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!

Exhausting work.

 The time has come to do something about the exhaust system. I had looked long and hard at a set of extractors available for this particular engine for swapping into late model Nissan Patrols. They exited in around the right spot but still didn't look like they'd quite be right without some work, and $650.00 is a lot of money for maybe then hacking them up!
 So I bought some header flanges and a Summit weld up shorty header kit for small block Chevs and decided to have a go! I bought the SBC kit for several reasons, mainly price ( I knew I would be hacking the pipes up so no need for anything special) and that the kit used 1 5/8" primary tubes, which is all this engine needs and being smaller, are easier to snake around for clearance.
 The header flanges:

And the header kit:

 I also bought a power tool I've been avoiding buying for years, always finding an excuse not to spend the money. Seeing how quickly it cuts through the exhaust tubing, I was a fool for not buying a cut off saw years ago! Such are the joys of being a tight ass!

To make a bit more room for the exhaust and to ensure that extra room reduced any heat soak issues for the starter, I also bought a mini starter, which was good for several extra inches of clearance. This is the original starter:

And the mini starter. Not only is it shorter, but much more room between starter and frame:

Then it was on to the interesting part, the actual header construction. I've never built a set of headers before, so I chose to start on the easier side first, the passenger side. There was no steering shaft in the way on this side so it was a fairly straight run down. There's not too much to say about fabricating headers except that I found it easiest to put the collector where I wanted it under the car on a stand and work towards it with the tubes. I found it best to make several cuts to arrive at the correct angle rather than a large first cut as angles can change a lot when you shorten a pipe, especially near the middle or edge of a bend!:

Here is the passenger side collector, I was worried about finishing the inside of the collectors (for fear of exhaust leaks), but it was pretty straightforward:

Here is the header welded up but waiting to have the collector trimmed to size. I wanted to finish weld the headers, then get them mounted and offer up the bend I needed to make the transition under the car. This allowed me to get the right length:

O2 sensor bung welded in:

And the 90 degree bend I had to get right both in height and direction:

Ended up with good ground clearance and enough room for a catalytic converter beside the gearbox, tucked up out of harm's way. Note that I used three bolt flanges, I HATE two bolt flanges! They always bend, leak and are a general pain in the ass!:

 The exhaust is 3" tube coming out of the headers, it will step down to 2.5" into the cats and then down to 2" out of the cats. This will keep the velocity up and create a little bit more heat in the cats, which will help them do their job better. I don't really need to run cats by law, but I want to as I want this car to be totally emissions legal for the engine year being swapped in. Car guys don't have to ruin the planet just because they can!
 These are the cool reducers I got for the exhaust system. They step down a little at a time, just cut them at the diameter you want. They are also cool because the step downs are more like a cone reducer, so much less of a bottle neck in the system. The other advantage is that you can use both parts of the reducer if you are stepping the exhaust system down, eliminating throwing away the other half!:

 And here is the beginning of the much trickier driver's side header. It's REALLY tight around the steering shaft, but it's getting there. The engine mount and A/C compressor bracket isn't helping either. Yes, this car will have functioning air conditioning when done.
 The front header pipe will run along the top then duck back down behind the rear pipe.....somehow! No seriously, there is enough room, it'll just take some time to sort out and some right angle spark plug boots:

 Once I have the driver's side done and cats mounted, I can run the exhaust back. Plan is to run 2" pipe past the transmission and maybe use a 2" in/ 2" out open chamber muffler behind the trans, then two large oval mufflers in the normal Jaguar spot under the rear seat.
 From there I'll buy a pair of new over axle/through rear suspension cage pipes and then out to the back of the car. That'll save fabrication those difficult through cage pipes and should allow good flow whilst being relatively quiet. Once the exhaust is routed, I'll sort out the driveshaft, then pull the rear cage down and rebuild the rear suspension and differential.
 More exhaust pics to follow as everything gets done.

Front suspension and crossmembers again!

Well, everything is now completed with the two crossmembers. I'm pretty pleased with how they've worked out. The transmission cross member has plenty of room around it for exhausts, shift cables, future maintenance etc:

 And the engine cross member has as much room around the mounts as I could get for exhaust clearances:

I've also finished the front suspension completely now. New bushes, balljoints, rotors, bearings, caliper rebuild etc. All painted in the tough 2k epoxy so it'll stay looking good for a very long time!
In the photo below, the stub axle is frosty with condensation as I froze them for 48 hours before installation, this ensures a nice, tight fit for the taper the stub axle and hub are connected by:

 And a couple of photos of the finished suspension. I'm a bit worried about the front spring stiffness. When jacking up under a control arm, they barely compress an inch before the body comes off the stands. I'm hoping there is a LOT more weight to go onto the front of the car still!: