the brake reservoir, necessitating the movement of that reservoir to the driver's side fender brace. It all ended up looking very clean and simple, one heater hose simply passes the new coolant reservoir via a tee in the line, and a small bleed hose comes off an adaptor I have in the top radiator hose. Idiot proof and reliable
I chose the VW reservoir because of it's size, ready availability, cheap price and the fact it is on millions of vehicles; it will be available new for ever: