Eleanor :

the quickening

The aero project is now well under way. The new splitter is carefully released from the mold, and a further day at work with his borrowed Russell makes the all-important further pieces that will actually turn a Mallock into a Jaguar.

The finished article does have a hint of the original Jag chin spoiler about the fixing points.  A great deal of further work is then needed to ensure that it sits correctly under the front end, at the right angle. There is more to this art than just slinging it under there and hoping.

Work on the rear wing has also now commenced. Classic Thunder is to be Eleanor's new home, and the rules are pretty generous with the wings. Regs say it can be of a particular size, but mounted up to one inch above the roofline, and a long way back. Both the front and rear aero devices can project beyond the plan view of the bodywork by only a set limit. It does however allow a rear wing that can really work.

Fitting the wing is more complex than it first looks. To mount it this high requires custom-made supports, and they need to meet several basic requirements. Tall enough, strong enough, light enough, and thin enough not to create their own source of drag.

They also need to mount to the car somewhere substantial. Rear-facing camera footage from this car with the original little rear wing showed a bootlid bouncing around and rattling about like a hamster on amphetamines, but this wing is going to be rather different.

High speed loads on this thing are going to be roughly equivalent to having two large friends sitting on the back of the car, and that lightweight boot isn't going to support that.

The wing has to therefore bolt to the shell itself, which puts the stays well outboard. Not a problem, fortunately and more by luck than judgement, the Mallock wing lines up pretty well with the XJS boot aperture.

Milled aluminium does however require a trip or two to see Dermott, of power4peanuts fame, for some friendly advice, and his machinery.

Machined to shape but not size, that requires a further measure up against the car to set the correct height.

Of course the boot doesn't now quite fit, it has to be trimmed to fit around the new supports.

With the height set, back to the Peanutter to finish the supports, including the addition of what we are clearly going to now call "speed holes."

The visual effect of the wing on the car is outrageous. It causes the small child-like brain in Stewert to start doing excited little backflips, as Eleanor turns into the out-and-out race car he always wanted.

With the endplates also finished, the whole thing is shipped off to Woods Restorations for paint, as Stew proves that over the years he's met enough people that he has a contact in every single useful automotive trade.

Next it's brakes. Eleanor has always run stock XJS discs and calipers, and they've always been enough, the organic component in the car was insane enough that the standard kit was enough to compete with those who have spent thousands on big brake conversions. But add downforce and huge slicks, and what was borderline braking becomes inadequate.

Time for an upgrade, and fortunately the combined efforts of Kutuka and our associates have trodden this path before, both the Bear and Roger Webster have been though the heartache of fitting big front brakes to the XJS before, without the huge expenditure of those who rush to buy off-the-shelf kits.

Another call then, and Stew has his shopping list of parts to buy, and a Webster trekking back out to his own workshop to assist with the conversion parts needed to bolt the new Brembo calipers to the car.

Sadly for the Bearded Webster they don't make brake disc boxes as robustly as they should, and he is alleged to have made a noise like a cross polar bear as a pair of rather large discs used his toe for a cushion.

Despite the weight of the discs being greater than the old XJS items - necessarily due to their increased size, the alloy calipers are so light that Eleanor actually loses a couple of kilos of front end mass.

A set of lightweight 18" rims fell off an X300 that came through the sticky paws of Kutuka's northern division, and the hunt for slick tyres begins. The usual route to cheap slicks are slightly-used tyres discarded by richer motorsport disiplines. An Aston Martin GT4 car yields a set of truly huge slicks....

More on those next time.

Fresh out of the mold, one new front splitter.

Made by a man who can.

It's possible that you might be able to spot where the Mallock ended and the Jaguar begins.

Strictly governed by the regulations, but what a set of rules!

Trial fitment to confirm that the measurements comply with the Classic Thunder regs.

No matter how high-tech, you can't manage in motorsport without little bits of wood.

There are a couple more devices to add, but you get the general idea.

And cardboard is as vital to the race effort as the bits of wood.

Old v new. If you drop the new discs on Roger Webster's foot, this is what it would look like.....

Old, original XJS brakes, new brakes installed, and new lightweight 18" rims ready to accept slicks. 

The horizontal on the roof is to set the height for the new rear wing. Which is currently a little bit too tall....

Aluminium stays milled to size and shape by power4peanuts and trial fitted, ready for some on-car adjustment.

Ignore the rather camp car in the background, it belongs to a hairdresser. The ex-Mallock wing is rather large.

Development of the aero on this car is going to take a long time. There haven't been a lot of books written on XJS downforce....

Sharey von Richtofen