JAGUAR XJS RACING

HELEN: Resurrection

The car is due to run with the JEC trackday at the end of Feb, which compromises this rebuild, I wanted an extra month. A compromise is therefore reached, the shell will be made over, but we will refit all the original suspension and engine for the trackday, then bring it home and take it apart again. It adds a week of work, but we promised Terry, so it must therefore be, we don't make promises we don't make every effort to keep. And they say we never do anything for the club…

The shell now needs her cosmetics attending to, and there are many hours in this. The underside is finally ready for some paint, and some free etch primer comes my way, which turns out to be a most amusing pumpkin shade. It is, however, free. Helen looks, briefly, as if I’m going the full Bob Beecham paintjob.

Primer follows, and then the slightly embarrassing point at which I was caught by the Bear sanding the underside of the car. Well, as I’ve said before, I can if I want to. The new gloss is swiftly applied with a hosepipe. Coverage under here is more important than finish, there are a few runs that appear, but I don’t much care. Why rub it down if you’re going to lather the paint on? Don’t ask awkward questions.

The new paint has been matched by the paint shop to match the colour of the old car. Angelina was a deeper, glossy blue called ultramarine, a non-metallic, solid colour that covered well, and above all else was very cheap. When you are throwing 5 litres of paint at a car, cost does become a factor. Once Angelina was destroyed and I built Helen, she was painted in that very same ultramarine, from the same paint place, and the blue that resulted was about three shades lighter, meaning she lacked a little of the depth of colour the old car had, and when sporting Angelina’s undamaged doors they were clearly a different colour. Oops.

The respray is now to be the old shade all over, and to be sure the whole car, inside, outside, under and over, all panels will all get the new shade.

With the underside done there is one further change before she comes down on the deck again, and that is an addition to the rollcage. Nothing major, but I am going to add further stiffness by tying the cage in above the doors, welding cage to roof structure with some bespoke pieces. Usual procedure for these, cut them to size, bore the holes and swage them, weld them in, done. Much easier with the car on her side like this, I still can't weld very well uphill.

These tie-in pieces don't have to be very large, there's not as much room as you think above the door tops, and I doubt that these add a great deal. The point is, however, that if every tiny change makes only a tenth of a percent difference, if you make a hundred such changes they cumulatively make sense

Time for paint in the engine bay, boot, and interior. Only then will the exterior bit everyone sees even get thought about! Less of that in the shell than you think, actually, remove all the panels and an XJS is a roof and 2 wings, the glossy bit that matters here is probably only ten percent of the shell I'm painting at this point.

As there have been a few things changed under the bonnet, the grinding, filler and primer takes some time. I particularly wanted the underbonnet to be worthy of the attention the car has had, so a lot more time prepping it under here than usual.

Inside too takes a lot more time. What I’m trying to rid the car of is that roughness to the paint that resulted from the way the car was originally built. Welding leaves those tiny metal bobbles all over the place, and I didn’t spend a week running a finishing disc all over the metal, it simply got primed. To compound this the gloss went straight over the etch primer, no weight penalty of a middle coat, so what you have inside is the unfinished roughness of gloss paint over what is effectively bare steel, with every flaw showing. Gloss paint applied directly over etch also seems to be at least partially absorbed, leaving a dull finish.

The enormity of this task is therefore to sand, by hand, the entirely of the interior. You don’t realise how much there is until you have to do this, but eventually enough 100 grit paper has died that the surfaces are a little smoother. A proper primer this time allows a more liquid finish, and some more sanding of the grosser deformities helps. I’m not looking for perfection, just a bit better. She will after all be running without a passenger seat, so you do have to pick up the standard of presentation a little with a bare floorpan.

 Yes, this is all much more road car than race, but then I do intend her to do both jobs. And anyone who has ever watched some of the posher race cars in action will note that the interior finish is actually very presentable, they do spend time on this sort of thing, and I can see why. Pointless, yes. Time consuming, yes. Absolutely no help in adding speed, well no, wrong actually. If speed is a function of both car and driver, and for the driver this is about confidence and faith, then the feeling of sitting in something a little bit special translates into that extra tenth. Don’t try to tell me what’s in my own head, I’ll be quicker in this if it’s more shiny.

Externally the job of tackling the rear arches has already begun. A little rough when the car first went out, both sides took a beating at Cadwell in ’09, Ray Hill and Chris Palmer respectively left off and near side rear wings in need of some time in the beating and fillering department, and I was never happy with the end result. Cosmetic-only fixes are at best temporary, and only work in California. Over here, no matter what you do, you can't avoid the car getting wet at some point. Repairs this time include a lot more by way of rust-proofing.

Whilst she was on her sides then I took the grinder to both wheelarches and found the steel beneath the old repairs. Some of it was rusted and so cut away to be replaced. Nothing drastic, the outer skin was fine, but the inner was in need of a few pieces inserting with the welder, which made this anything other than a short job. The regulations I’ll be running to permit the rolling under of the rear wheelarch lip, but not removal. I therefore had to repair the arches, in places reinstating the rear lip so that it could be then beaten with a hammer. Crackers? Yes. Required? Yes. Filler assisted in correcting some of the more appalling wavy lines, but the arches themselves are once again sound. Three nights each they took.

Now she’s on her belly again I can attack the outside to make sure I got that shape right. The time estimate for the work has the car in gloss paint the night before the tame McGivern arroves to work his magic. After over a month on the project so far it is, as ever, that close to the deadline. But then just in time is as good as a month early.

With a week to go until David gets here to assault the wiring, there are also early thoughts of the interior layout, because he needs to know where everything is to go. Sketches are doodled in over-long meetings, and parts start to flood in. Again, the theme is neatness, a tidier and more show-car finish in here. Delivery, or rather theft, of a 1976 XJS presents me with a full proper old-car interior, and the temptation is very much to fit a fair amount of it in here, I did get oddly nostalgic at the odd centre console and the strange silver-rimmed instrument binnacle. If we’re going classic touring car, why not go classic….

Before the wiring, and indeed the initial assembly can commence I need the interior, underbonnet and boot in gloss blue. The exterior of the car will wait til late, which will allow me to refit the wings and prep the doors, so that one big mix of paint will cover the lot in one go, ensuring the car is all one colour. No more subtle blue harlequin this time! Back to the sanding then....

Next time, gloss, and wiring!

Share Bear

A marshall sneaked into my garage to take spy pics for the major F1 teams. Subtle camouflage.

Have you met Ted?

Assistance with the heavy sanding was much appreciated.

At midnight the car turns back into the pumpkin it started life as.

The etch primer was free, OK?

A new brace/ gearbox crossmember takes early shape. Not the finished item, clearly, but an indication of the extra work that goes into even minor changes.

2-pack primer turns the pumpkin into a ghost.

A little excessive to do the underside, right? Yes. Do I care? No.

And gloss blue makes it all right again.

Would anyone have noticed if I hadn't done it? Yes, I would.

Every hole in the car was swaged.

All of them. Find one we missed, I defy you.

Not perfect under here, but not half bad by any standard. Certainly good enough for a roadgoing class XJS race car.

Extra roll cage tie in pieces going in.

Every little helps, right?

Took bloody ages.

Exterior prep ongoing.

It's a small change, but it does absorb a lot of hours.

And the pumpkin is back! There is a mouse in this garage too. Never offers to help though, lazy sod. And he steals biscuits.

All her insides are now sanded back, ground, and primed.

The pink hoover was acquired as a friend for Mr David.

I could paint the whole car this shade and go back to the 70s.

If only I had an old XJS to copy...