> Well the real reason for the post is to ask for help.
>
> How can I make this tach work? Does anyone out there have experience
> with allison ignitions/electric tach's?
The tach on the V-12 works the same way as all of the other Smiths tachs,
it looks for current pulses, and gets hooked up in series with the coil on
non-electronic ignition cars. The V-12 XKE's (or at least some of them) had
factory electronic ignition. You should look on the wiring diagram for one
of these cars and see how the tach is hooked up, and hook yours up in the
same way.
>
> One thing the previous owner's husband said is that the oil
> light will come on when the car's hot and stopped ie traffic light.
> The owners manual gives a pressure to maintain at 3000RPM
> (40 I think) which isn't a problem, but what about at idle, are
> other jags the same?
Sorry to say it, but the oil light should not come on. How low is the oil
pressure? Before going to too much effort, try replacing the oil with 20W50
(which is the correct weight if the car is mainly to be driven on warm days)
and replacing the filter. There is a special valve to bypass a clogged oil
filter that will lower your oil pressure by about 20 pounds, and the filters
will clog if not replaced for a long time.
> How much noise should the valve train make? It's not what I would
> consider noisy, but I can hear it? How difficult is this adjustment?
Don't bother unless there's a good reason. You know the effort you went
through to remove the carb? Its a lot harder, and not at all needed unless
there's a real problem with the car. Valve lash is set by little metal
shims of calibrated thickness placed between the valve cup and valve. They
get bashed smaller by 2 or 3 thousandths over time, which isn't enough to
make any difference in the way the car drives. To adjust them, you remove
the valve covers, take feeler guage measurements of the lash of each valve,
remove the cams and measure the thickness of each shim with a micrometer.
You then calculate the thickness of the shims that you really want, and
order them from your favorite parts house. Then you install them, and put
everything back together.
>
> What are good sources of info/parts/clubs? I order some stuff from
> a place called special intrest cars I think and had fast friendly
> service. Does anyone have a good dealer/bad dealer list?
SICP, Special Interest Car Parts is who I assume you're talking about. They
run specials every month that are incredibly cheap and are a good source for
what they carry. Unfortunately their stock isn't particularly broad. All of
the parts houses order their parts from Terry's Jaguar. Unfortunately, Terry's
sells to the general public at full list, so they are not a good source for
parts. But it is definitely worth getting their catalog, so you know what
will be widely available. Just choose whoever is cheapest and gives best
service, most of what they all sell is the same stuff.
Joe
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