Dear Fellow SOLs,
My wife and I recently acquired a '64 Jag. 3.8S (Yay!) in excellent
unrestored condition. It has ~79k miles on it, and behaves pretty
well. It has the 3-speed automatic. I would be grateful for any
wisdom on routine treatment of the car. It's clearly more complex
and touchier than my Spitfire, which I have owned and maintained for
12 years now.
The PO was very conscientious, and supplied many receipts. He only
put a few k miles on it, though. The original owner put on over 70k.
It's a black-plate California car.
Question 1: Should I worry about valve recession if I use unleaded
gas? The PO said he used an octane booster to avoid knocks,
I would really prefer not to be adding TEL to the tank.
Question 2: I'm getting a bit of stumbling and pinging on quick
throttle openings. Is this normal, or should I check and
clean the fuel system and get a tune-up? The car has twin
SUs.
Question 3: Horn does not work. Is there a canonical place to check,
or is the whole harness suspect?
Question 4: The tool set was not included with it. Where might I get
a tool kit as supplied with the car?
Question 5: (NOT on routine maintenance) Is there a _reversible_ way
to convert the car to manual transmission? I would like
to be able to retain originality, but a stick is really
my style (the transmission was the only compromise upon
purchase).
Actually, I can't wait to dig into the car! I suspect the poor running
might be due to doing so much slow driving, which is mostly what we've
done. However, it's hard to get the motor much over 3000 RPM and
legal! :)
Regards,
Tim
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