Step 3: Headin' Out.
Bright and early Saturday morning, Tristan and I arrived at Bob
Grossman's shop to start work. We were in the Jaguar dream shop from
hell, the world headquarters for The Might Roar Jaguar Racing Team.
It sports a major league lift, hoists, solvent baths, air lines, light
and heavy machine tools of every kind and, most importantly, lots of
heated space to work in. Outside the shop was an XJS and a derelict
MkII, inside was their MkII racer, a MkII in progress and his
_beautiful_ BRG tri-Weber'd 4.2L S1 E-Type Coupe boy-racer project (this
is only half their Jag collection). There were XK engines everywhere,
manuals, racks of Jag parts; basically everything you could want. But,
knowing how real-world mechanics work, I had brought all of my tools
down and I was determined to use his tools _only_ if mine absolutely
couldn't do the job. I had a pretty good idea of what needed to be
done, but I wasn't so cocky that I wouldn't hesitate ask advice when I
had a veteran XK builder at my elbow.
Bob lent me a wheeled cart to put my tool box on and the disassembly
began. As we started working, I had a strange feeling of being tested,
of being given enough rope so Bob could see if I knew what to do with
it, for example, Bob would give deliberately vague instructions to see
if I knew how to proceed with the disassembly, then a tool of his
mysteriously showing up in my tool box, I made sure it got right back to
him. It was a friendly environment and it's nice working in a situation
that if you get stuck, there's someone there who knows exactly what to
do. The coolant was drained, the radiator yanked, then I started on the
exhaust manifold while Bob kindly chipped in to pull all the fiddly bits
of the FI. Ironically, just then, when I was elbow deep in broken Jag
engine, PBS's Click and Clack were on, responding to a listeners
question of "Should I drop a 350 in my XJ6?" We both just laughed.
Tris was a real help, being our gopher and "helping" by pressing the
button on the electric wrench. I pulled out the broken upper timing
chain and close examination showed that I only had one small piece of it
end up in the basement.
Soon (an hour or two), I had both manifolds off and started in on the
head bolts. Awhile later, the head was dangling from the hoist. There
was a definite strike on the #1 intake valve with a little matching half
moon ping on the head of the piston (The Daimler is a gray market import
from Belgium, so it has the high, 9:1, compression pistons :-). We put
the head on the bench and filled the ports with solvent to check for
leaks thru the valves. #1 and #2 intakes leaked. #1 due to the strike
and #2 due to an obscene amount of deposits built up on the back of the
valve (no wonder all those 4 cylinder cars were blowing me off, my
engine couldn't breath). It's strange though, I had gotten 149's across
the board when I did a compression test two months ago even though it is
now apparent that #2 intake not shutting all the way. I pulled all the
intake valves and wire brushed the deposits off them. Bob then showed
me how to lap the valves to match them to their seats. It was really
neat and I only did one so that I could show Scotty and Johannes how to
do the others when they came down to help on Sunday.
Both the mechanical condition of the Daimler and some amazing receipts
which the PO (previous Owner) gave me made it obvious that he had taken
very good care of this car (he once paid $40 to have a license plate
installed and never seemed to make it out of our $9 emission test for
less than $100!). One of the long head studs had come out with the head
nut and I was amazed to find absolutely no corrosion on the part of the
stud which sits down in the coolant. It looked brand new!
By now it was late, we cleaned and locked up the shop. Too exhausted to
join Anne and the rest of the Front-Rangers who had spent the day in the
mountains 4-wheeling and who were now drinking beers and lounging in
Bizzers hot tub high up Four Mile canyon, Tris and I got some takeout
dinner and went home to soak in the tub and hit the sack.
/\ Lawrence "Can I drop a 440 in my XJ6 and still have it corner?" Buja
\_][ southern@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research
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