Rearend service for a classic Jag         Installing indicator lens on older Jags  

Don't use silicone lube in the engine compartment 

You should also checkout John Thomson's series of 4 articles on tire technology       TIRES

Home brew octane boosters The website of the Vintage Triumph Register, www.vtr.org republished an article on how to boost the octane of modern gasoline with chemicals available at your local hardware or paint store. Apparently the 100 octane gas that Union 76 sells at some of its local stations contains some or all of these chemicals. My question to the membership, has anyone actually tried these formulas and what does it do to the rubber and plastics in the fuel system?

Trans coolers If you are considering the addition of a transmission cooler on your automatic Jag (esp. helpful on the Series III XJ6 with the weak BorgWarner 66) I suggest you look at Perma-Cool www.permacool.com They make a cooler with a thermostatically controlled fan attached. We all know how much a good fan contributes to the cooling of the engine. Well, the same applies to the cooling of the transmission. Forcing air through a trans cooler can triple it efficiency and make the mount location irrelevant.

Notes on converting to 134a I have been taken to task for stating that 134a is a more efficient refrigerant than R-12. 134a is more efficient. Its latent heat of vaporization is 216.5 kilojoules/kg compared to R-12’s 166.56 kilojoules/kg. This is 30% better. Everyone who has made the conversion on an existing system knows that the air conditioning doesn’t get the car as cold. You also might know that systems designed for 134a are larger. The evaporator and the condenser are physically bigger. The key is that because of its characteristics 134a takes more space to contain the amount of refrigerant that will give the same cooling. When you retrofit an R-12 system you can only put in about 60% of the amount of R-12 the system originally contained so even though you have a refrigerant that is 30% more efficient you have a net loss of about 17%.

Essential tools If you work on cars very much you know that the most time consuming and frustrating part of the whole experience is dropped and missing parts, usually a washer or nut. Professionals share your frustration and the industry has a variety of tools for retrieving the flotsam and jetsam of auto repair. The most useful is the magnet on the spring shaft. These come in a variety of styles and it is useful to have a few different types. Don’t bother buying the one that has a couple of refrigerator magnets in a plastic case at one end. It won’t fit into the places where parts always fall and isn’t strong enough to retrieve many of the parts you will drop. I have one on a flexible shaft that is not a spring. This allows directing the magnet to the lost part when the path is not straight. The other very useful retriever is the 4-pronged grabber. Some fasteners and other small parts are not magnetic (like O rings). Along with retrieving tools you need a few mirrors on handles and a very strong light. A light on a snake is especially useful. Sometimes compressed air will blow a small part of its perch and you can retrieve it under the car. A piece of thin tubing attached to your air nozzle will put the air where it is needed. The one tool that I haven’t purchased yet, which I’m sure would be the ultimate part retriever, would be a fixture that I could attach to both ends of the car, allowing me to turn the car upside down and with the activation of a giant electric motor attached to a huge off-center weight I could give the car a violent shaking and watch all the loose parts fall out on the floor. Ah, well . . . Take a look at the accompanying pictures if your aren’t sure what some of these gadgets look like.

Variety of grab tools                                             Worthless grab tool

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you can’t retrieve a fastener. I keep a supply of the most common washers and nuts; 1/4 and 5/16 coarse and fine, flat, lock, and star washers, a few small bolts of varying length. Use grade 8 only. Your local OSH or Yardbirds has a pretty good selection and you can buy in boxes of 100. Sure beats the price at the local NAPA auto supply.

Manuals Got a call a few days ago wondering if the club had access to manuals for late model Jags. The answer, of course, was No. Apparently Jag doesn’t print manuals anymore. The dealers have CD-Roms or go online to the factory when they need service info. The CD’s aren’t for sale to the general public. I tried last year to buy a microfiche of a ‘94 parts book which the dealer had listed in his part catalog. The price was a nominal $20. I’ve purchased them in the past for the E-Types. After a few days the parts man called apologetically, saying that the fiche was a dealer only item, not available to the public. The message is clear. Jaguar doesn’t want anyone working on their cars but themselves. This stinks. There are many competent technicians out there who are every bit as good as the factory guys. If they could get the proper info they could help the reputation of late model Jags by repairing them properly at reasonable prices. One source of technical info that I know of is Mitchell On-Demand, a DVD that contains a pretty complete coverage on all popular cars from 1980 to the present. Cost? ~$4800. If you are interested you can contact Mitchell’s at mitchellrepair.com . Motor Information Systems, the old MoTor manual company, www.motor.com sells a current foreign car manual for about $110. It does cover much the same thing as the Mitchell on Demand, which is to say, not much. If you are interested you can contact the local rep, Ed McDonough, at 707-763-4889. For manuals on older Jaguars you might checkout www.books4cars.com They have some used manuals that are cheaper than new and they also have auto books of a technical nature. I will continue to research this issue as I know it is a sore point with all independent repair shops, not just individual owners. It seems to me that the EPA has a regulation that requires the manufactures of all OBD2 cars (’94 and later) to provide service information at a "fair and reasonable price". Stay tuned.

A matter of IMAGE Reflecting on the above paragraph reminded me of a recent conversation I had with some Auto Technicians in Training (they aren’t called "mechanics" anymore). The subject of Jaguar came up, naturally. Their impression of Jaguar? . . . Some old guy is driving one at the speed limit and never steps on the gas very hard. These guys’ car of choice? BMW. They can buy a running BMW for $1000, a convertible for $3000. Which Jag could they buy for $3000? A shot XJ6 that took 13 seconds to get to 60 mph when it was new. Not exactly a car to get a young man’s blood boiling. Some years ago Cadillac discovered that their average buyer was 65 years old and getting older every year. Bad news for future sales. Is Jaguar headed the same way? Once BMW hooks these guys they’ll be loyal for life. It took BMW a long time to build this following. It started with the 2002 back in the ‘60’s. BMW sells 800,000 cars a year. The used car pipeline is full. Ford is telling us that Jaguar is going to compete model for model with BMW. I’m waiting. So are the young guys.

Raiding the parts bin Much has been made of the fact that $175,000 Aston Martins have Ford switch gear and instruments in them and the Jaguar S-Type has some recognizable pieces too. Now that Ford owns Land Rover there’s a golden opportunity to steal a march on BMW. Take the high end Ranger Rover, junk the antediluvian Buick V-8 and put in the Jaguar 4 liter punched to 4.5 with and w/o the supercharger. For an encore, shove the front wheels forward and extend the hood and fenders. Put an Aston V-12 between the motor mounts, tuned to about 450 hp. Talk about the ultimate UAV (Urban Assault Vehicle)!